Syndicate by Dina Rubina, summary Automatic translate

The novel was written in 2004. This book is a satirical comic about the absurdity of bureaucratic machinery and the spiritual quests of people living between two countries. The writer Dina leaves her native Jerusalem and moves to Moscow for three years.

Dina starts working as the head of the Fenechki-Tusovka department in a powerful organization called the Syndicate. The organization is based in a former kindergarten, surrounded by barbed wire and a strict access control system. The Syndicate’s main goal is to persuade Jews to immigrate to Israel. Dina rents an apartment on Spasonalivkovsky Lane. There, her family constantly encounters alcoholic neighbors and a meek, red-haired boy named Andryusha. Andryusha regularly sets fire to mailboxes and garbage chutes.

The Syndicate’s office is full of eccentric employees. The head of the Moscow branch, Klavdiy, is a soft-spoken colonel with a love of cooking and military humor. During weekly roll calls, he displays a map of Russia with a laser flashlight, as if singing the "GOELRO Song." Chief Administrator Petyunya Gurvits constantly drinks and tells dirty jokes. Yasha Sokol runs the Ascension Department and constantly draws caustic comics about his colleagues. The Vigilance Department, represented by the stern Shai, forces the syndics to fall to the dirty floor during drills. They are all afraid of Chief Accountant Roza Marselovna Mtsekh.

Dina’s workday is filled with absurd encounters. She has to deal with petitioners, the town’s lunatics, community leaders, and hack writers. She regularly endures the hysterical outbursts of Klara Tikhonkaya from the "Prisoner" foundation. Klara constantly demands money to hold seminars on the Holocaust. Singer Esther Diamant asks for funding for her concerts featuring the song "Tell Me a Heartfelt Word." From Jerusalem, Dina receives mysterious emails from a certain Azaria. The unknown author describes the tragedies of Israeli terrorist attacks in biblical terms and angrily denounces the hypocrisy of the Syndicate’s leadership.

Intrigues and Moscow adventures

The eminence grise of the behind-the-scenes intrigues is Noah Ruvimych Kleshchatik. This elegant businessman, through his firm, Global Civilization, controls the Syndicate’s financial flows. He forces the organization to lease the abandoned Panteleyevo boarding house. Kleshchatik organizes pompous celebrations at the Luzhniki ice arena. Dina tries to fight Kleshchatik’s influence, but his grip is too strong. He forces Dina to read his mediocre play, "The High Note of My Love."

Dina is friends with her driver, Slava Panibrat. Slava drives her through Moscow’s traffic jams in a government-issued Ford. Slava also works part-time at the funeral home "Ritual." One day, he asks Dina to help transport a deceased person. Together, they carry the body of an alcoholic out of a dingy apartment in Khimki and stash it in the car. Along the way, they are stopped by the police. The sight of the dead passenger frightens the traffic inspector, and he allows them to leave.

Dina often goes for walks with her friend, the writer Marina Moskvina. Marina is interested in Buddhism and creates strange installations. She sews a Pushkin doll using Dina’s old summer pants for the face. The girls go to the Armenian restaurant "Old Phaeton" and show the doll to the chefs. Another time, Marina goes to the radio station "Holy Crucifixion." There, she puts on a real show live on air, using a flute, the jawbone of a prehistoric donkey, and a drum. The astonished host, Konstantin, can’t stop her monologue.

Meanwhile, religious wars rage within the Syndicate. Moscow has three Chief Rabbis: Zalman Kozlobrod, Manfred Kolotushkin, and Motya Garmider. To avoid offending anyone, officials invent a naming convention called "according to the version." Motya Garmider leads a movement toward a more lenient Judaism. He conducts a conversion ceremony for five buxom Russian beauties right in a sauna in Sokolniki. The women drag the rabbi into the pool fully clothed.

Lost knees and the absurdity of business trips

The Israeli authorities create a new department: the Department for the Search for the Ten Lost Tribes. Potential emigrants undergo blood tests and are informed of their ancestry in the ancient biblical families. Kleshchatyk devises a grand plan. He plans to gather the recovered descendants on the steamships Ilya Muromets and Ocharovanny Wandernik. The ships are to cruise the Volga and then head to Haifa.

