Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith

“Dogs will eat your bones!”

Stalin’s Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith

Paraliterature, those genres which are seen as artistically marginal although they are frequently commercially successful, afford us many pleasure. They are considered disreputable among academics, who tend to dismiss them as formulaic, written by literary hacks who reveal little ambition other than to fulfill a page quota, producing words that are measured by the pound. They aren’t considered “real” literature because they are would seem to be bereft of literary ambition, offering no deep insight into the human condition and no novel narrative strategies such as are prized in much modern literature. And yet, they permeate our popular culture, and provide references and tropes and memes and characters that are memorable. Perhaps if we may be fair, we would have to recognize that this influence is testament to a deep resonance and are tantamount to more than just cheap and ephemeral thrills.

One of my favorite characters is the Russian detective Arkady Renko, one who was introduced by the writer Martin Cruz Smith in the 1980s. He may be naturally situated within the genre of detective literature, and he certainly conforms to a type of character who is deeply familiar. He is somewhat pessimistic, having personal tragedies that haunt him, and he is invariably a lonely character, unable to find a lasting relationship with others. He is down-and-out, professionally as well as sentimentally, and yet, he is a deeply sympathetic character, because he (invariably a he) evinces a personal code of honor that seems deeply antiquated in modern society. Despite the pervasive corruption and consumerism and artificiality of modern culture, he functions as a culture observer who wades against the currents of modernity and clings to what seems like a more honest and simplistic code of ethics. He would seem to be our modern-day equivalent of the Medieval knight in armor, or the Japanese samurai, out-of-place but at the same time a prototype and reminder of an idealized vision of society.

In this instance, we see the detective in his familiar haunts. He is back in Moscow, at odds with the society of the New Russia and the gaudy but also dangerous oligarchs, struggling to understand the new undercurrents that threaten to sweep him away. He is at odds as well with his superior, the prosecutor Zurin, as well as with his companion, the doctor Eva whom he met in Chernobyl, and whose relationship seems to be in a state of corrosive and slow destruction. His son Zhenya, the supposed orphan boy who he has de facto adopted, has also disappeared. He is thus assaulted from all sides, and finds himself facing a new challenge, one that seems somehow unreal but nonetheless takes a form that will slowly reveal itself to be part of a new social threat.

It seems as if there have been reports of a sighting of a man resembling Stalin in one of the metro stations. The riders of the last train report seeing this figure waving to passengers, and this threatens to create a historical-religious spectacle that might harness the energies of contemporary disaffection with society. For many Russians still feel a nostalgic longing for Stalin and for the period of order and the aura of greatness that they attribute to his influence, and this feeling of longing might awaken new movements that could prove threatening to the new order that has been created. We have an icon whose symbolic power might be channeled to support certain disreputable movements and individuals, and the association between these visions and a series of individuals slowly materializes.

What happens is that our detective will slowly become involved in this mystery, one that seems, in a sinister fashion, to involve two new colleagues of his, the detectives Isakov and Urman. These figures have a high profile, having been members of an elite special operations force named the Black Berets, and having famously fought in a battle during the second Chechen war that rendered them heroic figures. They would seem to be lousy detectives, but they project an aura of menace and single-minded intensity that, accompanied by the need that Russian society has for heroes, would seemingly render them untouchable. They will soon begin to tangle with Arkady in an explicit way.

What we have, then, is the dissection of the figure of the hero. The figure of Stalin serves a deep emotional need for many disaffected in this new society, and points to certain cultural phenomena what signal the way in which Russian society has changed. What distinguishes Martin Cruz Smith’s fiction is his ability to touch on these issues, and to weave these socio-historical concerns into his fiction. We have the onslaught of commercial forces, and the deep-seated and impenetrable bureaucracy that results in institutions as well as commercial concerns being run as fiefdoms. It is a culture of serfs and subservience, of deep-seated anxiety and paranoia, and nowhere is this more evident than in the anecdotes about Stalin and the way in which he managed to terrorize his associates, having his inner circle hoot like holler like Tarzan while keeping them quaking in fear about a possible midnight knock at their door. As recounted by Arkady’s father, the General:

"Stalin liked gangster films and, most of all, Tarzan of the Apes. I went to the Kremlin for dinner once with the most powerful men in Russia. He made them all howl like Tarzan and beat their chests.” (p. 128)

 Once again, we have another testament to the power of paraliterature, in this case, the adventure novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as attested to in another work of paraliterature, a detective novel by Martin Cruz Smith. But we gain insights into the human condition in Russia, and an interpretation of its literature as well as a process of demystification. The new oligarchs as well as the down-and-out live with this legacy of violence, one which points as always to a certain institutional weakness in a country with strong authoritarian traditions.

