The Trial Begins

by Andrei Sinyavsky, Abram Tertz (Psedudonym), Max Hayward (Translator)

Abram Tertz, one of the most important writers to emerge in the Soviet Union since World War II, came to prominence in 1959 when On Socialist Realism was published in the West. It was the first important critique of the central dogma of Soviet literature. It arrived with a novel. The Trial Begins, which was published in 1960. Other books followed these into the West, until in 1965 a respected literary scholar at the Gorky Institute, Andrei Sinyavsky was arrested, revealed to be Abram Tertz, tried, and sentenced to seven years in a forced labor camp.

A Soviet public prosecutor´s life falls apart, as his wife starts an affair, his son starts thinking for himself and is accused of trotskyism and he himself starts prosecuting a Jewish doctor for abortion.

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Soviet Union

95 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky was a Russian writer and a literary critic. He was a Soviet dissident known as a defendant in the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial of 1965.

Russian: Андрей Донатович Синявский
Pen name: Абрам Терц
Pen name in English: Abram Tertz

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 2 out of 5]

A satire on Soviet society as a public prosecutor´s wife cuckolds him and their son starts asking awkward questions in class. The funniest bits are reading soviet ideology being twisted around in order to seduce the prosecutor´s wife or when his youthful son tries to think through what he is being taught as ideological truth.

If you have not read Tertz´s satires, I would recommend you start by "The Makepeace Experiment"

[Atreju · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una povest' (racconto lungo) di Abram Terz, aka Andrej Sinjavskij. Si tratta di uno degli scritti veicolati all'estero sotto pseudonimo (Abram Terz, appunto), che gli "valsero" il famoso processo nel 1966 (con Julij Daniel') e la condanna al gulag. Con quest'opera agile e briosa, che si pone in perfetta antitesi con il (per lo più mediocre, per usare un'eufemismo) "realismo socialista" imperante a partire dagli anni '30, Sinjavskij ci offre un'impietosa satira del mondo sovietico e dimostra che lo spirito letterario russo non può essere costretto in un recinto.

[Harald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Satire with serious consequences.
This satire cost the Russian writer Andrei Sinyavsky several years in prison and exile. My edition, published in 1960, appears to be a witty confrontation with Stalinism in the 1950s. Stalin is admittedly not referred to directly, only as the Master. (Many biblical analogies are made here in this apparently godless state). While the older opposition characters know how to keep their mouths shut, the plot is driven forward by public prosecutor Globov's son Serjosja. He questions everything and wants a free Russia with pure, genuine communism. Of course it must go wrong.

This is largely a historical document, but sometimes there are eerie reminders of today's rhetoric from Moscow, where minor inconsistencies are blown up into global battles of values.

[Zuberino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something of a mini-cause celebre in his day, the sad history of Sinyavsky/Tertz appears to be utterly forgotten today. As per the GR count at least, few people read him any more and fewer still can be bothered to comment on his work. Reading this grim fiction about the doctors' plot that preceded the death of Stalin, the one question that returned to me was - is this it? is this all? will nothing ever change there? 70 years later, some latter-day Sinyavsky could be writing pretty much the same tale of a grotesquely deformed society, bent out of shape by surveillance and repression and obedience, and he could be sent to the same gulag in Siberia or thrown out into the same exile that Sinyavsky himself suffered for writing the same kind of "dissident lit" ... it has all just become such a dreadful, tedious, repetitious cliche of Russian life, the Russian mind and soul that such a society can aspire to nothing better, can find no way out of the hamster cage, running the same fucking wheel it's been running on for nigh on centuries now.

How much longer? Honestly?

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Непоправимо одинок слон.