"The End of Plots" by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, summary

The prose collection "The End of Plots" was published in 2013. This book is a sweeping panorama of private and public life in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, where the fates of the intelligentsia, dissidents, doctors, and artists are connected through themes of personal choice, fear, loyalty, and human dignity. The book includes the novel "The Green Tent" (2010), the short story cycle "The First and the Last" (2002), and the novella "The Through Line" (2002).

In 2011, the novel "The Green Tent" was awarded the Oleg Tabakov Prize and the French Simone de Beauvoir Prize. The story "Through Line" was adapted into a film-performance by director Petr Stein in 2005.

The novel "The Green Tent"

The story begins in March 1953, on the eve of Stalin’s death. Fate brings together three dissimilar teenagers, rejected by their school environment, in a Moscow classroom: the awkward orphan Ilya Bryansky, the fragile pianist Sanya Steklov, and the red-haired Jewish orphanage boy Mikha Melamid. United around a rescued kitten, the boys form the unbreakable trio "Trianon." Later, Sanya injures his palm with the hooligan Mutyukin’s folding knife while defending Mikha, forcing him to abandon his dream of becoming a virtuoso performer forever.

In sixth grade, a new literature teacher, Viktor Yulyevich Shengeli, a war veteran who lost an arm, arrives at their school. He introduces the students to classical Russian literature and organizes a club called "LYURS" (Lovers of Russian Literature). Shengeli teaches the students to think independently, instills moral values, and explores the phenomenon of personal development. He later marries fellow graduate Katya Zueva, who gave him a typescript of Boris Pasternak’s banned novel "Doctor Zhivago," causing him to leave the school in disgrace.

In 1957, the paths of the grown-up friends began to branch. At the Moscow Festival of Youth and Students, they met the Belgian guest Pierre Sand and his relative, Orlov. Ilya began professionally compiling an archive of the dissident movement and photographing banned literature. Mikha graduated from the defectology department and enthusiastically taught at a boarding school for deaf children. Sanya entered the conservatory’s theoretical department, studying under Professor Kolosov, immersing himself in the abstract world of sound structures.

Ilya marries a general’s daughter, Olga, who was expelled from the university for signing a letter in defense of an arrested associate professor. Together, they publish samizdat. Mikha marries the artist Alyona, the daughter of the well-known opposition figure Sergei Chernopyatov. Soon, Mikha becomes involved with the Crimean Tatar rights movement and participates in the publication of the uncensored publication "Gamayun."

Arrests soon begin. Mikha is arrested and sentenced to three years in a labor camp for disseminating information about the deportation of Tatars. During his imprisonment, Chernopyatov breaks under pressure from the authorities and testifies against his comrades. After his release, Mikha finds himself socially isolated, deprived of the right to teach. Investigator Safyanov forces him to either sign a false denunciation or emigrate. Realizing the hopelessness of his situation and unwilling to become a traitor, Mikha commits suicide by jumping from a sixth-story window.

Olga grapples with the breakup and Ilya’s forced exile. She contracts cancer, achieves a long remission through folk remedies, but fades away following Ilya’s death in Munich. After the death of his grandmother and the death of Mikha, Sanya Steklov enters into a sham marriage with the American feminist Debi O’Hara and emigrates to the United States, where he becomes a professor of music theory. The romance culminates in January 1996, in New York City, with Sanya meeting his cousin Lisa on the night of the poet Joseph Brodsky’s death.

The cycle of stories "The First and the Last"

The story "Second Face" tells the story of former prosecutor Yevgeny Nikolayevich Kirikov. On the threshold of his eightieth birthday, he decides the fate of his personal collection of antiques and watches. Disdainful of the greedy relatives who have been dividing up his property since his death, the old man leaves all his valuables and real estate to his eccentric nephew, Sasha Kozlov, to establish a shelter for homeless dogs.

The novella "Women of Russian Villages" is set in New York City. Friends Vera, Margo, and Emma, who has arrived from Moscow, gather around the table to remember Vera’s husband. During a drunken conversation, the women reveal the tragedies of their relationships with their alcoholic husbands. The next morning, Emma discovers signs of cancer and immediately decides to return to Russia to be with her hapless lover, Gosha.

