Tabia 32 – Alexei Konakov

[Individuum; 2024]

Alexei Konakov’s novel Tabia 32 depicts Russia in 2081, where chess has replaced literature as a central element of national identity. After attacking an unnamed neighboring country in 2022, Russia found itself at war with a coalition of Western states. The war resulted not only in the defeat of the Russian army but also in a complete collapse of the country’s political, economic, and social systems. The new government had to accept the terms of the victorious powers: reparations and Russia’s temporary isolation from the rest of the world, or “quarantine,” as it was eventually called. To prevent resentment that could provoke another war against the West, Russian elites decided to change the dominant cultural patterns of the society rooted, as they believed, in the Russian literary canon.

Konakov’s premise draws directly from the discussion of Russian literature’s imperialist ideology, which intensified in 2022 after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Initiated by Ukrainian writers (1, 2), it was then continued by Russophone scholars and American critics (1, 2). The discussion touched upon, among other things, whether or not “great Russian writers” such as Alexandr Pushkin or Fyodor Dostoevsky expressed imperialist or colonial sentiments in their works and, if so, to what extent their ideas had informed the ideology of Putin’s regime. Most commentators admitted that Russian literature, like any other imperial literature, had produced narratives and myths arguing for the benefits of the centralized power, the “civilizing mission” of the “Russian nation,” and the inferiority of subjugated peoples. But acknowledging the imperial heritage of Russian literature raised questions: Should students of Russian literature and broader audiences avoid reading problematic works altogether or attempt to critically reconsider them in the context of Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine? And what about Russian society itself, which, correctly or not, is often described as “literary-centric”?

“Tabia,” from the title of Konakov’s novel, is a chess term for an opening position reached by standard moves, after which players start exploring alternative scenarios of the game. Following the title, the book offers a speculative future history of Russia, in which new leaders of the country decided that literature bears responsibility for the militarization of society and the war against the neighboring country. Works by Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Gorky disappeared from school and university curriculums as well as from the bookstores; streets, squares, and boulevards named after the “classic writers” were rechristened; the innumerable monuments to Pushkin, whom Russians used to call “our everything,” were dismantled. However, government experts soon realized that the vacuum left by overthrowing literature must be filled with something. That’s where chess came in.

In the universe of Tabia, as well as in reality, chess was popular in Russia and the USSR. Of eighteen world chess champions, ten were from the Russian Empire/USSR/Russian Federation, starting with emigre Alexander Alekhine (1892–1946) and ending with Vladimir Kramnik (born in 1975). In Konakov’s novel, Russian elites decided to build on this rich tradition. Chess had one important advantage over literature. If literature promotes emotions, the need to “fight for the truth,” and messianic ideas (which, as many believed, provided an ideological justification for Russian aggression against its neighbors), chess fosters logic, sober objectivity, and respect for the opponents, values that Russian culture has always lacked. Therefore, it was decided that Russian students would study not Eugene Onegin, Anna Karenina, or Crime and Punishment but games by José Raúl Capablanca, Bobby Fischer, and Mikhail Botvinnik. The idea proved successful, and a few decades after the so-called “Re-institution” of Russia, no one dared to challenge chess’s foundational place in the national culture.

Though Tabia shows the author’s extensive knowledge of the subject, Alexei Konakov (born in 1985) has never played chess professionally. Konakov is a Saint Petersburg-based writer and critic, and author of several studies of late-Soviet culture and literature, including a book on Soviet underground queer poet Yevgeny Kharitonov. Konakov’s reviews, essays, and poetry appear in Russian venues like the journal of literary theory and history Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, literary journals Znamia and Novyi Mir, as well as in an almanac of radical poetry and prose [Translit], a subject of a recent study by Marijeta Bozovic. In 2023, Konakov published his first prose work, A Diary of Weather, a first-person narrative in a diary form combining meteorological observations, chronicles of family life, and paranoid reflections about reptilians allegedly aiming to take control over humanity. Tabia attests to Konakov’s ability to work in a genre altogether different from that of A Diary of Weather. Instead of semi-abstract diary entries, it presents all the attributes of conventional novels: coherent plot, intrigue, and characters.

