The image of Russian life of the 90s through the veil of detective Alexandra Marinina "The Illusion of sin"

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

         I had never read Marina's detectives, but then in the hospital I saw a bright little book left by someone with a strange name and decided to pass the time. To my surprise, I was carried away not only by the detective, but also by the panorama of time, bright strokes, written out by the author of the book. Reading the "Illusion of Sin" brought not only pleasure, but also questions arose. First of all, is the genre of this work really a detective (the title page says "... and Kamenskaya again! The long-awaited novel of the Queen of detective" ^[4])? No, of course, there is a detective, and a very inventive and original one. The whole gentleman's set: several completely incomprehensible murders at first; no less versions, each of which turns out to be false, but nevertheless, they gradually bring Nastya Kamenskaya to the correct picture of what was happening; a wise boss who does not interfere with Kamenskaya, rather supports her when Nastya comes to a dead end; an unexpected insight that allows Kamenskaya to understand that it is not the person they are looking for (Valery Vasilyevich Volokhov) who kills, but someone else, although it is Volokhov who is the cause of these murders; the death of witnesses is just one step ahead of the investigators' decisions; the brilliant abduction of the last witness (Natasha Terekhina) and her release in another country (Ukraine); almost fantastic, Kamenskaya's ingenious decoding of the messages of the kidnapped Natasha (this is perhaps the only fragment that you don't believe, but the rest are impeccable).

         But I caught myself thinking that behind the intricacies of the detective, there was a completely different reality ? the life of Russia in the nineties and, perhaps, for me this reality is no less significant than Detective Marinina. A detective and a picture of Russian life, it is unlikely that they can be summed up together under the concept of a detective genre.  

         The second question that quickly arose in my mind is why the novel is so strangely named ("The Illusion of Sin"): what is the sin there and why is the illusion, it seems that Marinina is talking about completely different things? At the end of the novel, however, there is a small explanation, but it does not convince. Here is an explanation made against the background of Volokhov's crime already disclosed by Kamenskaya. Being a well-known radiologist, Volokhov, deceiving women, entered into contact with them, irradiated them at the stage of pregnancy in order to get perfect, physically and mentally, people after birth; this was his idea-fix. The conversation takes place between the investigator (Tashkov) and one of Volokhov's victims, Zoya, with whom Tashkov was in love.  

         "Wait, Zoya, don't be so abrupt," Tashkov said affectionately. ? Doctor Volokhov is one song, and your child is completely different, you don't have to lump everything in one pile. Yes, Volokhov is a scoundrel, but what does the child have to do with it? You have to give birth to him and bring him up, one has nothing to do with the other.

         ? I can't, Sasha, I'll keep thinking that he's not real. Artificial. It's a sin to make artificial people, a big sin.

         ? Well, what are you coming up with, there is no sin here. It's all an illusion. Zoya, think about the fact that one woman fell into the same delusion (we are talking about Galina Terekhina, who when she realized what Volokhov had done to her, by the way, the father of her four children, went crazy, threw the children out of the window and threw herself out; the children survived, but became disabled, and Terekhina lost memory. ? V.R.), succumbed to the illusion of sin and thereby crippled her children and herself, and simply killed her husband. That's really a sin. Don't repeat her mistake" ^{[4, p. 397]}.

Interestingly, there are four novels by Diana Soule (Irina Dmitrievna Subach), named in the same way ? "The Illusion of Sin". A reader who is not familiar with Diana's work might think that Marinina borrowed certain plot ideas from them. For example, in the fourth novel "The Illusion of Sin. The last illusion" has a plot that vaguely resembles the idea-fix of Volokhov (the hero of the novel Herbert Sachs, who is an incubus, "a creature who can bestow gorgeous gifts and fulfill any whims, but can never fall in love", in order to prolong his life in children, offers for a lot of money to the heroine, Viola, to conceive a child from him). But, firstly, the Soul novels were written much later than Marina's novel (the first one was released in 2016), and secondly, you need to have a lot of imagination to identify the realities and events of the novels of both authors. Rather, on the contrary, Marinina influenced Diana Soul: her four novels describe a world, an atmosphere somewhat reminiscent of Russian life in the 90s: the unreality and torment of what is happening, cold logic and egoism of manipulators of people, hopelessness, the war of all against all, the attempt of reason to resist evil and death, embodied in personalities, as if belonging to another world ? darkness. Marinina has this atmosphere, presented through the prism (veil) of an entertaining detective, and not only the investigation itself, but also a story about the heroes, their actions, statements, events of that time, which are easily recognized by those who lived at that time.     

