SEER,VlI.79,No.3,J_UIY 200I On the Page and on the Snow: Vladimir Makanin's Andergraund, iii Geroi nashego vremeni G. S. SMITH INthe subtitleof the novel he finishedin the springof I997, serialized the followingyear in a leading Moscowjournal,1and soon publishedin book form,2Vladimir Makaninexplicitly, even blatantly,laid claim to a canonic literary antecedent and its associated (more than merely literary)authority.In doing so, he wasby no means alone among major Russian writers in recent years.3 Makanin labours the point in his epigraph,which citespartof Lermontov'sprefaceto the second edition of Geroinashego vremeni (i 84 ): 'Geroi . . . portret, no ne odnogo cheloveka:eto portret,sostavlennyiiz porokovvsego nashegopokoleniia , v polnom ikhrazvitiia'(p. 7).4 The importanceof thishero and the bookhe anchorswas recognized immediately by the leading Russian literarycritics,5with one notable exception.6It is evident from theirresponsesthat this novel confirmed G. S. Smith is Professor of Russian, University of Oxford, and Fellow of New College. ' Vladimir MIakanin, Andergraund, iil Geroi nashegovremeni.Roman, Znamia, I998, I, pp. 5-I06; I998, 2, pp. 32-96; I998, 3, pp. 69-I37; I998, 4, pp.53-I I6. 2 Vladimir Makanin, Andergraund, iil Geroinashegove-emeni. Roman, Moscow, I998. All references will be made to this edition, indicated by page numbers in parenthesis in the body of the article. Makanin's own Kavkazskii plennyi(I 995) was preceded, for example, by Evgenii Popovs Nakanune nakanune(I 993) and, more relevant to the subject of Andergraund, Vyacheslav P'etsukh's N`ovaiamoskovskaia filosofiia(I989), which is a 'remake' of Prestuplenie i nakazanie. 'Re-runs' by film-makers of classic Russian literary texts, which manifestly correlate directly with Makanin's concerns in Andergraund, are surveyed by David Gillespie, 'New Versions of Old Classics: Recent Cinematic Interpretations of Russian Literature', in Birgit Beumers (ed.), Russia on Reels. TheRussianIdea in Post-SovietCinema,London and New York, I999, (hereafter RussiaonReels),pp. II 4-24. 4 'Geroi nashego vremeni' is also listed in the book's contents (p. 6) as the subtitle of Part 5, chapter 2, 'Pod znakom Marsa', but this subtitle does not appear at the beginning of tlle chapter itself (p. 42 1). 5 See especially,Vladimir Bibikhin, 'O romane Vladimira Makanina Geroinashego vremeni,' lezavpisimaia gazeta, II, I998, p. 3; T. Blazhnova, 'Drugoi', Anizlznoe obozrenie, 2, I998, p. 6; Alla Latynina, 'Legko li ubit' cheloveka? Literatura kak velikii virus', Literaturnaia gazeta, I7, I998, p. I 2; Vladimir Cherniaex, '"Menia net v vashem siuzhete .. .": Vladimir Makanin, Andergraund iil Geroinashegovremeni',folga, 7, I998, pp. I36-39; AndreiNemzer, 'Kogda? Gde? Kto? 0 romane Vladimira Makanina: opyt kratkogo putevoditelia', AVovyi mir, I998, pp. I83--95; Aleksandr Arkhangel'skii, 'Gde skhodilis' kontsy s kontsami. Nad stranitsami romana Vladimir Makanina Andergraund iiigeroinashego viremeni', Druzhbanarodov, 7, I998, pp. i8o-85; Vladimir Kuritsyn, 'Makanin i Tsvetkov ishchut geroia "vnizu"', Oktiabr',2, I998, pp. I84-86; Evgenii Ermolin, 'Chelovek bez adresa. Roman Vladimira G. S. SMITH 435 the author'sstatusas a majorpresence in contemporaryRussianprose, and that in many respects it represents a consistent development of themes and techniques found in Makanin's earlier work, or even perhaps a culmination of them. The purpose of the present article, however, will be to offeran intrinsicanalysisof the novel ratherthan a comparativeassessmentof it and Makanin'searlierwork.7In particular , an attempt will be made here to classify the sites, events, and characters that are represented in the novel, and in particular their sequencing and inter-relationships;these matters are subjected by Makaninto considerableobfuscationin his text, and have led to some confusionin existingdiscussionof thebook.Also, theRussianresponses takecertainaspectsof the hero forgranted.In particular,none of them explicitlyincorporatesgender as a leading categoryof analysis,and to make such an incorporation will be the principal methodological concern of thisarticle. The 'time' to which the subtitle of the novel refersmay be inferred from the historical events that are mentioned, however obliquely, in the course of it. The core presenttense of the book occupiesjust over a year, beginning in the summerof I99 I. Flashbackepisodesinterwoven into this timeline mainly concern the hero's life during the Brezhnev period, and then during what he sometimes refers to as 'the Gorby years'.The presentationof theseeventsisby no means straightforward, and certainly not chronologically sequential. Makanin's novel, like Lermontov's...