"The Wilderness" by Boris Vasiliev, summary

This 2001 novel chronicles the life of an unnamed narrator in a provincial town during the global upheavals of the late twentieth century. The degradation of social institutions and the fusion of local authorities with criminals are depicted through the personal story of a former military representative at a defense factory.

Returning home and new friends

The narrator returns to the Outback after being seriously wounded. As a senior technician in military inspection, he tested 7.62 caliber rifles at a local pasta factory. Tired of boredom, he went on a foreign assignment to Africa, where he miraculously survived a bullet from a local drill. He received treatment in Cuba. During his long absence, his wife, Tamara, a pasta maker, filed for divorce, believing her husband to be missing in action. She quickly married Spartak, a Komsomol leader. The hero receives a new position as the head of a secret workshop.

A man befriends two outstanding individuals. Albert Kim manages a struggling state farm. He is a Korean, a man of immense hard work and strong moral principles. His other friend is Vakhtang Kobaladze, a Georgian and chief engineer of the railway workshops. The cheerful Vakhtang has brought his wife, Lana, and two teenage sons, Tengiz and Teimuraz, to the city. The men regularly visit the local bathhouse, sharing their troubles.

The friends are confronted with the terrible realities of the times. The body of a local boy, Slavik, is returned home in a sealed zinc coffin, allegedly having shot himself during his military service. Kim and the narrator secretly open the box, welded from cartridge cases. The coffin is hollow and completely empty. The command covered up the crime by faking a funeral. The victim’s mother, Vera Iosifovna, learns the truth and takes poison at her son’s grave. Kim sends his eldest son, Andrei, to serve in Afghanistan.

Tbilisi tragedy

The hero goes on vacation with Vakhtang. They fly to Tbilisi and stay with Vakhtang’s sister, Nina. The city is engulfed in peaceful youth protests. Teenage girls from the Kobaladze family — Tina and her friend Natella — are spending days and nights in the square in front of the Government House. Vakhtang hopes the protesters will simply shout their heads off and go home.

That night, special forces are brought into the city. Vakhtang goes to the square to fetch his children. The soldiers brutally disperse the rally with entrenching shovels and poison gas. The narrator tries to rush to help, but is beaten by patrol paratroopers. They twist his arms, throw him in a cell at the local commandant’s office, and forcibly deport him to Russia on a military plane.

In the morning, the terrible truth is revealed. The cheerful Vakhtang, the young girls, and many other civilians were beaten to death by soldiers during a nighttime sweep. Distraught with grief, Nina throws herself out of the hospital window.

The Birth of a Criminal Octopus

The Soviet state is finally disintegrating. The country is plunging into the chaos of unbridled capitalism. Former Komsomol activist Spartak becomes first secretary of the district committee, and then head of the entire shadow government. He is assisted by former lawyer Yuri Denisovich Zykov, who served time for inheritance fraud.

The narrator’s deputy, Kherson Petrovich, secretly sells unaccounted for military ammunition. With the proceeds, he opens a fashionable restaurant, "Until Dawn." He becomes close to his red-haired secretary, Tanechka. She devotedly nursed him during his serious illness, bringing him hot meals. They quietly marry. Her husband gives her a luxurious Cuban wig. Tanechka becomes a true support in his life.

Albert Kim creates a joint-stock company and builds modern greenhouses. Vegetables are profitable. The local mafia, led by Zykov and Spartak, decides to take over the successful farm. They organize a brutal pogrom at the market. The gangsters smash the stalls and destroy the entire harvest of a Korean agronomist. Kim is admitted to intensive care with a massive heart attack.

Blood and dollars

Afghan veteran Andrei Kim decides to fight racketeers. He is assisted by his former comrade Valera, who returned from Chechnya without a leg and has an Austrian prosthesis. Disillusioned by the senseless war, Valera throws his Hero of the Soviet Union star into a silted-up pond. Their third comrade, Fyodor, betrays his friends. Fyodor gets a job as a security guard at Spartak’s sports camp, where young Blackshirt bandits are professionally trained.

To pay for his father’s treatment in a Moscow clinic, the narrator is forced to make a deal with Zykov. He agrees to ship two train cars of live ammunition to Chechen separatists. Zykov provides the dollars for an ambulance helicopter. Kim is rescued, but the hero finds himself in a deadly trap.

Local journalist Metelkin attempts to investigate Spartak’s machinations. Metelkin collects incriminating photographs and tape recordings in a black photo paper bag. The gangsters stage a car accident. Khromov, a drunk hired by the mafia, beats Metelkin to death over the head with an iron pipe.

Andrei is on his way to meet Zykov to transfer a debt. Vadik, his former driver, is driving. Fyodor plants a bomb disguised as a gift box of cigars in the car. The powerful explosion decapitates Andrei. Vadik miraculously survives, escapes the scene, and tells Valera the truth. Svetlana, Andrei’s fiancée, is also killed by bandits during a shooting at a local disco.

Forced revenge

Organized crime strikes where he holds dearest. Tamara, the narrator’s ex-wife, is fiercely jealous of Tanya. On her orders, sulfuric acid is splashed in Tanya’s face. Tanya loses an eye, her face horribly disfigured by chemical burns. She refuses to see her husband, agonizingly awaiting a series of plastic surgeries.

The hero and Valera begin to seek revenge. Tanechka sneaks into a gangsters’ bachelorette party and discovers all the mafia’s secrets. Valera kidnaps Fyodor, hides him in the basement of an abandoned brick factory, and tortures him with a live rat. Fyodor confesses that Spartak and Zykov ordered the journalist’s murder and Andrey’s explosion. Valera kills the traitor with two precise shots.

The narrator stops the ammunition cars from advancing. He diverts the ammunition-laden trains to a siding at Rostov station, feigning broken wheels. Valera hands over the security of the cars to his trusted comrades. Zykov telephones, demanding an immediate meeting, threatening further merciless reprisals.

Underground passage and finale

The hero decides to sacrifice himself. He realizes the bandits will never leave his family alone. Valera wraps the narrator’s body in powerful factory explosives. A sensitive voice recorder is hidden under his clothes to record conversations.

A man enters an elite club through an underground passage from Kherson Petrovich’s restaurant. Security guards don’t search him. All the mafia bosses gather in the domed office. Spartak, Tamara, Zykov, and Kherson Petrovich drink expensive cognac. They frankly discuss the huge profits they are about to make from selling stolen weapons. A voice recorder meticulously records their confessions to brutal murders and total corruption.

The hero shouts, "Goodbye, Tanechka!" and tries to press the detonator button. His hand slips, and he accidentally breaks the microphone. A furious fight ensues. Zykov, terrified, hides under a massive oak table. Spartak grabs his pistol and shoots the fleeing narrator in the back. The last bullet hits the plastic explosive hidden under his shirt. A powerful explosion reduces the two-story stone mansion to dust.

A terrible fire destroys the bodies of all those present at the feast. Only the lawyer Zykov survives, protected by a sturdy oak table. Tanechka, carrying her dead husband’s child, leaves forever for a distant village with Valera. She wears a gray wig to conceal the terrible scars left by acid burns. She carefully edits her husband’s diaries to preserve the terrible truth. The novel concludes with the deceased hero’s poignant note about how the wilderness lives within people themselves.