  Trying to understand what kind of Russian lifestyle causes me to read Marinina, I remembered the end of my article "Interpreting A.P. Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard" (following the analysis of Alexander Minkin's book "Gentle Soul")." It seems that what is common between the life of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century and the nineties? And yet. "What was the scheme of social order that Chekhov entered in this play ? I ask? ? It contains two plans: in the first, an impersonal social process (in the "Cherry Orchard" this is the ruin of the old nobility and the formation of capitalism, the transformation of the garden and nature into many garden plots), in the second plan, the actions and deeds of individuals, as a rule, do not affect each other, often meaningless. Chekhov does not understand how people's actions determine, and whether they determine, the social process at all. Therefore, in "The Cherry Orchard" and his other plays, these two processes go on independently of each other, generating a bad social reality and hopelessness. In the best case, an individual should accept the changes that occur against his will (including the selfishness of others and evil), and try to live, if possible, correctly ("to fulfill his duty")…

Why does the interest in the "Cherry Orchard" not weaken? I think there are two main reasons. Firstly, strangely enough, but life in Russia has changed little in terms of the scheme of sociality that Chekhov entered. As before, there are two unrelated processes ? impersonal, social (revolution, the construction of socialism, war, the unexpected death of the USSR, reforms, etc., up to the present events) and unrelated and often meaningless, marginal actions and actions of people. Secondly, due to the heterogeneity (hybridity) and redundancy of the artistic form created by Chekhov, his works allow for a variety of interpretations, which is what the directors, artists and viewers use one hundred percent" ^{[5, pp. 85-87]}.

  Let's try to look at Marinina's "Illusion of Sin" from the point of view of this scheme of sociality. But first, let's take away one doubt. Chekhov and Marinina write their works just during the period of active social transformation (in the first case, the formation and development of capitalism in Russia, in the second ? the reforms of the 90s aimed at deconstructing socialism, building a market economy, as well as a legal, democratic society). Why are these social processes not represented in their works? Well, firstly, they are partly presented, however, as a background (for example, Lopakhin suggests splitting the Cherry Orchard into separate suburban areas and selling them profitably, and one of Marinina's heroes participates in the elections and therefore does not have time to write his speech at the upcoming dissertation defense).

Nastya Kamenskaya explains to her husband why his client did not write his speech. "And your graduate student, instead of moving science forward, engaged in political activism.

? From what such conclusions?

? Yes, from the elections, honey. He was engaged in election campaigning for his candidate, sat in the headquarters, did a lot of all kinds of work, I don't know, for money or for ideological reasons. In any case, until the morning of the seventeenth, he did not have a minute free to sit down, think and write his speech on the defense" ^{[4, p. 233]}.

Secondly, Chekhov and Marinina are not scientists, not sociologists, but writers, they are primarily interested in people, their actions, statements, relationships; they relate to social events and their understanding only to the extent that it is possible to better understand these anthropological realities. In this regard, Marinina very adequately, but naturally as an artist, represents for the reader the social reality of the 90s, which in many ways resembles the "bad sociality", about which he wrote in the 20s of the last century  Vasily Zenkovsky.

"Take a look at what is being done even now in all corners of Russia: you will find everywhere a certain number of active, animated by public ideals figures who are overburdened with work, overburdened by the mass of the task assigned to them. And behind them there is a whole mass of “philistines” who only know how to use the results of someone else's work, perhaps they are not averse to criticizing it, but they will not lift a finger to help. The weak development of public amateur activity is all the more striking in our country, because life has now become unbearably difficult. The food, housing, and financial crises are crushing all of us, and despite all this, the same people are performing in the arena of public work. This fact should be recognized as formidable, it is fraught with great danger for our society, for the whole people. The political freedom that has been won, the broad democratization of life will not lead to the renewal of Russia, to its flourishing, if public self-activity stands at the same level as it currently stands. <...>

In Russia, under the previous conditions of public life, when any sincere and honest service to the public good was severely persecuted, the type of socially indifferent and socially inert person was naturally put forward by life itself and historically fixed. To these purely Russian conditions, which favored all our Oblomovs, it is necessary to add the factor that has its effect everywhere ? namely, the influence of economic individualism of our era. The economic structure of our time pushes people apart, makes everyone think about themselves, leads to the cult of their interests. Economic progress itself is largely based on selfish service to self-interest. Due to this economic factor, natural social drives somehow weaken, move deeper, and interest in the social whole fades. It would be naive not to take this factor into account in the question of the causes of the prevalence of the socially inert type. <...>

