Tale of the Troika
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Tale of the Troika (Сказка о Тройке) is a 1968 satirical science fiction novel by Russian writers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, with illustrations by Yevgeniy Migunov. It criticises both Soviet bureaucracy and also to some extent the Soviet scientific environment. Although the novel itself is not directed against the state per se and a number of points underlined are true of modern-day bureaucracy and science in general, it met with a cold reaction during the Soviet era and was quite difficult to obtain, therefore achieving a "forbidden fruit" status.
The novel exists in two slightly different variants, known as Smena and Angara by the names of the magazines in which they were published. They differ by characters and some plot lines necessitated by Angara's editorial request to fit the novel for the magazine volume.
There are two versions of the tale, both of which are superficial sequels of Monday Begins on Saturday. One version can be viewed as a continuation of Monday Begins on Saturday, at the end of which the main character is told he will be sent to Kitezhgrad for a business trip, and that is where this version of Tale of the Troika takes place. The other version takes place in Tmuskorpion' (literally: "darkness-scorpion", a pun with "Tmutarakan", which is a cliché for a remote, obscure place; tarakan means cockroach, hence the pun, on a previously unexplored and unreachable floor of the Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry described in Monday Begins on Saturday.
External links
[edit]- "Before and After the 'Tale'..." (in Russian)
- https://archive.org/details/ArkadyBorisStrugatskyTaleOfTheTroika English book at the Internet Archive
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