The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics) [Paperback]

Vladimir Voinovich (Author), Richard Lourie (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian

Product Details

• Paperback: 316 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press (March 29, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810112434
• ISBN-13: 978-0810112438
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #472,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ivan Chonkin - Universal Slacker, March 28, 2008

By 

Douglas S. Wood "Vicarious Life" (Monona, WI) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics) (Paperback)

Ivan Chonkin is an inept private in the Soviet army on the cusp of World War Two who first finds himself ordered to guard an airplane in a distant village, then finds himself forgotten by the authorities, and finally remembered and with a vengeance.

`The Life and Extraordinary Times of Private Ivan Chonkin' might be called a Soviet Catch-22 [Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)] for its seemingly absurdist send up of life in the Red Army. I say 'seemingly absurdist' because, like Catch-22, one suspects there is more than a little truth in Voinovich's portrayal of bureaucratic tomfoolery. Chonkin himself calls to mind George Macdonald Fraser's McAuslan (McAuslan in the Rough), the bumbling private in a Scottish Highland regiment. Others have likened it the The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War (Penguin Classics), which I have not yet read.

The background of Stalinist terror gives Voinovich's work a darker cast. Army bureaucrats endeavor at all costs to keep a low profile to avoid attracting the attention of the higher ups. Such attention is too often accompanied in their minds with imprisonment, exile, or death.

A favorite bit occurs late in the book when a regiment has surrounded the village in order to take Chonkin into custody. Chonkin has taken seven members of the secret police captive and the regiment has come to the rescue. (In the meantime, Chonkin has turned this group of seven into such efficient farm workers that word soon reaches the newspapers and even Comrade Stalin. The local chairman feels certain doom is sure to follow such success.) The captain of the secret police escapes, but falls into the hands of army, which he mistakenly thinks is the German army. Much hilarity ensues.

Although the book is somewhat an artifact of the Stalinist era and is almost certainly even better if one can read it in the original Russian (alas, I cannot), the book still rates five stars and my highest recommendation in part for the rare look it provides into life in the wartime Soviet Union and in part for its timeless portrayal of army bureaucracy, and the universal slacker, Ivan Chonkin.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Shorter, Sweeter Svejklike Satire, August 30, 1999

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics) (Paperback)

Funny, good-natured look at a bumbling Soviet private sent to guard an airplane which is stuck out in the sticks just prior to the German invasion in 1941. Satirizes all manner of things Soviet, most especially bureaucracy and the pomposity of its upper echelons. Somewhat similar to The Good Soldier Svejk in this respect, but at a much more manageable size and pace. Some really funny bits about Comrade Stalin. Especially recommended for Russian literature devotees, but should be enjoyable to most. There is a sequel called Pretender to the Throne.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ivan Chonkin, June 13, 2005

By 

Peter McGivney (Wappingers Falls, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics) (Paperback)

For those who may think that Russian literature is unrelieved doom and gloom, crime and punishment, endless Slavic heaviness about the meaning of life from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, Vladimir Voinovich's The life and extraordinary adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin is a masterpiece of comic writing that you will not want to miss. Chonkin is the not quite as bright younger brother of Jaroslav Hasek's Good Soldier Svejk, with this exception: Hasek's hero wears the mask of naiveté, but after a while we can tell that it is just that, a mask, and that Josef Svejk is a lot more clever than he is letting on. Ivan Chonkin, on the other hand, really is as naïve as he seems. He is trying to do his best by Stalin, the Red Army, and the Soviet Union; it's just that the people running the Soviet Union are dangerous idiots who can't quite comprehend just how dangerously stupid they really are.

Voinovich published the novel in France in 1975, for reasons that are clear just as soon as you start reading; no Soviet censor could allow its publication inside Russia, given the subject matter-in his time Stalin had writers imprisoned and executed for less trenchant criticism of him and his rule. The targets of Voinovich's hilarious satire is Soviet society itself and all of its institutions, beginning with Stalin himself and the Communist party, the Soviet military and its officer corps, the secret police, collectivized agriculture and the crackpot genetic theories of Lysenko, party propaganda, political officers, and World War II. There is little in Soviet life that does not take a hit as the patriotic and conscientious Private Chonkin, who is not the greatest soldier in the world but is doing the best that he can, tries to do his duty and creates mayhem in the process. Read it and enjoy.