It would be more correct to say that modern school does not foster antisocial skills, but that it fosters bad sociality. <...>

Without entering here into a detailed discussion of the issue of social struggle, it should be said that there are no serious reasons to over-emphasize the social contradictions of different classes…People belonging to different social classes will never cease to be for each other, first of all, people! In social education, we must prepare children precisely for such social communication, in which the main place would belong to purely human, and not class relations. <…>

Oh, how Russia lacks elementary social virtues now! How few people are able to subordinate their personal, party, class interests to the common good! A rich country, full of young, untapped forces, freed from all external fetters, having the full possibility of free self?determination, vaguely aware of all its infinite power - Russia is approaching catastrophe from day to day, torn from within by socially contradictory currents." ^{[3, p. 296, 300-301, 303, 329, 343]}.   

         What was the bad sociality of the 90s? First of all, the Russians' attitude to the law, stretching from the past centuries, the tradition of non-legal consciousness and behavior, which allows corruption to flourish and even the authorities to circumvent the laws, catches the eye. For bribes in Russia in the 90s, they get a job; for a lot of money, Ajax, who organized the murder of witnesses, sells nuclear technology to Libya and hopes to sell the technology of growing perfect Volokhov people; again, for bribes, Ajax bandits acquire an orphanage, where the kidnapped Natasha is brought, for even more bribes, Major Tashkov terminates the purchase agreement this house to free Natasha. Without waiting for the trial, Vera, one of Volokhov's victims, deals with him herself.    

         "The first part of the operation was carried out brilliantly, secret documents on nuclear technology were successfully bought for a lot of money, and the task of Ilyas (one of the bandits of Ajax. ? V.R.) was to deliver them to Libya <...> A brilliant Dad (Volokhov. ? V.R.), baking like pies, children with extraordinary with physical and intellectual data, he is moving towards the crown of his experiments and scientific developments, and he needs to be brought to this crown intact, so that later he can get big good money for his methodology <...> The only way to twist the hands of those on whom the quick paperwork depends (on the termination of the contract for an orphanage. ? V.R.), there was a bribe even larger than the one they had already received from the persons who rented the estate. Of course, giving a bribe is not a good thing, who can argue. Tashkov did not argue, he just gave it... The officials were sure that they had fallen into the pincers of an even more powerful mafia group that knows everything about them, and will get it everywhere if something is wrong <...>

Looking at her tense back, Volokhov thought that she was probably crying and trying to find a handkerchief. When Vera turned to him, he didn't even understand what was going on. At first he felt a burning pain in his chest and only then he heard the roar of a shot.

            ? Bastard," Vera said with a stony expression on her face, "scumbag, it's not a pity to sit for you" ^{[4, pp. 293, 200, 419-420, 444]}.

         It is to the 90s that the statements about the law of the academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences V.S. Stepin and T.I. Zaslavskaya belong. "In Russia," Stepin writes, "the people have never felt and did not realize themselves living in a single legal field for everyone, and, of course, did not believe in a rule?of?law state... The reforms of the 90s carried out in post-Soviet Russia, unfortunately, have not yet led to a legal society…In an environment of weakening of the State and on an expanding scale, the practice of violating laws and nihilistic attitude to the law was strengthened. And here the worst features of the Russian tradition were reproduced and strengthened, when written laws are not perceived as a norm designed to regulate life, because everyone knows that the law can be circumvented, it is necessary to look for loopholes and make it beneficial for corporate interests... laws are interpreted as you like, then by-laws are issued that essentially they violate the laws, and it is possible to bring a person to justice arbitrarily, imputing to him a violation of any of the conflicting by-laws" ^{[8, p. 28]}.

There is even a kind of paradox – the law in Russia is formed and operates in the context of non-legal practices. Over the years of reforms, write T.I.Zaslavskaya and M.A.Shabanova, this context has expanded so much that for the majority it has become more real than the law itself. According to these authors, 42% of respondents "indicated that in modern conditions their legal rights are violated more often than before the reforms. It is particularly unfavorable and important for understanding the essence of the modern transformation process in Russia that the main subjects violating the rights of citizens are the authorities of different levels (89% of respondents named them)…Many researchers express concern about the deep gap between the administrative-legal and socio-cultural components of Russian institutions. It is noted that new laws and norms often remain on paper, while real practices develop as if these norms did not exist" ^{[2, pp. 6-7]}.

