Evgenii Popov: A new Gogol' for a new Russia?

This article examines the recent writing of Evgenii Popov (b. 1946), especially the 2012 novel @rbeit, and attempts to place the writer in the satirical tradition of Russian prose. The comparison with the nineteenth-century writer Nikolai Gogol? seems apt as both writers depict Russian society as a grotesque and absurd reality where the relationship between individuals and the collective breaks down and life itself borders on the phantasmagorical. Disparities, nevertheless, exist: Gogol? expresses anguish for the future of Russia, whereas Popov's work attacks injustice and corruption in both Soviet Russia and the Russia of President Putin.