Saray ve Zindan

by Olga Forsh, Levent Özübek (Translator)

Sovyet edebiyatının önemli yazarlarından Olga Forş'un en sevilen romanlarından biri olan Saray ve Zindan, 19.yy'da Rus ordusunda görevli bir subayın, yıllarca sakladığı bir sırrın çevresinde şekilleniyor. Roman, aynı zamanda 19.yy'ın ortalarından Ekim Devrimi'nin ilk yıllarına kadar geçen sürede Rusya'nın siyasal ve toplumsal yaşamından kesitler sunuyor. Bu açıdan önemli bir tarihi belge niteliği taşıyor.
(Arka Kapak)

Genres: Russia, Fiction

260 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1925

About the author

Olga Dmitryevna Forsh was a Russian/Soviet novelist, dramatist, memoirist, and scenarist.

Olga was interested in the fashionable ideas of the time, including Tolstoyanism, Theosophy and Buddhism, but was increasingly drawn to Socialism. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Olga and her husband became active supporters of the Bolsheviks. Olga's husband died of typhus while serving with the Red Army in Kiev. After his death she continued to dedicate herself to cultural work.

She devoted several novels to the history of revolutionary thought and the revolutionary movement in Russia. Among them are Palace and Prison (1924–25, also made into a film script), about the revolutionary Mikhail Stepanovich Beideman, The Fervid Workshop (1926), about the Revolution of 1905–07, and Pioneers of Freedom (1950–53), which deals with the Decembrists. She also wrote the three-part biographical novel Radishchev, which comprises the books Jacobin Leaven (1932), The Landlady of Kazan (1934–35), and The Pernicious Book (1939). Her experimental play The Substitute Lecturer was published in 1930.

Reviews

[Czarny Pies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Olga Forsh's "Palace and Prison" (1924-1925) is a lunatic cry of triumph uttered in the early years of the Soviet Regime as Russia is about to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. The novel begins on a euphoric note. Happy children walk in the streets. A former Tsarist general is an attendant in a public water-closet. The days when Russia was a carceral society are declared to be over. The reader is assured that landowners will never again whip their peasants and have their way with the women who work on their estates. We now know that Forsh's optimism was unwarranted. However, for all the errors Forsh makes in predicting the future, she still magnificently portrays the problems in the Russian countryside prior to 1917 and the personality of the radicals who strove to change things.
"Palace and Prison" represents the last word in a long literary discussion. Like those in the novels of Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, the revolutionaries in Forsh's novel are members of the nobility who wish to improve the lot of Russia's peasantry. There are rural riots but no strikes. Forsh brilliantly describes the physical and sexual abuse of the Russia's peasants by their noble masters both before and after the abolition of serfdom but does not address the issue of economic exploitation of Russia's proletarian class.
The plot of "Palace and Prison" is based on one of the worst clichés of central and eastern European literature that of the college companion companion who steals his best friend's fiancée. Serguéi Roussanine a young nobleman befriends Mikhail Biedéman, charismatic revolutionary, at a military academy When Serguéi brings Biedéman to visit his home, Biedéman promptly steals his beloved Vera from him.
Biedéman's charm is tremendous. Seemingly everyone even Dostoevsky is drawn to him. When Biedéman publicly announces that he is a socialist, Dostoevsky introduces himself and asks for a private meeting so that he can persuade Biedéman to abandon his ideas.
Serguéi by family upbringing and instinct supports the old order. However, he is attracted tp Biedéman and refuses to give up on Véra. Hoping to win favour with Véra, Serguéi decides to prevent Biedéman from being arresting by going to the police and explaining to them that Biedéman does not really believe all the revolutionary ideas that he is expounding. Serguéi's conversation with the police which he naively believes will help Biedéman proves in fact to be the denunciation that will result in Biedéman being incarcerated for 20 years in the famous Peter and Paul prison of St. Petersbourg for 20 years in a cell measuring 10 feet by 5 feet.
Vera does not realize for many years that Biedéman was arrested on Serguéi's denunciation so he is able to remain in her circle stabbing people in the back albeit without really meaning to.
Finally one of the Vera's revolutionary friends tells him to go away. He explains to Serguéi that he understands that he never sets out with the desire to harm people. Rather the bad outcomes are due to the fact that at as supporter of the Tsar he should simply not be frequenting revolutionaries. Because, he does not share their world view, his presence inevitably results in bad things happening. Ultimately this rebuke from the revolutionary to Serguéi constitutes Forsh's message which is that to create the Worker's Paradise everyone must sincerely adopt the socialist outlook and sincerely engage in the class struggle.
In purely literary terms, "Palace and Prison" is rather dreadful. For history buffs however it is a extraordinary document from a pivotal era in European history. With the right expectations it is a fascinating read.

[Emre · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is tremendously depressing, and substantially more bizarre than I had anticipated. So sad how some of these Soviet classics have fallen through the ideological cracks.

[Erlen Gabriel Sales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, surreal and visionary, the second half threw me on a whirl and the contrast between the two segments make the sum of the novel greater than the single parts. I was surprised at finding out it's "based" or inspired by, a true tsarist prisoner. Very happy I stumbled by this novel by pure chance, a hidden (to me) gem of Russian literature.