Lieutenant Kijé
Lieutenant Kijé or Kizhe (, translit. Poruchik Kizhe), originally Kizh (Киж), is a fictional character in an anecdote about the reign of Emperor Paul I of Russia, in which the cover up of a transcription error leads to the creation of a fictional soldier, Kijé, and his rise through the ranks. When Paul asks to meet the now renowned officer, the creators of the hoax are cornered into a final lie that the soldier has died in battle. The story was used as the basis of a novella by Yury Tynyanov published in 1928 and filmed in 1934 with music by Sergei Prokofiev. The plot is a satire on bureaucracy. Original version The first appearance of the anecdote is in Vladimir Dahl's "Stories of the time of Paul I" (), a short piece published in the journal Russkaya Starina in 1870; he reported it as told by his father, Jochan Christian von Dahl (1764-1821). In this original version, a clerk miswrites an order promoting several ensigns (praporshchiki) to second lieutenants (podporuchiki): instead of "praporshchiki zh ... - v podporuchiki" ("as to Ensigns (names), [they are promoted to] Second Lieutenants"), he writes "praporshchik Kizh, ... - v podporuchiki" ("Ensign Kizh, (other