cover image CRIES IN THE NEW WILDERNESS: From the Files of the Moscow Institute of Atheism

CRIES IN THE NEW WILDERNESS: From the Files of the Moscow Institute of Atheism

Mikhail N. Epstein, , trans. from the Russian by Eve Adler. . Paul Dry, $25.95 (236pp) ISBN 978-0-9679675-4-7

Working in a "comedy of ideas" format, Moscow-born Epstein, a Russian literature professor at Emory University and author of 15 nonfiction books (including Russian Postmodernism), has fashioned a sly satire of the religious factions that sprang up illicitly in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and '80s. The book is in the form of a classified reference manual called "The New Sectarianism," intended for select members of the Soviet government; it's a taxonomy of crackpot religious sects written by a "Professor R.O. Gibaydulina, Ph.D." in deadpan academic-bureaucratic argot. The factions she describes—divided into categories like "doomsday," "nationalist" and "literary"—embody (and mock) different aspects of Russian culture. The Pushkinians worship Aleksandr Pushkin as the "Creator" of modern Russia. The apocalyptic Steppies worship the vastness of the steppe. "For them it's as if Russia has no need to fear the end, for she herself is already the end of everything." The doggedly rational Gibaydulina struggles to understand why these ideas still hold sway with educated people in the worker's paradise, and she's eventually revealed to be something of a tragic figure in the post-Glasnost world. The book suffers from the predictable limitations of a plotless work of fiction: the reader's trek can be grueling, in spite of the rewarding little jokes Epstein buries in the tracts. As well, the comedy of ideas doesn't make for very pointed satire; it can send up 20th-century intellectual history but offers only an oblique view of life in the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union where it is "set." Nonetheless, Epstein's truly unusual reckoning with the disintegration of communism—and ideology itself—is well worth a look. (Aug.)

Forecast:A few strategically placed reviews could make this a cult book for academics and Russophiles.

Correction: Wendy Weil, the agent for Fannie Flagg's Standing in the Rainbow (Forecasts, July 22), is with The Wendy Weil Agency, Inc.