         And where laws and law do not apply, reality quickly develops, perceived as social injustice. "Asenka. The whole civilized world, ? explains Kamenskaya to her workmate Yura Korotkov, ? lives with the innate notion that some people have a lot of money and even a lot, while others have little or no money at all… And our fellow citizens grew up with the idea that everyone should have equally little money. Therefore, when suddenly our habitual course of life was disrupted, and even so abruptly, psychology did not have time to rebuild. Have you ever seen a case when a person has a pension with the size of the cost of a single ticket on public transport. And the neighbor has three cars and two country houses, and for one trip to the supermarket, this neighbor spends three old woman's pensions on groceries…

         ?Yes, you're probably right," Nastya said thoughtfully. ? Plus, the lack of confidence that everything will not be taken away tomorrow" ^{[4, p. 62]}.

         Research shows that sociality is conditioned by three main factors: tradition and history, one, the ways of organizing people's lives (division of labor, power and management, self-organization of citizens, etc.), two, and three, the unique composition of people who make up the substrate anthropological basis of sociality (and the characteristics of these individuals, in turn, sociality affects, i.e. here is a circle, but not hermeneutical, but so to speak, environmental ? people are an environment for sociality, sociality is for people).

In the "Illusion of Sin" it is not difficult to see three main features of the Russians of the 90s: the first, the confrontation of two opposite personality types acting on the side of a kind of "good" (culture, love and help, etc. values)  or "evil" (egoism, attitude to Others as objects, etc.); the second feature, the absence of the vast majority of moral and moral imperatives, and the third, following ideas that completely determine the actions and decisions of people. Mikhail Bakhtin points out at the last moment: in Dostoevsky's works, he shows, an "independent", "creatively lonely", "value-initiative personality" is exhibited, the integrity of which is set by the category "idea". ^{[1, p. 157; 7, p. 75]}   

         Of course, we can say that the opposition of two opposite personality types (for example, Ira Terekhina, the only, eldest daughter of Galina, who managed to hide during her mother's insanity, Kamenskaya, Tashkov, on the one hand, Volokhov and Ajax, on the other), is an artistic device, and it will be true, but does not reflect Is this technique a real opposition in Russian sociality, caused, as Alexander Akhiezer shows, by a deep historical split in Russia almost since Ivan the Terrible? Isn't the effect of this split continuing in our time? The famous Swedish scientist and esotericist of the beginning of the XVIII century Emanuel Swedenborg believed that all people are initially divided into two types ? loving goodness and the Lord, and therefore they ascend to heaven after death and serve Him, and prone to evil, which causes their posthumous stay in hell ^{[6, pp. 49-55]}. If so, then the case is hopeless and Russia is forever doomed to split. But an analysis of the experience of other types of sociality shows that if the latter are built in the logic of cultivating good and blocking evil (for example, as in states based on the projects of Locke and Montesquieu), then in this case the majority of citizens gradually incline to good.

         If you read Marinina carefully, it turns out that in the nineties, Russians mostly stayed outside of morality, they did not seem to have such categories, in terms of morality and morality ? pure consciousness. Moreover, both, so to speak, real villains like Volokhov, and quite ordinary Russians, for example, operative Oleg Gesterov, sympathizing with Irina Terekhina, however, for the sake of the case, he slept with her several times. "Valery Vasilyevich Volokhov has always considered himself a very healthy person both physically and mentally. The main sign of mental health, he saw in himself an extremely powerful ability to expel unpleasant and disturbing thoughts from consciousness… In twenty years of constant experimentation with women and the children they gave birth to, he managed never to be horrified by the immorality and monstrosity of what he was doing. He had a goal and that was all he was interested in. He remembered all too well the burning resentment he felt when his proposed theory provoked ridicule and was rejected by colleagues out of hand as unpromising and unscientific. <…>

         Oleg Gesterov's life was quite harsh and did not have any sentimentality. In the course of this life, he had to do evil more often than good, although evil was done in the name of good goals, but still it was evil in itself, because it took away people's freedom, property, and sometimes life. The idea of a small miracle took root in the depths of consciousness and now rarely came to the surface, but it did not disappear anywhere. And after the meeting with Irina Terekhina, as psychologists would say, she became actualized.

         Of course, there was no question of any love. What happened tonight was part of his job, his assignment. He had to get in touch with the landlady of the apartment where the "Kazan" live…But business is business, and a miracle is a miracle" ^{[4, pp. 344-345, 87-88]}.

