The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1969)

Short, bowlegged, big red ears, field shirt sticking out over his belt, Private Ivan Chonkin, the hero of Vladimir Voinovich’s novel, has been likened to Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk, and for good reason – like Švejk, Chonkin is an everyman forever at war with the forces - political, military, social, whatever - that use the iron fist of power in an attempt to obliterate a person’s unique individuality and humanity.

Squarely in the great tradition of satire and the absurdist fiction of Gogol, Kharms and Zabolotsky, with The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin Vladimir Voinovich served up enough anti-Soviet zingers to contribute to his eventually getting kicked out of the country and stripped of his citizenship.

The storyline is simple: a pilot of a Soviet aircraft makes a forced landing in the farming village of Krasnoye near his Air Force base. Private Ivan Chonkin is sent to guard the military’s property.

I so much enjoyed the novel’s narrator telling readers directly how he amassed information on the subject of Chonkin and the village and added a little something of his own. And how he would have taken a tall, well built, disciplined military hero for his main character but all those crack students of military and political theory where already taken up and all he was left with was Chonkin. However, he urges us to treat his novel’s hero (Chonkin) as we would our very own child since when we have a child we get what we get and don’t throw the kid out the window.

Likewise, I relished the Mikhail Bulgakovesque dream sequences that gave Mr. Voinovich the opportunity to flex his creative imagination. Chonkin has his first dream when he’s sleeping in bed with Nyurka, his new girlfriend from the village. He watches as none other than Comrade Stalin slowly descends from the sky holding his rifle and wearing a woman’s dress. Stalin tells the sergeant in charge that Private Chonkin abandoned his post guarding the aircraft, lost his combat weapon and therefore deserves to be shot.

In our hero’s second dream, he attends a wedding reception where the groom and all the guests turn out to be not humans but pigs. Oh, no, he's been duped! Chonkin realizes he has blurted out a classified military secret to the first person (actually a pig) he ran into at the table. And one of the dire consequences of his fatal mistake? Humanork is on the menu! A tray bearing naked Comrade Stalin holding his famous pipe, all garnished with onions and green peas. Stalin grins slyly to himself behind his mustache.

The third dream is another doozy. This time the dreamer is Gladishev, one of the villagers who is a prototypical Soviet “new” man of science. In Gladishev’s dream his horse Osya informs him in plain Russian that he is no longer a horse but a human being. Gladishev says if Osya is a true Soviet human he would go to the front to fight the Germans. Osya replies that Gladishev is the dumbest person in the world since he should know a horse doesn’t have fingers to pull a trigger.

These are but snatches catching several colorful, hilarious bits. What's noteworthy is the way these dreams reinforce a major theme running throughout the novel: the prevailing Soviet system is a complete misreading of the rhythms of nature and life. Such an inept, ass-backwards system will lead men like Gladishev to do such things as fill his house with shit, even eat shit and drink water mixed with shit, based on scientific and materialistic calculations that all life is nourished by shit.

Such a misreading has its effect on all areas of Soviet life and community. For instance, at one village meeting the chairman of the local kolkhoz (collective farm) chastises members who fail to work the minimum number of workdays. Among the Comrades singled out for a tongue lashing is Zhikin, one of those who flaunts his age and illnesses. The chairman goes on: “Of course I realize that Zhikin is a disabled Civil War veteran and has not legs. But now he’s cashing in on those legs of his. . . Let him sit himself down in a furrow and crawl from bush to bush at his own speed, weeding as he goes and thereby fulfilling the minimum workday requirements.”

The chairman also is vocal when the village learns of the German offensive against their country: “The war will write everything off. The main thing’s to get to the front as fast as possible; there either you get a chest full of metals or a head full of bullets, but either way, at least you can live like an honest man.”

Such Soviet wisdom peppers every page. This is a very funny book. But as you are laughing, Comrades, you will be brought face-to-face with life on a community farm and in the military that is downright cruel and brutalizing.

One last example that really tickled my funny-bone. The narrator relays a rapid change of chairmen over at another village. The first chairman was put in jail for stealing, the second for seducing minors, and the third took to drinking and kept on drinking until he drank up everything he owned and all the kolkhoz funds. Things got so bad he hanged himself but left a one world suicide note – “Ech” with three exclamation points. The narrator tells us nobody figured out what that “Ech!!!” was supposed to mean. Actually, even as an American in 2018 I have a pretty good idea what he was getting at with his “Ech!!!” --- I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANY MORE!!!

Having read The Fur Hat and Moscow 2042 I wanted to treat myself to Vladimir Voinovich’s classic earlier work. I’m glad I did. I enjoy laughing and this novel provided ample opportunities. I can see why Ivan Chonkin is now a widely known figure in Russian popular culture.


