The History of a Town

ME Saltykov-Shchedrin

Apollo, £10

In Britain M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is overshadowed by other, gloomier, nineteenth-century Russian novelists. But it should not be so. Turgenev recommended Saltykov’s novel The History of a Town to “lovers of humour and satirical verve.” Although, he did suggest that it couldn’t be enjoyed outside his home country. According to translator I.P. Foote, Saltykov’s reputation on these shores rests on his novel The Golovlevs, about the decline of a landowning family in the mid-nineteenth century. Born in 1826, Saltykov hailed from such a family. During the first half of his life he worked for the government. He wrote journalism for his last 20 years, working for the journal Notes from the Fatherland. While there he published one of the greatest Russian satires.

The History of a Town is a farcical chronicle of Glupov (translated as ‘Stupid Town’). The inhabitants, over one hundred years, have been “buffeted on the head” so often by their rulers that they can merely stumble onwards, dazed and confused. From their earliest days, all they have ever wanted is law and order. All they have ever got is chaos and persecution. Even in liberal times, there is an abundance of “flogging”. Shchedrin claims to be the editor of this chronicle – written by the town archivists – that recounts the failed administrations of Glupov’s governors, each one as inept as the last. Along the way, he uses the fantastical to uncover the deeper truths of reality. The head of one apathetic and dull governor, Pryshch, for instance, is stuffed with truffles. He is promptly eaten by a colleague.

This Apollo re-issue comes with contextual notes and an introduction, but just as you don’t have to understand British politics in the early eighteenth century to enjoy Gulliver’s Travels, you don’t have to understand much about tsarist Russia to enjoy this magical novel. Saltykov’s satire attacks the follies that have blighted humans from time immemorial: lust, deceit, violence, tyranny, subservience. Saltykov twists the reader’s mind with irony of situation and style. At one point the madness of crowds is brilliantly ridiculed when the town goes through a period of famine. The Glupovites, in thrall to superstition, blame Arenka, mistress of the then town governor, Ferdyshchenko, for the blight. They round on her and throw her from a bell-tower: “at the moment when this spontaneous bloody drama was enacted, far away on the highroad a thick cloud of dust was seen. ‘It’s the bread coming!’ cried the Glupovites, their fury turning suddenly to joy.”

Saltykov’s novel is full of unappetizing endings, for all and sundry. At its delicious denouement, history itself disappears. In the preface Saltykov writes that “the chronicle…covers the period from 1731 to 1825. In the latter year literary activity evidently ceased to be permissible even for archivists.” In real life, this year coincided with the repressive regime of Nicholas I. But simply in terms of the inner logic of the fictional world, it is an ingenious and superbly ironic finale. For how can the novel continue when those writing it have had their jobs abolished?