         On the other hand, where can morality come from after the revolution of the seventeenth year, the civil war, the destruction of an entire class (bourgeois and kulaks), the destruction of churches or their transformation into warehouses, Stalinist terror, Brezhnev stagnation, the collapse of the USSR? Perhaps morality could have developed if it had been possible to build a rule-of-law state, put it under the control of a society that still needed to be formed, rethink the Soviet period, develop adequate new goals and pictures of life that could be aspired to, and much more.

         Although Marinina's characters are the characters of a detective script, they do not look cardboard and one?dimensional. Largely because they are obsessed with life ideas (people are ideas, according to Bakhtin). Irina wants to earn money for her brother's surgery and support her disabled sisters, as well as her mother who has lost her memory. She dreams, "that one day there will be a person who will take pity on Pavlik and give money for operations. She doesn't need anything else to support her sisters and herself, she will somehow earn. And enough for the mother. No matter how much Ira hated her, but after all, the mother is still" ^{[4, p. 32]}. Volokhov is obsessed with the idea of creating a technology that allows you to grow ideal people.

The idea-fix Ajax ? to live beautifully. "Well," he muses, "he is in his last hour. ? He lived well, gloriously, for his own pleasure, provided for both mother and wife and son. And he amused himself to his heart's content, turning out daring and expensive operations... Life seemed to him insipid and boring, and he brought into it what made it interesting and lively, gave a sharpness and a piquant sense of constant risk. It was not so much money that he needed, as awareness of his power and invulnerability, dexterity, cunning, scope..." ^{[4, p. 440]}.    

         Even Kamenskaya looks like a person obsessed with the idea of solving a crime at any cost and saving the life of a crime victim. Her husband, Alexey Chistyakov, "knew his wife too well for too long and knew in the same way that when it comes to someone's life, Nastya does not stop at anything" ^{[4, p. 368]}. And this is despite the fact that Kamenskaya is well aware of what she is doing and in what reality she is working. "Well, I've been crying," she says to her colleague Yura. ? Let's agree that you and I are both a little crazy about this enchanted business, but this is not a reason to resign. If there are complete idiots among the leaders of our country, then we will work with you again" ^{[4, p. 237]}.  

         Of course, life outside of ideas is uninteresting and hardly possible in culture, but obsession with ideas is fraught with various negative consequences. Especially if such an obsessive, for example, as Hitler has great power.

         Having painted a convincing picture of Russian life in the 90s, Marinina does not bypass the question that interested many thinking Russians at that time, and even now - what will happen next, will it be possible to change life and break out of the worn?out rut, as Vladimir Vysotsky sings?

It's my own fault: I'm crying and groaning ? I got into someone else's deep rut. I planned my goals to choose from myself ? But now I can't get out of the rut.

This track has steep slippery edges…

I broke into a cold sweat to the bone, And I walked a little bit forward along the dostochka. I look — the spring streams have washed away the edge, There is an exit from the rut ? salvation!

I spit mud from under the tires Into someone else's rut.

Hey, you rear ones, do as I do! It means ? don't follow me. This track is only mine, Get out with your own track!

Unfortunately, Marinina's prognosis is sad ? it is unlikely to work out. In artistic form, it is clearly indicated at the very end of the novel. "And again everything went into the usual rut. Ira got up at five in the morning and went to clean the street. Then I washed the stairs in a sixteen-story building. Then I went to the clothing market. In the evenings, she worked at the Gloria. Natasha was in the hospital again, in the same hospital, and even in the same ward. Only Ira had no more lodgers. Or rather, there was one, a handsome black-haired guy, according to Aslanbek's passport, but for some reason everyone called him Myron. He did not pay rent, he worked very hard and brought money to Ira. Every penny.

? First we will gather for Pavlik, ? he told her, ? then for the monument to your father. And then Natasha will graduate from the institute, I will find her a job, we will take her home and we will live much better. Just be patient a little longer, okay? We will live much better, I promise you.

And Ira believed.

Zoya and Tashkov came to her once a week, with that Tashkov who gave all his money to save Natasha. Ira did not know where to sit them down and what to treat, it seemed to her that she would not pay off this serious man for the rest of her days. She was so happy that Zoya decided to give birth after all! She will have, though not a native, but a brother or sister with whom you can go for a walk, play hide-and-seek or tag, which you can pick up from kindergarten. And maybe she, Ira, will even be trusted to take him to school for the first time someday. She probably won't take Pavlik to school anymore.

She will have a family consisting not only of disabled people. In this family there will be Miron, there will be Zoya and her child, and even, it seems, there will be Tashkov. She will be fine, you just have to work very hard and believe very much.

And Ira believed" ^{[4, pp. 444-445]}.