Three Pairs of Silk Stockings: A Novel of the Life of the Educated Class Under the Soviet

by Panteleimon Romanov, Leonide Zarine (Translator)

Russian novel depicting the daily life under the Soviet, “particularly of the lives of the men and the women who, formerly the wealthy and cultured, are now outcasts.”

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Panteleimon Sergeyevich Romanov (Russian: Пантелеймон Серге́евич Романов; July 24, 1884 – April 8, 1938) was a Russian/Soviet writer.

After completing his law studies at Moscow State University, he devoted himself to literature. He published his first story in 1911, but had little success before the 1917 Revolution.
Career

Panteleimon Sergeyevich published Childhood in 1920. He became one of the best known Soviet authors of the 1920s and 1930s. He won most of his fame with short satirical stories exposing the ignorance, inefficiency and cowardice of the new Soviet bureaucrats and their aides. Panteleimon Sergeyevich also devoted his attention to the sexual revolution of the 1920s, sometimes in works that were considered too graphic by contemporary standards, as in the story Without Bird-Cherry Blossoms (1926). He wrote novels in the epic manner, including Childhood (1926) and his five volume series Russia (1922-1936), dealing with rural life in pre-revolutionary Russia.

In 1938, he died of heart disease.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three Pairs of Silk Stockings is a merciless and murderously acrid satire about wretchedness and controversy of the postrevolutionary existence.
The last month of summer… The city is astir with commotion and hubbub…

As each local and main line train arrived, the passengers, with their baskets, trunks and suitcases, trickled out into the square from the station like playthings from a box of toys. The almost total absence of cultured faces, of bourgeois hats, umbrellas and bowler hats was astonishing. People in red kerchiefs and caps crowded on to passing tramcars, or bargained with the mob of cabmen, and then flowed slowly off in various directions through the noise of the capital.

But as an antithesis to all the mortal coil of the new order there is the central museum… A splinter of the old world…

Shortly after ten o’clock the employees began to arrive. Most of them had something in common with the building itself; if in the streets noisy people in caps and red kerchiefs predominated, then here were people of refined appearance, the men in hats and overcoats and the ladies in modest dresses, with carefully dressed hair which they rearranged in front of the mirror before going upstairs.

But now the plebeian serpent of vulgarity is at the doors and ready to crawl into this temple of knowledge…
The hero of the novel works in the museum… He belongs to the old-time intelligentsia…

He had small, well-shaped ears and a sharply pointed little beard, a pale nervous face and a habit of turning round quickly, as in a frightened way, which was a sign of lack of balagce and fretfulness of purpose.

Demagogues and opportunists are wielding power… His personal life is ludicrously miserable… He wants to survive amongst vulgarity and ignorance… Mimicry is the only way…

The people, the proletariat, who were so touching and wonderful when oppressed by the other classes, absolutely ceased to be touching and wonderful when they themselves began to oppress these classes and to proclaim their own existence in the most definite way; by walking about in exercise shirts and high boots, and occupying positions in all establishments.

He who runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds, runs to his perdition.

[Effie Gavriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels like reading modern literature. Romanof was definitely way ahead of his time, both in his content and his writing style. No wonder why he was banned and vanished for decades!

[Jeremy P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un aperçu édifiant de la vie quotidienne en Russie soviétique.
Des difficultés économiques et sociales que connaissent les exclus de la « société » de l’époque (artistes, croyants) qui peuvent être résolues par la servilité envers des puissants (pour le cas de notre fonctionnaire) et la capacité à se faire bien voir.
Très belle édition (hors limite) et écriture dont les images d’une Moscou en pleine transformation restent dans la tête.