Good with a sword and a plow: a novel about the beautiful Russia of the future came out

Anna Bersenyova, writer

Lack of justice not only disorganizes everyday life, but, most importantly, drives a person into an all-encompassing depression. And since even compatriots who are not inclined to reflection are now increasingly discovering that they are in the epicenter of triumphant evil, this depression is no longer a phenomenon of personal psychology, but a social factor. One should not be surprised that the most unexpected institutions are involved in the fight against it.

In particular, fiction. The well-known author of action-packed genres Lev Gursky (no less known that this is the pseudonym of the writer Roman Arbitman) wrote the book "Ministry of Justice" (Moscow: Vremya. 2020), where the triumph of this very justice is told with such an enchanting fantasy and, most importantly, with such unkillable optimism that the reality described in it seems absolutely realistic. By the way, this circumstance - the realism of the narrative manner and the reality created with its help - should be taken into account by readers who, like me, flinch at the word "fantasy" and put the book down without opening it.

Even the fact that Lev Gursky writes not about the present day, but about that fantastically beautiful time when the Glorious Revolution had already taken place in an absolutely peaceful way, and the triumphant meanness in Russia was finally expelled from public life, both on the legislative and everyday level.

Not everything is easy, there is enough confusion, naivety too, however, at least, the policeman has ceased to be perceived as an enemy of the people, and for good reason: he shies away from bribes, because taking them is not only criminally punishable, but also shameful, treats people kindly, tries to help them in every possible way. Nothing special, of course, but for a modern Russian reader, you see, it's unusual.

In the former building of the State Duma, with the help of modern technologies, a gigantic Museum of Contemporary History has been created, schoolchildren from all over the country are brought to it, and children are amazed to ask how their parents could live, not paying attention to the acts, the enormity of which is obvious to any child. In short, the norm and living life with all its pluses and minuses triumphs.

But justice does not quite prevail. Because immediately after the death of President Pavel Pavlovich Dorogin and the honest nationwide election of the wonderful Nadezhda Evgenievna as president, what happened, as stated in the author's annotation, happened: “When the rusty braces crumbled and the vile world sank into oblivion, its yesterday's masters and their loyal servants quickly crawled all over the globe and huddled in deep cracks. They changed their names, passports, bank account numbers and hoped for legal evasions, and even more - for the short memory of the townsfolk and the generosity of the winners. " But no! Universal Justice comes into play. Its scales are located in the head of an ordinary seemingly middle-aged philologist Roman Ilyich. He feels the carriers of evil so strongly that he physically cannot be with them ... No, no, Roman Ilyich does not grab a sword-kladenets or a Kalashnikov assault rifle from his bosom - just from his approach to the carriers of evil those same Libra. Due to this, retribution is carried out. Roman Ilyich does not even know in advance exactly how the Universal Justice will work, and even more so he cannot measure it; She acts without fainthearted hesitation, but also without vengeful exhaustion.

Organizationally, everything is done through a small group of people working in a modest office under the Ministry of Finance. And now this group, led by Roman Ilyich, is in a hurry to the Dominican Republic, where the former head of the space industry Demid Ergolin is hiding under a false name. He managed to destroy the industry so much that satellites began to fall on the heads of innocent people. Is it any wonder that a piece of such a satellite with the help of Roman Ilyich's weights overtakes Ergolin. And what happens to the inhuman killer Erofei Ozhogin, who poisoned many people around the world ...

I shamelessly retell the events that take place in this brilliantly written book, for one simple reason: there are so many of them and the plot is full of such unexpected turns that my retelling contains hardly a hundredth part of it.

We are tired of the triumph of evil, and in literature no less than in life. For example, at some point I realized that I can no longer read thrillers, and precisely because the conviction of the omnipotence of evil is the main sign of this genre. And since I guess that there are many like me, I can assume that the book by Lev Gursky, in which good triumphs inevitably and with lively humor, deserves both the interest of readers and simple human love.