Oh, freedom and equality! Oh, brotherhood, oh, life on the dole! Oh, the sweetness of unaccountability. Oh, that most blessed of times in the life of my people, the time from the opening until the closing of the liquor stores.'

• Moscow To The End Of The Line Pdf

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• MOSCOW TO THE END OF THE LINE. Trying to make his way by train from Moscow. Though the point of Erofeev's satire--that modern Russian life is tolerable.
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' Yes, something a bit different: a blissfully alcoholic samizdat novel (written at least a decade ago). Venichka, the first-person narrator of this monologue-book, is a sort of EveryAlkie, trying to make his way by train from Moscow (he's lived there for years but has never seen the Kremlin because of his drunken stupor) to Petushki-the end of the line-where a girl waits for him. But Venichka's logical processes are positively pickled: 'On the one hand, I liked that they women had waists. But, on the other hand, they stabbed Marat with a penknife. On the other hand, like Karl Marx, I liked the weakness in them.

But, on the other hand, didn't one of them shoot at Lenin?' ' So he never does get to Petushki but instead stumbles off the train at a station and mistakenly gets back on another going toward Moscow again.

His sodden journey, however, is often quite funny: a catalogue of favorite Russian cocktails, with ingredients including furniture polish, Freshen-Up cologne, insecticide; a discussion of the dangers of imminent attack by Norway (!). And the tone of Venichka's inexorable self-destruction remains breezy throughout, though the point of Erofeev's satire-that modern Russian life is tolerable only in a state of round-the-clock inebriation-comes through clear and militant. All in all, a minor, pell-mell little oddity, with many of the references apparently lost in translation while the drunk-joke at the center seems downright universal.

Ah, this book.a cherished one for me, pilfered from a friend who's father studied under Nabokov (but later given back). I read this under the serious spell of Knut Hamsun and this book is similiar to 'Hunger' but perhaps more humorous.

It's about an unemployed, alcholic cable fitter who is fired for charting diagrams of his comrades 'idleness' correalated with the days they get drunk. Thrust into a serious drinking binge he is stuck on a train trying to reach Moscow and in between we have flashbacks of him trying to buy vodka before restaurants and stores have opened, giving us recipes of cocktails made out of aftershave ('Aunt Clara's Kiss) that brings on hallucinations and incredible verbal pyrotechnics full of literary ramblings and political rumblings. The whole time his hallucinations are marked by a pair of overcoated angels egging him on or chastising his behavior as he mixes up his route on the train forgetting to disembark and actually heading away from his destination. He finally does reach Moscow and the novel closes like a hand over a movie lens as abruptly as it started. It is a startling book, not only the best of the samizdat novels (works distributed like fanzines secretly during the communist regime) but by far the most dazzling comic novels ever written about desperation and alcholism. It is an incredible book and after reading it you will never have patience for another Bukowski book again. Moskva-Petushki, which is translated in English as Moscow to the End of the Line, is Venedikt Erofeev's greatest work, one drunken man's (Venichka's) journey on the Moskovskaia-Gor'skovskaia train line to visit his lover and child in the Petushki.

En route, Venichka talks with other travelers in dialogue and he also speaks in monologue about various themes such as drinking, Russian literature and philosophy and the sad, poetic soul of the Russian peasant. As the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly dark, disoriented, hallucinogenic and surrealistic, in proportion to the narrator's alcohol intake.Moscow to the End of the Line was written in 1970. During this time, Erofeev, himself, was traveling around the Soviet Union working as a telephone cable layer. Erofeev's friends have said the author made the story up in order to entertain his fellow workers as they traveled, and that many of these fellow workers were later incorporated as characters in the book.The text of the novel began to be circulated in samizdat within the Soviet Union and then it was smuggled to the West where it was eventually translated into English. The official Russian language publication took place in Paris in 1977.

With glasnost, Moscow to the End of the Line was able to be circulated freely within Russia, but, rather than stick to the original form, the novel was abridged in the government pamphlet Sobriety and Culture, ostensibly as a campaign against alcoholism. Finally, in 1995, it was officially published, together with all the formerly edited obscenities and without censorship.Although he is an alcoholic, Venichka never comes across to the reader as despicable. Venichka is not a man who drinks because he wants to drink; he drinks to escape a reality that has gone beyond miserable and veered off into the absurd. He is not a stupid or pitiable character, but rather one who has no outlet for his considerable intelligence. That Venichka is very educated is obvious; he makes intelligent and well-read references to both literature and religion. However, in the restrictive Soviet Union of his time, there was no outlet for this kind of intelligent creativity; Venichka is forced to channel his creative instincts into bizarre drink recipes and visions of sphinxes, angels and devils.Although many will see Moscow to the End of the Line as satire, it really is not.

Moscow To The End Of The Line Pdf

Instead, it is Erofeev's anguished and heartfelt cry, a cry that demanded change. Venichka is not a hopeless character, however, the situation in which he is living is a hopeless one.A semi-autobiographical work, Moscow to the End of the Line was never meant as a denunciation of alcoholism but rather an explanation of why alcohol was so tragically necessary in the day-to-day life of citizens living under Soviet rule.Moscow to the End of the Line is a highly entertaining book and it is a book that is very important in understanding the Russia of both yesterday and today as well. This book is really a cl. This book was recommended to me by a friend who apparently read it my accident, and loved it. Now I've gotten a hold of it and read it too, and I'm disappointed only because there isn't more of it. I'd like to have three hundred or so more pages of the same stuff.

A great mixture of humour and poetry, terribly funny and tragic at the same time. Highly recommended - I've read quite a lot of Russian literature, and I was surprised to find that there are such gems out there that I've never even heard of. Get it, read it, you won't regret it.

At least not if there's some sense in you. This is a sublime little tale, saturated with humor and pathos.

Erofeev (both author & narrator have the same name, heightening the autobiographical tone of the book) is the Dante of the Moscow commuter rail. He stumbles from bar to bar and a purgatory of the 'thirteen varieties of Soviet vodka.' Then, it's onto the train, which takes him some thirty stops from Kursk station and 'The Hammer and Sickle' to the 'end of the line' at Petushki (which I'm told means 'flowers' in Russian) where he is to meet his Beatrice. But (unlike Dante) Erofeev never seems to arrive. As he downs more and more hooch, the story becomes progressively more blotched and incoherent. It culminates in the Passion of Erofeev, in which our poor hero is driven up against the wall of the Kremlin (though whether its the Kremlin in Moscow or Petushki is unclear) and left screwed. This is a story about mercy.

It is easily one of the best books I've read in the past year. Then pass the word along, because it deserves to be better known.