Vladimir Voinovich, Born 1932

"Kuzma Gladishev was known as a learned man not only in Krasnoye but in the entire area. One of the many proofs of his erudition was the wooden outhouse in his garden, on which was written in large black letters, in English, WATER CLOSET." - Vladimir Voinovich, The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin ( )

One doesn't need much background in Russia history or literature to enjoy this novel about broken bureaucracy. Ivan Chonkin is a likeable Everyman who engages in bumbling but satisfying comeuppances as the elite and self-important get their due, and the little guy just reward. Glad to read a lighthearted and funny novel about (and from) Soviet Russia. ( )

I have to imagine that one of the things most hated by authoritarian governments is being laughed at. It's no wonder then that Voinovich found his works being refused by the Soviet government for publication in the 1960s, found himself excluded from the Soviet Writers' Union in the 1970s, and was stripped of his citizenship and exiled in the 1980s.

The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin is often considered Voinovich's best work. He takes the familiar Russian character of Ivan the Fool and recasts him as Ivan Chonkin, a soldier in the Soviet Army at the advent of World War II. He is the perfect blend of bumbling naïveté with just a slight touch of guile that makes him endearing to the reader and has made him a modern folk figure in his own right.

Chonkin is sent to guard an airplane that has broken down and been left stranded in a farmer's field. Forgotten by the Army, he strikes up a relationship with the postmistress of the village and spends the war tending her livestock and garden. Of course, once the NKVD hear of him, it is inevitable that they should consider him a spy and—with jabs at Stalin, collectivism, the Army, Five Year Plans, and just about everything else Soviet...and with overt nods to Chekhov and Gogol—Voinovich takes on a hilarious ride through the consequences.

The 1990s brought a restoration of Voinovich's citizenship. However, while the literary world has handed him a prize here and there, I find myself wondering if the Russian government feels the same way. In 2007, he returned to familiar ground with the publishing of the third volume of Chonkin's adventures, Displaced Person, set in post-Soviet Russia.

This is a humorous anodyne for glooms or blues, particularly if you're of a certain age and your memory of Russia encompasses the Cold War era. ( )

Private Ivan Chonkin is a soldier in the Soviet army. This novel starts in 1941, just before Germany attacked the Soviet Union. We find Private Chonkin to be an innocent and apparently weak minded individual who finds it difficult to do what is expected of him in the armed forces, and is therefore given menial tasks, is in constant trouble, and is very familiar with punishment duties.
A Soviet aircraft gets into mechanical difficulty and has to make a forced landing beside the rural village of Krasnoye, terrifying the local residents. Chonkin is equipped with a week’s supply of rations and flown over to Krasnoye where he takes up a lonely vigil guarding the crippled plane in a field beside Krasnoye.
Chonkin is forgotten by his unit and the novel tells the story of how he interacts with the local villagers while he sticks to his orders and guards the plane.
We are treated to droll Russian humour which includes misunderstandings, bureaucratic idiocy, internal Communist party politics, blatant bullying, digressions into trivia, organisational paranoia, and everything else one would expect from a huge, bureaucratic enterprise. This includes the chairman of the local kolkhoz, who is constantly being told by his superiors that he is under constant surveillance, believing Chonkin has been planted in the village for the sole purpose of spying on him.
I don’t usually describe so much of the content of a novel in a review, but the details above are giving nothing away. I could tell you the whole plot and how the novel ends without taking away the pleasure you will have reading it for yourself. This book was a re-read for me, something I never do, but I still enjoyed the book enormously.
Voinovich created an atmosphere and I just enjoyed living in it. He created characters that make you cringe with their actions, but he explains the logic they work to and this makes it all plausible and understandable.
Since writing this review I have learned there is a third book about Private Ivan Chonkin, and it has not yet been translated fromt he Russian. :-(
Voinovich wrote this book between 1963 and 1970. It was not appreciated by the Soviet authorities and by 1980 he was forced to emigrate from the USSR. He was subsequently rehabilitated in 1990, even receiving an award from President Putin, who, while in his KGB days, was probably on the side of the people who forced Voinovich to emigrate in the first place.
Voinovich’s work is full of droll humour and constantly pokes fun at the stupidity of situations caused by political environment and centralised power. I found Ivan Chonkin to be not just about Soviet culture and the operation of a Communist state, but to also contain stories that could easily reflect events in some large organisations that operate anywhere in the world. I know I have seen things happen that could easily have taken place in Krasnoye.
I enjoyed The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin and was delighted to read it a second time. Why did I read it a second time? Because I only recently discovered there is a sequel and I wanted to remind myself of the detail before starting it; “Pretender to the Throne: The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin”. ( )

Me ha decepcionado. Esperaba un libro repleto de sátiras mordaces e ingeniosas, y lo que he encontrado ha sido una historia que no merecería más de 20 páginas, y un cúmulo de situaciones demasiado repetidas en casi cualquier libro sobre la vida militar. Nada nuevo, salvo que sea la primera vez que lees un libro en tu vida. ( )