Konakov’s novel draws on two rich literary traditions: chess-themed fiction (Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Stefan Zweig’s Chess Story, Vladimir Nabokov’s The Luzhin Defense, and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight) and dystopian novels (Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451). From the former tradition, Tabia borrows the play of the chess metaphors, and from the latter, it takes a general theme of the dystopian future and a plot-line of a protagonist who starts as a decent member of the society but eventually comes into conflict with it. Konakov’s decision to draw on the dystopian tradition may have something to do with the increasing popularity of Orwell’s 1984 among Russian readers, a fact that says a lot about the country’s current political situation.

When working on a dystopian novel, a writer is challenged to create a comprehensive picture of the fictional world without boring the readers with long passages about its social, political, and economic constitution. Konakov, following his many predecessors, solves this problem by making Tabia’s characters describe their world in conversations with each other. Thanks to Konakov’s vivid style and humor, these long conversations are engaging, even when they take up an entire chapter.

From these conversations, we learn that, despite the military defeat and “quarantine,” Russia still exists in the same borders as before the war. During the “Re-institution,” some experts argued for the country’s disintegration (an apparent reference to the current debates about the decolonization of Russia). However, for some reason, their project was not realized. Rejecting imperial heritage on the level of ideology, Tabia’s Russia remains an empire, at least in the territorial sense.

The novel’s protagonist, Kirill Chemakhin, was born and raised on the country’s periphery in Novosibirsk, a city in Siberia. After graduating from college, he moved to Saint Petersburg to study chess history under the supervision of Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Uliashov, or simply DAU, as students call him. (Uliashov’s abbreviated name may reference Soviet physician Lev Landau, nicknamed DAU, whose biography was the basis for Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s controversial movie project.) Back in the day, DAU was instrumental in the “Re-institution” of Russia, suggesting that chess should replace literature and developing a detailed plan to introduce chess culture into the everyday life of Russian society. Now, the aging DAU is a professor at the Saint-Petersburg State University. There are rumors that he still has connections with the Russian elites and is secretly involved in the decision-making process at the governmental level. However, it is not DAU but Kirill’s girlfriend Maiia who introduces him to the Saint-Petersburg intellectual elite. In contrast to Kirill, Maiia was born into a privileged family of intellectuals, members of the social group that in Russian is usually referred to as the intelligentsia.

During dinner with Maiia’s family, Kirill learns that Russian culture was not always centered around chess. Moreover, as Maiia’s father, Friedrich Ivanovich, notes, DAU’s idea was initially met with skepticism by other experts, who emphasized the age-old association of chess with war. DAU managed not only to persuade his opponents but also to initiate a campaign to promote a positive image of chess. Kirill, who was born and grew up after these momentous events, is surprised by the revelation. Like millions of Russian citizens, he was surrounded by chess since childhood. In the country DAU built, people learn chess games by heart, make dates at the monuments dedicated to the famous chess players, and constantly refer to chess terms in their speech (the exclamation “Caïssa!” the goddess of chess, replaces “oh my God!”). As Russian literary critic Igor Gulin noted in his review of the novel, even though chess culture pervades every aspect of society’s life, this “chess totality” does not feel like a totalitarian regime. Everyone (or almost everyone) seems to be perfectly happy living in a chess utopia.

In Tabia, chess culture functions as an ideology, offering Russian citizens a way to see the world and a language to describe it, as well as structuring their everyday lives with rituals. To perform its role, chess culture must disguise itself as common sense, erasing its historical origins. As we learn throughout the book, DAU not only rebranded chess but also effectively rewrote the whole history of Russian culture to present it as always being centered around chess. This ideological situation puts Kirill, who writes a dissertation in the Department of Chess History, in an ambivalent position. On the one hand, as a historian, he is supposed to study the origins of chess culture in Russia using sources not available to the broader public. On the other hand, according to the “DAU postulates,” historians should be careful when examining the past so as not to harm “the new Russian culture,” which is still “too delicate and weak.” Historians in DAU’s Russia are explicitly described as “guardians” of chess culture whose primary duty is to produce narratives that maintain the status quo. At first, it seems that the two imperatives—to explore and protect—go hand in hand, but as time goes on, they increasingly contradict each other.