The Syndicate’s inner life is crumbling in scandal. Yasha Sokol’s fifteen-year-old twin daughters are brilliant card players. The Syndicate throws a party for young people at the elite Blue Robe club. The event turns into a massive disgrace. Yasha discovers strippers on stage with Syndicate emblems on their buttocks. Then he sees accountant Jackie Chaplin in the audience. He gambles away huge sums of government money. Yasha starts a fight and ends up in police custody along with Izya Koval. A terrible secret is revealed: Yasha’s daughters won the Panteleyevo boarding house in a card game from the Iranian ambassador, who had previously won the building from Chaplin.

Dina herself discovers a blazing, empty swimming pool in the Panteleyevo boarding house. Drunk teenagers are partying around the fire. The fire is lovingly lit by the same red-haired boy, Andryusha, from her Moscow apartment building. Misha Pancher, the youth leader, calmly calls it self-expression.

Dina constantly travels to the Syndicate’s branches. In Saratov, Samara, Odessa, and Riga, she gives lectures and observes the life of the communities. In Riga, she visits an antique shop. Dina tries on a black hat with a veil. Suddenly, in the mirror, she sees the hat being knocked off the head of an old lady by a soldier’s rifle butt as she’s being driven into the ghetto. Running out onto Albert Street, Dina sees the living ghosts of the past, but it turns out to be just the set of a historical film.

The trip to Kaliningrad turns into a real ordeal. Belarusian border guards shout at Dina as she’s forced off the train at night at the freezing Gudogai station. The reason is the lack of a transit visa. In the cold gatehouse, she meets Ovadya, the husband of her scandalous colleague Anat Krachkovsky. Ovadya constantly travels around the country in sleeping cars, wasting his travel money. He enjoys Russia’s endless forests and fields. Ovadya says, "Moscow is boring… The city… what haven’t I seen there?"

Dina is rescued by two Chechen guys, Azamat and Rustam. They give her a ride to Minsk at breakneck speed on an icy highway. In gratitude, Dina gives them the Moscow phone number of the town’s lunatic, Reverdatto. This man had been harassing her with late-night calls. Returning to Moscow with a broken face, Dina continues her routine. She goes with Yasha to the remote village of Seltso near Bryansk. There, they find only a ransacked bar and armed teenagers.

Terror and Return

The Syndicate is holding a large-scale Memorial Evening at the Rodina Concert Hall. Behind the scenes, a fierce battle rages between rabbinical representatives for the right to speak first. Delegations arrive at the hall. Israeli singer Moran Cohen sings on stage. Then, Orthodox priest Sergei Konoplyannikov sincerely apologizes to the Jewish people. The event takes place against the backdrop of Klara Tikhonkaya’s hysterics and squabbles over funding.

Meanwhile, horrific terrorist attacks are occurring in Israel. Dina’s friends are killed, buses and cafes are blown up. Dina’s daughter is deeply affected by this news and plans to join Israeli intelligence. Dina returns to Jerusalem on a short vacation. She tries to find the grave of her deceased neighbor, Frida, in the Givat Shaul cemetery. An elderly man from the burial fraternity gives her a ride to the city. Dina strolls through the Mahane Yehuda market, where she sees a smiling golden lion and meets Duda the clown, whom she met on Red Square in Moscow.

Later, Dina learns tragic news. The old hat merchant she always haggled with on the streets of Jerusalem was killed in the explosion on the number fourteen bus. The widow sells Dina the hat, not even trying to raise the price. Dina sits in a café, weeping inconsolably over the destruction of her world.

Three years of work are coming to an end. Dina is preparing to leave Russia. In her final days, she meets with Kleshchatik and gives him an ancient marriage contract belonging to his ancestor, Don Abarbanel. Dina received this document via email from the mysterious Azaria. Kleshchatik is shocked. In exchange, Dina demands funding for the publication of an album about Jewish tombstones. Kleshchatik agrees to fulfill her request.

The syndics are packing their bags. Dina is giving her successor instructions. She advises him to take care of the system administrator Zhenya, the secretary Masha, and the reliable Kostyan.

On her last evening in her empty office, Dina clears her computer’s memory. She deletes all the folders containing absurd projects and plans. Finally, she reads Azariah’s letter, full of prophetic quotations from Isaiah about the coming judgment and salvation on Mount Zion. Dina has a vision: an endless throng of her people boarding a huge ship sailing to the Promised Land. Dina deletes the file containing the letters. The heroine leaves the novel and returns to real life in Jerusalem, where she is destined to miraculously survive another market explosion.