Day of the Oprichnik: A novel

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As the nobleman has a standing army of servants, there is something of a stand-off, which is settled by a single combat. Sorokin wanted to imagine what Russia might become if the country’s future was determined by its staunchest traditionalists and reactionaries—especially the political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, but also Vladimir Putin, who was still a newish president when the novel appeared in 2006. He’s not just a satirist but also a speculative fantasist, and he became angrily political after Putin came to power. None of the Duginist vision, of course, can be realized without some old-fashioned discipline for dissenters.

As in Krasnov's novel, the Russian characters dress in traditional costumes; the men grow the traditional long beards while the women braid their hair; and all of the characters speak in a pseudo-folksy way meant to evoke the Russian of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The glories of Tsarist Russia mix with 21st-century luxuries, and even the words for Mercedes, mobile phone, and a Boeing jetliner have been Russified. and a lampoon about her and a count, clearly based on the Tsar’s son-in-law, who appears to have a predilection for having sex with women in burning buildings. The American critic Victoria Nelson noted in her review:"In a pitch-perfect channeling of the fascist temperament, the voice [of the narrator] proudly sharing these brutal exploits radiates a naïve and sentimental piety ruthlessly undercut by vicious sadism and self-regarding cunning. Afterwards, Komyaga learns his other Oprichniki all had the same vision, showing their minds are all being merged into one collective entity. Overall the novel is an interesting (sickly so) and bizarre novel of violence and vague ideas of Russia and a persistent Soviet mentality, persisting to 2028.

His farcical allegory, transports us into the not too distant future of a modern Russia in awe of Chinese technology, walled off from the “corrupt West” and dependent on its exports of gas to enrich the Tsar and his close entourage. And so we follow Komiaga being woken by servants, anointed with gold dust, dressed in traditional finery, lavished with a traditional Russian breakfast, and selecting the best decapitated dog's head to mount on the front of his state-Red Mercedov, as he zooms down the government-use lane of the two-tiered highway on his way to work. Thus, the gang-rape of a woman whose only crime was to be the wife of a free-thinking boyar is justified by the narrator, Andrei Komyaga, under the grounds that it was done to promote a collective identity for all the Oprichniki as it is the wish of all Oprichniki to be united together into one collective mind devoid of any sort of individuality or identity. Shimmering with invention, fierce social commentary and razor-sharp wit, Day of the Oprichnik imagines a near future too disturbing to contemplate and too close to reality to ignore.Bursting with near-hysterical enthusiasm, the latter-day Oprichnik crosses himself and invokes the Holy Church as he righteously inflicts sickening violence on His Majesty's identified enemies". Clearly Sorokin does not hold back on the dirty deeds of the regime and, while we can and should certainly see this as an attack on both Ivan the Terrible and Putin, Sorokin does two things to make it less obviously a blatant and direct satire on Putin. Od Kine do Pariza vodi autoput sa 11 traka i nekoliko podzemnih pruga koje kontroliše Gospodar Rusije kako mu je volja (po Zakonu, tj.