We are right to suspect the hero mystique that has arisen around Isakov and Urman and the Black Berets. We are also right to question the conduct of Russian mercenary forces in Chechen, and the role they had to play in this ongoing crisis that still simmers below the surface. And we are also right to fear the reappearence of ghosts, whether they be sightings of Stalin in the metro or the ominous arrival of Zhenya’s father, one who will actually shoot Arkady in the head during a sordid episode at the end of a chess tournament at a local “casino”. There are, of course, other ghosts waiting to be dug up as well.

The roads lead back to the provinces, and specifically to the city of Tver. We have once again a discussion of the eternal dynamic that seems to have pervaded many recent industrial societies, that of the small town and the fact that they are being elevated as symbols of “eternal” values at the same time that they are being hallowed out by the mass emigration of their young people. Abandoned houses abound, and young people are desperate to escape the confines of what they consider an inferno, the small town ethos that is deeply constricting precisely because it seems to resist the energies of a modern society.

Our detective, recovering from his gunshot wound, will contrive to have himself reassigned to Tver (one of the charms of these heroes is their single-mindedness, and their inability to leave an investigation incomplete), pursuing not only the detectives Urman and Isakov to whom he attributes by now several murders (those of Kuznetsov and Borodin, both fellow Black Berets who served with the detectives in Chechnya, Kuznetsov’s wife, and Ginsburg, a journalist who was also assigned to that company). There is the suggestion of a secret that has to be uncovered, as well as the realization that Isakov is involved as a candidate in a political campaign, wishing to be elected as a representative from Tver and thus, representing the agenda of a New Patriotic movement and, incidentally, benefiting from political immunity from prosecution. What are they hiding?

There will be a series of incidents and contacts made in Tver, and our detective will furthermore be involved in trying to win back his former companion, Eve, who has taken up with Isakov, who she had apparently met in Chechnya. The entanglements are suffocating, and indeed, at one point while in Moscow, Arkady was almost garroted by Tanya, a woman who is mysteriously associated with the detectives. The detective hero is always escaping from situations of extreme danger, one which of course can’t help to lend to the aura of indestructibility of these detective figures.

It will all end with a failed publicity ploy. It seems as if a perennial cottage industry in Tver involves digging in burial sites to recover the remains of soldiers and victims. Not only were thousands of Russian and German soldiers buried in these sites, but also the victims of Stalinist repression, an unpleasant “ghost” that recalls the sociological explanation of this phenomenon, where ghosts in reality represent unresolved social as well as personal conflicts. The publicity ploy, orchestrated in a humorous fashion by two American campaign consultants, Wiley and Pacheco (of course, one of these sleazy figures had to be a Texan), will fail, not by the intervention of Arkady but by the native resistance of the real diggers, that clan of ethical excavators represented by Rudi and his grandfather.

And with this and other encounters we see the unraveling of Isakov’s plans. The pace of the novel at the end seems unnaturally accelerated, but this can’t help but fit in with the way in which any mystique or aura, whether it be of heroism or coherence, suddenly reaches the breaking point. These detective works are a much an unwieldy creation as any of the others, because they are stitched together from many unlikely episodes of chance and last-minute escapes.

In this way, this novel was somewhat disappointing at the end, precisely because of the way in which loose ends are tied together and because of the supposed familiar closure that is achieved (Arkady recaptures the affection of Eva and of his adopted son Zhenya). It doesn’t ring true, but it does represent an element of wish fulfillment for the reader. The journey, as always, was exciting, but the detective figure ideally should always yearn for ultimate redemption, not achieve it. Yearning is at the heart of his character, after all.



Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013