Venichka's Poem

The mystic of suburban trains and cheap drinking, Venidict Erofeev (or Venichka, as he is affectionately known to Russians, and which is also the name of the main character of his most famous work), is one of the most brilliant figures in contemporary Russian literature.  He became famous for just one work – the prose book that he called a poem, Moskva-Petushki (in English, published as Moscow to the End of the Line). The poem – despite its seemingly  humorous theme:  a drunk’s allegorical voyage from Moscow to Petushki, 125 km from the capital –  is both the funniest and the saddest book of its era.

During his lifetime, Erofeev was considered by some a drunkard and an unlucky wretch who simply failed to become a philologist. One student of the writer, Svetlana Geisser-Schnittman, described the author more aptly, as  “an erudite person raised in a godforsaken place, near a small station in the silent tundra, a hobo who disdained the rules of the powerful ‘propiska’ [residency permit system], a mystic in a country based on state atheism, a most paradoxical figure who reflects the contradictions of his time and country.”

Erofeev was born in a remote province of Murmansk region on October 24, 1938, and went on to be a man of great learning. Moskva – Petushki demonstrated this in full measure. The work is full of different quotations, allusions, stylizations and parodies. More than 100 names of Russian and foreign writers, philosophers, musicians, politicians, singers, actors, literary and Biblical figures can be found in the hundred and a half pages of text.

Venichka’s childhood was joyless. His father was accused of notorious “anti-Soviet propaganda” and sent to prison. Erofeev’s mother, afraid that her children would starve, sent them to an orphanage. Venichka wrote his first work at the age of seven. He finished school with the highest marks and received a “Gold Medal” for his academic achievement. In 1955, he entered the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University, but was soon expelled for truancy (he particularly abhorred the obligatory military training). After 1957, Erofeev changed jobs many times, starting out as a librarian, then working in the militia, then a mason’s helper and a laboratory assistant. From 1969-1974 he traveled across the Soviet Union, laying telephone cable.

Erofeev authored nine works and a number of textbooks written for his son. Moskva – Petushki,  the best-known of his works, was written in 1969 and soon spread around the country through samizdat (typewritten and photo copies). After a few years, it appeared  abroad – in Israel (1973) and in Paris (1977). During the years of Gorbachev’s glasnost, the text, significantly abridged, appeared in Temperance and Culture, a magazine dedicated to the soviet leader’s anti-alcohol program. It was not until the 1990s that it was published in book form.

Erofeev died of throat cancer in May 2000, in Moscow. His complete works came out the same year. In his diaries, Venichka offered this self-portrait: “I am a white spot on the map. A wonderful person. A dullard. An eccentric. A genius. I am too gloomy. I am the merriest man in the world. A queer fish. An idler. A hooligan.”