Omon Ra

Rating:
Summary: Pelevin is a modern mystic
Review: Most of the reviews available on this page suggest that Omon Ra is a new "1984", i.e., a (morbid) satire of the Soviet State. I would like to disagree with this interpretation. Pelevin is a deeply mystical writer. A mystical writer (especially a Russian mystical writer) would not waste his time criticizing some long-forgotten political regime. Reading Omon Ra as a sad satire of the USSR is like saying that Kafka's Metamorphosis is about the situation in pre-war Austrian Empire or that Borges' The Book of Sand is about the condition of intellectuals in Argentina. People who see only the (pseudo) satirical dimension in Omon Ra hugely underestimate Pelevin.

In my opinion, Omon Ra could have taken place in any society and in any era (whence the surreal "reincarnation test" in the middle of the book). It is (as any good mystical novel) a travel of a soul through layers of emptiness. This travel seemingly ends on the dark side of the Moon, in desolation and despair. But wait until you read the last pages before you conclude that suicide is the only solution in the murky world of Russian mysticism. And please, compare Pelevin to Gogol or Kafka rather than to Orwell.

Rating:
Summary: Pelevin is a modern mystic
Review: Most of the reviews available on this page suggest that Omon Ra is a new "1984", i.e., a (morbid) satire of the Soviet State. I would like to disagree with this interpretation. Pelevin is a deeply mystical writer. A mystical writer (especially a Russian mystical writer) would not waste his time criticizing some long-forgotten political regime. Reading Omon Ra as a sad satire of the USSR is like saying that Kafka's Metamorphosis is about the situation in pre-war Austrian Empire or that Borges' The Book of Sand is about the condition of intellectuals in Argentina. People who see only the (pseudo) satirical dimension in Omon Ra hugely underestimate Pelevin.

In my opinion, Omon Ra could have taken place in any society and in any era (whence the surreal "reincarnation test" in the middle of the book). It is (as any good mystical novel) a travel of a soul through layers of emptiness. This travel seemingly ends on the dark side of the Moon, in desolation and despair. But wait until you read the last pages before you conclude that suicide is the only solution in the murky world of Russian mysticism. And please, compare Pelevin to Gogol or Kafka rather than to Orwell.

Rating:
Summary: Pelevin is a modern mystic
Review: Most of the reviews available on this page suggest that Omon Ra is a new "1984", i.e., a (morbid) satire of the Soviet State. I would like to disagree with this interpretation. Pelevin is a deeply mystical writer. A mystical writer (especially a Russian mystical writer) would not waste his time criticizing some long-forgotten political regime. Reading Omon Ra as a sad satire of the USSR is like saying that Kafka's Metamorphosis is about the situation in pre-war Austrian Empire or that Borges' The Book of Sand is about the condition of intellectuals in Argentina. People who see only the (pseudo) satirical dimension in Omon Ra hugely underestimate Pelevin.

In my opinion, Omon Ra could have taken place in any society and in any era (whence the surreal "reincarnation test" in the middle of the book). It is (as any good mystical novel) a travel of a soul through layers of emptiness. This travel seemingly ends on the dark side of the Moon, in desolation and despair. But wait until you read the last pages before you conclude that suicide is the only solution in the murky world of Russian mysticism. And please, compare Pelevin to Gogol or Kafka rather than to Orwell.

Rating:
Summary: the Cold War's most closely held secret
Review: Okay, quick quiz :

(1) What was the name of the first man made vehicle to orbit the Earth ? Right, Sputnik

(2) Who was the first man in space ? Right, Yuri Gagarin (April 1961)

(3) Who was the first American ? You got it, Alan Shepard (May 5, 1961)

(4) The first man to walk on the Moon ? Neil Armstrong is correct

(5) The first Russian ?

That's a tough one, huh ? Well, that's because the answer is : no one. The Soviet Union never put a man on the Moon, nor has post-Soviet Russia. That's right, the whole race to the Moon, that massive, costly, era-defining program that JFK started, was almost entirely pointless. The whole time we were merely racing ourselves. How can this be ? you ask yourself. Wasn't this the great peaceful test of the relative strengths of Communism and Capitalism ? Wasn't the Apollo 11 mission a glorious victory for the Free World ? The answer is that : yes, of course, it was. It just wasn't a narrow victory. All of the edge-of-your-seat drama we associate with the "race" was the product of mass delusion.

You see, the dirty little secret of the Cold War--actually it's not little, it's quite enormous in its implications--is that the Soviet Union was never a coequal Super Power with the United States. It was always a backwards, inefficient, bureaucratic, corrupt mess. It just happened to be the case that both East and West, conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, militarists and pacifists, had their own reasons for puffing up the Soviet Union, for overestimating its achievements and its capabilities. Soviet leaders had to convince their own people that there was some reason for the squalor they lived in. Western leaders wanted to justify their willingness to allow Communism to continue to subjugate all of Eastern Europe. Militarists wanted money spent on their weapons systems. Pacifists wanted to scare people. Conservatives wanted a bogeyman. Liberals needed to believe Communism could work. Seemingly everyone had a vested interest in the myth of Soviet power. Now, normally, the collapse of the Soviet Union would have punctured such a myth, were it not for the unfortunate fact that Left and Right continue to have their own reasons for maintaining it. The Right needs the myth in order to burnish the greatness of Ronald Reagan. After all, if the bear was really a paper tiger, it diminishes the Gipper's achievements. Meanwhile, for the Left to acknowledge the myth would require them to concede that the Soviet Union was a disaster from the get go, that rather than being a tenable system which Stalin corrupted or which failed to innovate in its later years, the system was simply stillborn, and even at its moment of seeming parity with the West was actually quite primitive.

