"Russian Jam" by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, summary

This collection of Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s dramatic works was created between 1988 and 2003. It brings together three dramatic texts: "Seven Saints from the Village of Bryukho," "Russian Jam," and "My Grandson Veniamin." Through the lens of individual family destinies and paradoxical collisions, they explore themes of historical memory, the transition of social eras, and the continuity of family ties.

Seven Saints from the Village of Bryuho

The action unfolds in a remote village with the historical name of Bryukho, where a miraculous icon once appeared. During the Civil War, the local Soviet government is led by Arseny Rogov. The village is home to the bedridden clairvoyant Dusya and her three attendants, along with the holy fool Manya Gorelaya. Local residents come to Dusya’s yard for healing and advice.

The local priest, Father Vasily, turns to Dusya for a blessing: the Bolsheviks have imposed an unbearable grain tax on him. The clairvoyant gives the priest seventy pre-prepared loaves of bread. Later, Arseny’s younger brother, Timosha Rogov, comes to see her. He has received a draft notice for the Red Army, but he refuses to serve and hides in the blessed one’s attic.

Soon, Red Army soldiers desecrate the village church, knock down the lock, and attempt to carry off the sacred relics. Dusya is carried to the church in a chair, after which two soldiers suddenly experience blackouts. Two weeks later, Arseny Rogov personally comes to search Avdotya Ivanovna Kislova’s house and discovers the deserter Timofey in the attic and a Red Army overcoat in the barn.

Rogov creates an impromptu revolutionary troika. Local teacher Nikolai Golovanov and a married peasant woman, Nadya, are recruited through deception and alcohol. Under the influence of alcohol, they sign the death warrants for the arrested men. Arseny demands that his brother personally execute those harboring him, threatening him with death for treason.

Early in the morning, a procession of those arrested is led to Glukhova Wasteland. The young walker Nastya attempts to go to her death with the others, but Manya Gorelaya drives her away and takes her place at the seer’s chair. At the edge of the mass grave, Timosha shoots Dusya. The Red Army soldiers execute Father Vasily, the nuns, and the holy fool.

Descending into the pit to retrieve the dead men’s belongings, Timofey discovers a miraculous icon hidden under Manya Gorelaya’s clothing and also realizes that the dead holy fool was a man — Dusya’s fiancé, Proclus, who had fled many years earlier. Shocked, Timosha unties the icon, hands it to Golovanov, who has approached him, and, in a frenzy, sees the bright crowns of the martyrs ascending to heaven.

In the epilogue, an aged Golovanov sits by an overgrown grave in the renamed town of Rogovsk. The site is being prepared for a visit from senior clergy for the general canonization of the dead, while cordon troops are clearing local residents from the newly paved streets.

Russian jam

The events take place in the summer of 2002 at an old, dilapidated dacha in an academic settlement. The house, inherited from academician and plant breeder Ivan Lepekhin, is formally owned by his son, the elderly mathematics professor Andrei Ivanovich (Uncle Dyudya). Living with him are his sister, Natalya Ivanovna, her grown daughters Varvara, Elena, and Liza, Elena’s musician husband, Konstantin, and the housekeeper, Maria Yakovlevna (Makanya).

The family’s life is in disrepair: the floorboards are rotten, the roof leaks, the electricity constantly goes out, and a clogged sewer forces them to use an outdoor toilet. Elderly Natalya Ivanovna tries to support her relatives by working around the clock to translate her daughter-in-law Alla’s (Evdokia Kalugina) pulp novels into English. The daughters and Konstantin spend their days idle, arguing about ideals and practicing Eastern gymnastics. The local handyman, Semyon, regularly charges the family for minor repairs.

Natalya Ivanovna’s successful eldest son, businessman Rostislav, arrives for Easter with his wife, Alla. The relatives argue about the fate of their homeland, rejecting an offer to trade the family home for a comfortable cottage. It soon becomes clear that the family’s city apartment is flooded, the foreign tenant has moved out, and the village utilities have been cut off completely due to debt and disrepair.

In the summer, the family tries to survive by selling cherry jam, which Maria Yakovlevna makes in antique copper pots over a fire right in the yard. Elena paints homemade watercolor labels, and the youngest, Liza, buys berries at the market with money borrowed from Semyon, the craftsman. Andrei Ivanovich suddenly announces his impending marriage to his old acquaintance, the ballerina Anna Pavlovna, and his impending departure to Barcelona.

It turns out that Uncle Dyudya deeded the dacha to Semyon, a foreman, hoping to obtain the funds to buy a Spanish property. Rostislav appears and buys the rights to the property from the stunned foreman for a million dollars. He claims that the tunnels of a new metro line have converged beneath the village and brings in special equipment.

A team of movers in carnival masks carries away the family’s belongings, and a dilapidated house collapses from a targeted underground explosion. Rostislav triumphantly announces that a grand entertainment complex and amusement rides will be built on the site of the demolished estate.

My grandson Veniamin

A family drama unfolds in the Moscow apartment of elderly seamstress Esfir Lvovna. She survived the destruction of her family in Bobruisk during the war, losing her husband, Veniamin, and her firstborn, Ilya. She devoted her entire life to her youngest son, Lev, a PhD candidate in physics and mathematics. Esfir decides to marry her thirty-four-year-old son to a girl from the surviving Vinaver family in Bobruisk.

Esther brings the orphan Sonechka Vinaver, who worked as a teacher in Bobruisk, to the capital. Lev bows to his mother’s unyielding authority, files an application with the civil registry office, and immediately flies off on a business trip to Novosibirsk. Returning on the eve of the wedding, the groom disappears right after the restaurant reception, leaving Sonechka and his mother with farewell notes rejecting the forced marriage.

Esfir Lvovna conceals her son’s escape from her relatives and friends, hoping to bring him home by force. However, her cousin, former midwife Elizaveta Yakovlevna, receives a revealing letter from Siberia. Lev announces that he has married the head of his laboratory, is expecting a child, and asks her to annul his fictitious union with Sonya.

Upon learning of the letter, Esther Lvovna gets into a heated argument with Elizaveta Yakovlevna, who directly accuses her sister of despotism. In a fit of despair, Esther jumps out the window but miraculously survives, landing on the branches of a poplar tree and a pile of cardboard boxes below. She breaks her arm in the hospital corridor and returns home in a cast.

While her mistress was away, Sonya’s school friend, Private Viktor Mikhnich, who was doing his military service, came to visit. It soon became clear that Sonya was pregnant with Viktor’s child. Elizaveta Yakovlevna revealed a long-held secret to Esther: Sonya was adopted by the late Sima Vinaver and is not related by blood to her ancestors from Bobruisk.

Esther Lvovna wholeheartedly accepts the orphan and resolves to raise the unborn child as her own grandson. Sonya refuses to marry Viktor because of his anti-Semitic prejudices and dismissive attitude toward her family. Esther Lvovna, Elizaveta Yakovlevna, and Sonya unite in anticipation of the birth of a boy, whom the mistress of the house firmly decides to name Veniamin.