In the story "Zu-yurich," the village orphan Lydia, with her bulldog-like tenacity, learned German, and knowledge of housekeeping, charms a Swiss man, Martin. After marrying and moving to Zurich, she opens a Russian restaurant. When Martin suffers a stroke, Lydia spends years nursing her ailing husband and running a successful business. Years later, she returns to Moscow to show off her wealth to her former mentor, Emilia Karlovna, but finds her helpless and paralyzed.

"The Orlovs-Sokolovs" is a drama about two brilliant crystallography students, Andrei and Tanya. An ideal couple, they find themselves competing for the only graduate school spot. After giving up the spot to Andrei, Tanya breaks off her engagement, marries the writer Viktor, and gives birth to sons. A chance meeting between the two in Crimea 11 years later reveals that their youthful passion remains, but their former intimacy is impossible to recapture.

"The Beast" depicts the lonely life of Nina, who has lost her mother and husband, Sergei. A feral and brazen cat appears in her renovated apartment, sneaking through closed doors. Her late husband’s friend, Mirkas, throws the cat off the seventh-floor balcony. On the anniversary of her husband’s death, Nina has a reconciling dream in which the cat appears to be part of a harmonious afterlife.

"The Queen of Spades" depicts the daily life of a despotic ninety-year-old aristocrat, Moore (Maria Czarnetskaya), who has completely dominated her daughter, Anna Feodorovna, an ophthalmology professor. A surprise visit from Anna’s ex-husband, Marek, a doctor from South Africa, disrupts the family’s routine and gives her great-grandchildren the hope of a trip to Greece. On the day of her children’s departure, Anna Feodorovna’s heart fails and she dies on the street, clutching a carton of milk.

"Golubchik" tells the story of Nikolai Romanovich, an elderly professor of aesthetics who married an illiterate housekeeper in order to adopt her handsome son, Slavochka. The professor raises the boy in the ancient traditions of Platonism and same-sex love. After his stepfather’s death, the grown-up Slava sinks to the bottom of society, spends years in prison camps, and dies in a park under the name Valita.

"Barley Soup" is a lyrical memoir of her post-war childhood. The narrator recalls her mother, a biochemist who cooked barley soup and fed it to beggars under the stairs, a fire victim, and her neighbor, Nadezhda Ivanovna, on the day her terminally ill daughter died.

The story "Through Line"

The story is united by the image of the narrator, Zhenya, who explores various manifestations of female lies and myth-making.

In the short story "Diana," Zhenya is vacationing in Crimea and meets a red-haired Englishwoman, Irene. She tearfully recounts the heartbreaking story of the death of her four children, especially the beautiful sixteen-year-old artist Diana. Later, Zhenya learns from a Moscow friend that this entire tragedy was a fabrication by the childless woman.

"Brother Yurochka" introduces Zhenya to ten-year-old Nadya, the daughter of a dacha owner. The girl incessantly spins tall tales about filming in Spain, captured murderers, UFO rays, and a heroic older brother, Yura, who never actually existed.

In the chapter "The End of the Plot," her thirteen-year-old niece, Lyalya, confesses to Zhenya about a secret affair with her married, forty-year-old artist uncle. Horrified, Zhenya tries to prevent a criminal offense, buys the girl contraceptives, and has a difficult conversation with the artist. It turns out that he does indeed have an adult mistress, and the entire drama with his thirteen-year-old niece is entirely concocted by Lyalya’s overactive imagination.

"A Natural Phenomenon" tells the story of an elderly poetry teacher, Anna Veniaminovna. The old woman reads poems by Silver Age poets to her naive student, Masha, passing them off as her own youthful compositions. After her mentor’s death, Masha reads these texts at a funeral, embarrassing herself in front of the philologists.

In "A Lucky Chance," Zhenya travels to Zurich at the request of Swiss director Michel to gather material for a script about Russian prostitutes. While interviewing girls in nightclubs, Zhenya discovers that they all tell the same cliched story: a dead captain father in a white uniform, a cruel, rapist stepfather, an escape, and a groom murdered before the wedding.

The final part of "The Art of Living" describes a terrible accident Zhenya experiences on the way to the airport. After a broken pelvis and a spinal injury, the heroine becomes bedridden and sinks into apathy, wishing she were dead. The care of her husband, Kirill, the visits of strange friends — the Jewish convert Hava and the paralyzed Christian Lily Aptekman — and a successful operation by Dr. Ilyasov, help Zhenya overcome her crisis and learn to walk again.