Moscow Stations - a novel by Venedikt Yerofeev

Moscow Stations was written in 1970 but until just a few years
before Yerofeev's death in 1990 it had only circulated as a typescript
in a few major cities. This translation by Stephen Mulrine only
appeared in 1997, published by Faber and Faber, though a dramatisation
by the same writer made its stage debut in 1993 with Tom Courtenay
playing the lead role.

The book ostensibly charts the events of the author's journey by train
from Moscow to Petushki, eighty miles east, though its scope, in both
time and space, goes well beyond the extent of this journey. In one
sense it is an autobiography of his life, but it is also the painting
of a canvas by an alcoholic philosopher who is part of a disaffected
under-class. This may all sound extremely bleak, but despite its
basically tragic elements, the story is told with an incredible humour
and spirit which has a startling ability to make you laugh out
loud.

Yerofeev was born in Poyakonda, a small town in the arctic circle in a
treeless frozen landscape. He excelled at school and won a place at
Moscow University, but was expelled half way through his second year
for absenteeism and insubordination. From then on he drifted from town
to town doing a variety of jobs and his hard-drinking career also
began. His experiences over these years are graphically illustrated in
the novel, his journey through life fuelled by various and alarming
alcoholic concoctions and laced with his own highly original
philosophy.

Yerofeev sweeps you along from a hard, stark, gutter perspective
examining major issues like employment, love, economics, sex and
religion, all with the intelligence of what, despite everything,
remained a scholarly mind. He also takes you off on hilarious tangents,
achieved with equal aplomb, like why no-one has ever been able to come
up with a formula for the interval between hiccups brought on by
drinking. He also offers some rather alarming recipes for cocktails
containing everything from sock deodorizer to brake fluid; if you
wonder about the veracity of these recipes, one of his female friends
recalled after his death having to hide bottles of perfume when he
visited.

Yerofeev was not a dissident in the way that Solzhenitsyn, for example
was, but the novel can clearly be seen as an indictment of the
faltering Soviet Union as well as a testament to the remarkable power
and will of the human spirit. If you have ever watched a Russian
Orthodox church service it has the same sort of rhythm as the chanting
and singing which pauses every now and then, and then recommences with
its own distinctive structure and beauty.

Moscow Stations is a highly original work and makes you wonder what
else is out there in the world of Russian literature and art in general
which has not yet surfaced since the fall of the USSR. It deserves a
wider audience and I recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the
human condition; it will delight and horrify you, make you laugh and
cry as Yerofeev, to quote from the book's own summary, 'goes into the
night with a sodden dignity.'