This collection has 65 very short, satirical sketches, most of which were written during the period of the Soviet Union’s NEP (New Economic Policy) in the 1920’s, when as Hicks says in his excellent introduction, leaders realized “the country was in a ruinous state and that before genuinely redistributive policies could be attempted, there must first be some wealth to redistribute.” This came with a brief interval of slightly more freedom of speech, and several authors of the time took advantage of it. Zoshchenko was one of them, and quite popular at the time for his gallows humor.

In his writing you’ll find overcrowding, shared housing, an insane amount of theft, scarcity of goods, bureaucracy, and poor organization; he paints a picture of a nation clearly struggling in the aftermath of the revolution. What seemed liked satire of individuals was really a satire of the condition of the conditions they had been put in by the State, and he was soon attacked and censored.

My favorites:
“What Generosity” (1924) – breweries give workers reject bottles that are contaminated with filth.
“Crisis” (1925) – newlyweds can’t find a room, so they live in a bathroom that is used by other families.
“A Workshop for Health” (1926) – Crimea as a restorative vacation spot, interesting given current events.
“Pushkin” (1927) – the eviction of families living in the poet’s old home on the 90th anniversary of his death, to create the house-museum in St. Petersburg.
“A Trap” (1933) – a Soviet travels to capitalist Germany and gets trapped in a toilet, interesting given the commentary on Germans and the time it was written.

It’s not that I didn’t like the other 60 stories, but they did get repetitive. They all seem a bit absurd, and yet they were sadly reflective of life at the time. There are few heroes here; people behave to base instincts in the face of poor conditions, and grow cynical of everything around them.

I like the collection for its window into this period of Russian history, but because the stories are so short at 2-3 pages, they just aren’t developed enough for my taste (or practically at all, and in any respect, characters, plot, etc). I recommend reading Bulgakov’s “Heart of the Dog” and Gogol’s “The Overcoat” instead, as they touch on the themes of the housing crisis and bureaucracy in the aftermath of theft, respectively, and in the context of complete stories. ( )

This is a brilliant collection of humorous short stories set and written in the Soviet Union of the 1920s and early 1930s. The humour comes from the description of everyday situation in the communist state and providing them with a little twist at the end. This could be a useful source book for anyone researching every day life in Moscow in the early years of the Soviet Union. The translation is superb. ( )

One of the funniest Russian books I've read. This has finally been in a wider translation recently, although at first I had to use InterLibrary Loan to get it. As the stories are chronological, you can palpably sense the author getting more depressing or harsh over time. As such, the earliest stories are laugh out loud best. Lighthearted, everything good about Russian literature from a sense of humor perspective. ( )