The Soviet Trickster: The Cultural Legacy of Cynicism

Mark Lipovetsky's new book explores some of the most memorable characters of Soviet culture—from Julio Jurenito and Ostap Bender to Woland, Venichka, and the protagonists of Leonid Gaidai's iconic film comedies. Despite their differences, they all belong to the archetype of the trickster—a figure who emerged as a distinctive counterpart to the Soviet "New Man" of the 1920s.
Lipovetsky argues that in the Soviet context the trickster acquired a new cultural role: an ironic messiah of modernity whose parodic narratives challenged and subverted the official ideological projects of the Soviet state. The enduring vitality of this figure, he suggests, was sustained by a pervasive culture of Soviet cynicism—a culture that shaped not only the strategies of those in power but also the everyday tactics of conformity, adaptation, and survival.
Developing a theoretical framework for understanding the Soviet trickster and proposing a typology of its various forms, the author examines some of the most significant trickster narratives produced between the 1920s and the 1980s, spanning literary modernism and socialist realism, popular culture and the underground alike.
The book concludes by tracing the transformation of this cultural model in the post-Soviet era.
Mark Lipovetsky is Professor of Slavic Languages at Columbia University and a leading scholar of Russian literature and culture. He holds a Doctor of Philological Sciences degree.

Mark Lipovetsky. The Soviet Trickster: The Cultural Legacy of Cynicism. — Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2026.
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