Oddly enough, it is in Russia itself that the myth has faced its stiffest challenge. In his great book Lenin's Tomb, David Remnick makes the compelling case that it was in large part Gorbachev's loosening of speech restrictions during perestroika which, quite accidentally, led to the fall of Communism. Gorbachev expected intellectuals to criticize the Soviet Union as it existed at that moment, and thought that this critique would help him to reform Communism. Instead, dissidents dismissed the historic tendency to blame all of the USSR's ills on Stalin and attacked Lenin, the Russian Revolution itself, and the very origins of the Soviet system. Where Gorbachev expected help in repainting the edifice, they blew up the foundation of the structure. And the Wall came tumbling down....

Now comes Victor Pelevin, widely considered to be one of the best of the Post-Soviet Russian writers, and his short novel Omon Ra is a truly devastating fable of the Soviet Union. From childhood Omon Krizomazov, named for the Interior Ministry riot police, dreams of escaping the grim reality of Soviet life by soaring skywards. He gets the chance to realize his dreams when he is chosen not merely to become a cosmonaut but to actually go on the first Soviet moon landing. But the dream turns into a nightmare when he is told that he is training for a suicide mission, because the Soviets do not have the technological expertise needed to bring a landing vehicle back from the Moon. In fact it turns out that each space launch consumes a number of lives because every stage of the rocket must be released by hand, by a cosmonaut decoupling the section he's riding in, because Soviet scientists haven't been able to automate the systems. Omon agrees, not that he's really given a choice, to participate in the deception, as his superiors explain to him that the lie he will help perpetrate is necessary to vindicate the larger truth of Marxism.

This is a marvelous satire, one that is just as subversive here in the West as it continues to be in a Russia, where a frighteningly large segment of the populace views the Soviet era as a Golden Age. The writing--for those of you, like me, who frequently find Russian Literature to be impenetrable--is totally accessible. Think The Right Stuff as imagined by Christopher Buckley. I can't recommend this one strongly enough. Readers of the World unite! You have nothing to lose but your misconceptions about the past fifty years of World history.

GRADE : A

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious view at the Soviet space programme
Review: Omon is a typical Soviet boy growing up in a dreary suburb of Moscow with an absent mother, a drunken father and an uninterested aunt who takes care of him. Since his childhood he want to be a cosmonaut and he shares this dream with a boy from the neighbourhood, Mitiok. Together they apply for Flying School and even make it to the training for the space program. Gradually it dawns on them that the Soviet achievements in the air and in space are not as glorious as they are claimed to be: the space program has a whole new interpretation of the term "automation" which makes the people who have to carry out the "automated techniques" into instant heroes, but in a way you do not exactly want. In the end Omon visits the moon, but not in the way he had expected it to be...

Pelevin wraps his criticisms on the Soviet society in a story which is at the same time hilarious, sarcastic and critical and makes you think of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller. Definitely worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Omon Ra: Let it be burned.
Review: Omon Ra is garbage. I would not suggest you read it if you care for good literature. It is just another boring collection of Russian senetnces patched together in short paragraphs that make absolutely no sense. Unortunately, most of Russian literature is like that.

Rating:
Summary: Short story master does well with novel
Review: Strange, funny and sad ... Pelevin takes on the longer form and does well. Hopefully will continue in "Life of Insects"

Rating:
Summary: quite depressing but worth reading
Review: This book was nice but rather depressing. It is drenched in cynicism. It is quite amusing to see how Pelevin makes so much fun of the Russian system. Having read some of his other works as well (The Yellow Arrow, The Blue Lantern), I found this one the least "weird".

Rating:
Summary: To all the cosmonauts
Review: This is a great story about two boys who want to become astronauts, but their dreams and hopes are destroyed very soon by cruel soviet reality. They do become some kind of astronauts, but they are only the tools in the hands of politicians, who want to spread the false glory of Soviet Union.

I like the Pelevin's way of writing, especially his satire. It sounds a bit unusual, but because of his satiric way of writing the story touched the reader very deeply. The end of the story is unexpected and optimistic. So, there is still the hope for better future.

It is really worth to read this book, especially in these times when we finally find out that before Yuri Gaggarin many other soviet astronauts were sent to the space - unsuccessfully.

Rating:
Summary: Requires an index that isn't there
Review: This is an amazing book. It's really funny - provided that (like me) you have someone who knows the inside jokes to explain them to you. Otherwise, a lot of the things that happen really make no sense, and you're left guessing as to why things happen. There are a lot of references to Soviet history that totally flew over my head the first time I read it. (The second time, I had more information). It's really sad that there isn't an index because, when given more of a context, it's a fantastic read. (On the other hand, maybe the lack of context works better with a postmodernist work - it all depends on your perspective!)