A summary of "Moscow Hospitality" by Arkady Averchenko

Arkady Timofeevich Averchenko’s collection of satirical and humorous stories, "Moscow Hospitality," brings together works from various periods of his career — from pre-revolutionary feuilletons from the era of the St. Petersburg magazine "Satyricon" to the émigré prose of the 1920s. The book was published abroad in the 1920s. The author masterfully blends autobiographical prose, grotesque sketches of urban life, caustic pamphlets on social vices, and a profound longing for a lost culture.

Autobiographical essays and the formation of a satirist

The narrative opens with the author’s recollections of his childhood and youth. With gentle self-irony, the narrator describes his birth in Sevastopol, his avoidance of unloved studies under the pretext of poor eyesight, and his homework with his older sisters. The writer’s father is portrayed as a kindly, visionary merchant, engaged in the systematic ruin of his own business. The merchant generously distributes goods on credit and buys absurd, monumental objects: a marble washbasin gushing like a fountain, a gigantic, smoking lamp, and a clock with a frantic pendulum that children ride.

His first steps in the service at a sleepy Sevastopol office and a stint in the filthy coal mines of Donbas exposed the young man to the relentless drunkenness of the employees and escaped convict miners. A transfer to the Kharkiv government office paved the way for his literary career. After satirical cartoons in the magazine "Shtyk" and a conflict with the local governor-general, the writer left for St. Petersburg, where he founded the renowned magazine "Satyricon."

Childhood experiences come to life in the stories of the yard leader Vanka the Aptekarenko, nicknamed the Scary Boy. The young hero devours the novels of Mayne Reid and Boussenard, but a visit to a menagerie shatters his literary illusions. The menacing Indian Wapiti and the black man Basheliko, dressed in ordinary jackets, peacefully eat Easter cake, shattering his childhood dreams of ferocious savages.

A satire on the bureaucracy and social vices of old Russia

A significant portion of the book consists of feuilletons about the paradoxes of imperial censorship, bureaucracy, and the psychology of the average person. In "Ivanov’s Case History," a non-party resident of St. Petersburg develops political radicalism from reading newspapers: his worldview rapidly shifts leftward until a police officer issues him a certificate of exile to Vologda. In the feuilleton "Who Sold Her…," the author mocks the suspiciousness of the press, describing the sale of Russia to Finnish and Japanese agents for eight million rubles.

The short story "Russian History" exposes the ignorance of the peasants in the village of Nizhnyaya Gogolevka. The peasants drown a botany student in the river for his scientific paper on cholera vibrios and the rotation of the Earth, but meekly hand over their last money to a scoundrel with an officer’s cockade on his cap. In the story "Robinsons," detective Akatsiev pursues a surviving intellectual on a desert island, threatening him with charges for hunting before St. Peter’s Day and lack of a passport.

The absurdity of administrative pressure resonates in the essays "Koribu" and "The Busy Nation." A timid journalist disguises his criticism of the Odessa mayor as a tale of a cruel African chieftain. The narrator himself faces a ban on entry to Yalta due to emergency security regulations and ridicules the habit of ordinary people to constantly fuss over every little thing.

Everyday life, family relationships and customs of bohemia

Averchenko exposes the falseness of private life and human egotism. In the short story "Mosaic," Mr. Korablyov takes six lovers, trying to assemble from them the image of the perfect woman, but loses his memento book and becomes confused by names and gifts. A character in the story "Petukhov" torments his faithful wife with jealous suspicions, projecting his own secret affairs onto her. The short story "Wife" tells the story of a husband whose excessive solicitude results in a rush to collect her husband’s life insurance.

The backstage world becomes a hub of envy. In "The Stage," actors who speak passionately of forgiveness and love from the stage shower their colleagues with venomous gossip in their dressing rooms. Actress Maryskina, given the tiny role of merchant Poluyanova, throws a hysterical declaration of love for someone else’s lover during the performance, earning applause from the audience. In "The Incurable," writer Kukushkin unsuccessfully attempts to sell tabloid cliches with the lustful turn of phrase "it’s all about…" under the guise of scientific essays on the lives of insects.

Comical everyday stories reveal the paradoxes of human nature. Cab driver number 24345 drinks away the reward he received for returning someone else’s wallet, buying Burgundy wine, and starts a fight in a tavern. In the story "The Principle," the thief Ivan Sergeyevich helps a stranger pack his belongings, only to discover he’s been taking the apartment’s rightful owner’s belongings for free. The title story, "Moscow Hospitality," takes hospitality to the extreme: a guest is force-fed food and drenched in alcohol until he loses consciousness.

Revolutionary collapse and the tragicomedy of exile

The events of 1917 and the Civil War introduce the theme of historical change into the collection. In "Russian Fairy Tale," a father explains to his son the delights of pre-revolutionary life: the child, who has known only typhus, requisitions, and speculation, perceives peaceful professions, toys, and balls as magical fiction. The dystopian "Excerpt from a Future Novel" depicts a feral Soviet Russia of 1950, where primitive tribes of people’s commissars and executive committees war among the ruins, and a recovered railroad nut is considered a sacred relic.

Emigrant stories depict the bitter fate of refugees in Constantinople and Prague. In "Russian Art," a metropolitan actress is hired as a cook for foreigners, and a military general serves as a doorman. The novella "The Argonauts and the Golden Fleece" tells the story of the collapse of illusions: the wealthy merchant Nikanor Syrtsov drinks away his money with gypsies and dies of typhus, while his comrades are reduced to penniless newspapermen and disenfranchised restaurant waiters.

The study "People-Brothers" brings together a former card sharper, an actor in the imperial theaters, and a police officer at a table in a foreign land. Past arrests and quarrels seem like a happy lost world to the émigrés. The book is supplemented with parodic life lessons on the art of telling jokes, social manners at dinner parties, and the subtleties of declarations of love.