Since ideology is, first and foremost, a specific way of perceiving and describing the world, let’s look at the formal aspects of Konakov’s novel. Tabia is primarily narrated in free indirect discourse, which, combining the third-person grammatical form with the elements of the protagonist’s inner monologue, “seems to tell the truth without equivocation, to have all the certainty we could wish any third-person narration to have, and then strands us in complicated doubt,” as Michael Wood aptly put it. We see the events of the novel mainly from the perspective of Kirill, who takes all the aspects of the chess utopia for granted. While depicting a rather unusual form of social organization, Tabia makes it seem normal and even natural, thus mimicking the workings of ideology whose main goal is to present the status quo as the only possible way of living.

However, at some moments, we get hints that the “real conditions of existence” (as French philosopher Louis Althusser would say) of the citizens of chess-dominated Russia are not as shiny as Kirill believes. It turns out that even sixty years after the war, Russia still uses food stamps, and some groceries, such as coffee, are extremely expensive, so only the elite can afford them. Moreover, according to the peace treaty terms, Russia does not have access to the internet and cannot export or produce computers. In terms of technology, at least, the country is stuck in the artificially prolonged twentieth century. (As Konakov notes in an interview, he modeled Russia 2081 after the post-war USSR.) Most vividly, the discrepancy between Kirill’s perception of the world (informed not only by chess ideology but also by his love for Maiia) is expressed in the opening passage of the novel:

Instead of a run-down city, a ruined country, and a cold spring; instead of secretly moving continental plates, of elementary particles flying from space, and of flashing stars and spinning planets; instead of the infinite universe itself; instead of all of these there was only happiness.

Вместо неухоженного города, разоренной страны, холодной весны; вместо тайно движущихся материковых плит, летящих из космоса элементарных частиц, вспыхивающих звезд и вращающихся планет; вместо самой бесконечной Вселенной — было одно счастье.

“A run-down city” and “a ruined country” are the signs of History (Russia’s aggression against the neighboring country and subsequent defeat) that Kirill does not ignore but simply does not notice because, in his worldview, they cannot be registered as such. The book’s opening words belong not to him but to the narrator, who is positioned outside of the depicted world and, therefore, can see things that are invisible or irrelevant to the protagonist.

The narrator’s point of view reappears once again, however briefly, towards the second half of the book. In a remarkable passage written in the second-person (the only such passage in the book), the narrator directly addresses Kirill, saying that, too obsessed with his beloved Maiia and chess, he “does not know anything about Russia” and fails to realize that his studies in the history of chess are directly related to the interests of elites. It is no coincidence, the narrator continues, that the omnipotent DAU agreed to advise Kirill’s dissertation, and Maiia, whose father may become the next prime minister, took notice of an unassuming young man from Novosibirsk. Even though the narrator’s lengthy remark is supposed to warn Kirill, its actual addressees are the readers, who, at this point, cannot shake the feeling that they are witnessing an unfolding conspiracy.

After meeting the dissident Aleksandr Brotkin, a former student of DAU, Kirill also begins to suspect that something is wrong with the society he lives in. Brotkin tells him that Russia’s isolation from the outer world is not as complete as propaganda presents it and that DAU himself takes secret trips to the West. Kirill’s new acquaintance believes that, far from suffering from Russia’s isolation, the country’s elites benefit from it because it allows them to hide secrets somehow related to the origins of the chess culture. Even though, initially, the protagonist takes Brotkin’s words with a grain of salt, a chain of mysterious events makes him change his mind. Kirill takes two trips to Moscow, where he learns a secret that can potentially destroy chess culture and Russian society. A secret so terrible it could cost the life of its bearer.

Tabia 32 shows that neither literature nor chess is “naturally” predisposed to provide a base for an oppressive political regime. Yet, rewriting history, restructuring the educational system, and manipulating public opinion can turn even a seemingly harmless game into an ideological weapon. The same is true of any other form of cultural activity. As a thought experiment, one can imagine a society organized around gardening, knitting, or sudoku. This insight may be helpful for the current discussion of Russian literature and its ideological role. When exploring how Russian literature was and still is involved in the country’s imperial politics, we may want to look at both the works of Russian writers and also at the structures of power that appropriated and utilized them for their own needs. These structures often remain hidden, disguised by appeals to common sense. In this provocative and estranging replacement of literature with chess, Konakov’s novel makes them visible.

Konstantin Mitroshenkov is a historian, literary scholar, and translator. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Slavic Languages at Columbia University.