page_title: Day of the Oprichnik
section_title: Analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Day of the Oprichnik / Analysis
caption_attribution_description: Vladimir Sorokin, Russian writer, at lit.Clogne, literature festival in Cologne, Germany date: 2006-03-13 author: Elke Wetzig (elya)
context_page_description: Day of the Oprichnik is a 2006 novel by the Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin. The narrative is set in the near future, when the Tsardom of Russia has been restored, and follows a government henchman, an oprichnik, through a day of grotesque events.
  Sorokin in one of the later interviews confessed that he did not anticipate his novel be an accurate picture of the future, even in some subtle details, but rather wrote this book as a warning and "mystical precaution" against the state of events described in the storyline. The title is a reference to the Oprichnina, the black-clad secret police of Ivan the Terrible, whose symbol were a black dog's head and a broom.
context_section_description: The title of the book is a reference to the 1962 novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Sorokin has been vocal in expressing his dislike of not only Solzhenitsyn as a man, but also his writing style and his right-wing politics, so the reference is unlikely to be understood as a favorable tribute. However, most of the novel is a parody of the 1927 novel Za chertopolokhom (Behind the Thistle) by General Pyotr Krasnov, the former ataman of the Don Cossack Host who went into exile in 1919. Krasnov's novel, which is published in Russian in Paris, which was almost completely unknown in Russia until 2002 when it was published in Moscow and has become quite popular, being in its third reprinting as of 2009. Behind the Thistle is a future history, depicting Russia in the 1990s being ruled by a restored monarchy that has severed all contact with the West, which is precisely the same scenario as Day of the Oprichnik (which is set in 2028), but only Sorokin has inverted the premise. The Russia of the future depicted in the Day of the Oprichnik is as dystopian as Krasnov's Russia of the future is utopian.
   
  As in  Behind the Thistle, the Russia of Day of the Oprichnik is ruled over by a restored monarchy which came about as a result of an apocalyptic disaster that killed millions. In Behind the Thistle, Krasnov described in detail an unsuccessful Soviet invasion of Poland and Romania that led to vast qualities of deadly chemical gases being released which kill millions at the beginning of the novel; by contrast Sorokin is a rather vaguer about the nature of the disaster, which is described in his novel only as the "Grey Turmoil". The term "Grey Turmoil" is a reference to the "Red Turmoil" of 1917 and the "White Turmoil" of 1991. As in Behind the Thistle, the social order in Day of the Oprichnik  is upheld by daily public floggings, torture and executions of Russians who dare to think differently and Russia has very close relations with China. The Tsar in the novel resembles Ivan the Terrible in terms of both appearance and personality, and like the real Ivan has a stern, patriarchal leadership style, portraying himself the father of the nation and his subjects as his "children" in need of his strict supervision. Much like Ivan the Terrible, the Tsar in Day of the Oprichnik insists obsessively on "chastity and cleanliness" from his subjects. As in Krasnov's novel, the Russian characters dress in traditional costumes; the men grow the traditional long breads while the women braid their hair; and all of the characters speak in a pseudo-folksy way meant to evoke the Russian of the 16th and 17th centuries. Alongside the intentionally anachronistic Russian, the language of Day of the Oprichnik includes much slang from the vory v zakone ("thieves in law", i.e. Russian organised crime, which forms a very distinctive subculture in Russia complete with its own dialect of Russian) and New Russian slang of 1990s-2000s, making for a Russian that sounds both very modern and jarringly anachronistic. In the novel, a house is called a terem, a mobile phone is a mobilov and a car is called a merin (mule). The ringtone for the phones of the orichniks is the cracking of a whip. Marijuana has been legalised in this Russia it "does no harm to a simple person, but helps him relax".
  The  subculture of the vory v zakone who despite their name engage in all sorts of criminal activity is characterized by its own dialect and its own rules. For an example, a vor (thief) must never willingly serve in the military; must never a report a crime, even against themselves; and must never testify against another vor, even if he is a rival. The most notable distinguishing marks of the vory are that their bodies are covered with elaborate tattoos full of symbolism about their status within the vory v zakone and that they always wear Orthodox crucifixes around their necks. As the vory have a well deserved reputation for being brutal, amoral and predatory criminals, their dialect of Russian has a very low status in Russia, and to speak the d
caption: Vladmir Sorokin, the controversial author of The Day of the Oprichnik whose novels were flushed down a paper-mache pseudo-toilet at a rally by the Putin Youth as "unRussian".
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