The Russian Gambit: Boris Akunin Chooses His Own Adventure

This paper connects Boris Akunin’s app-based novel Soulagine (2016) with the wistful historical revisionism that the author practiced since debuting his Erast Fandorin series of detective novels in the late 1990s. Akunin’s explorations of pre-revolutionary Russian politics attempt to recuperate the Soviet century by stipulating the possibility of avoiding it altogether: perhaps, with the intervention of the right historical actors ‒ namely, a hyper-moral James Bond-Sherlock Holmes hybrid ‒ it would have been possible to avert the calamity of the Bolshevik Revolution. The implicit glorification of the “good policeman” points to Akunin’s desire to discursively jettison the Soviet century as a historical aberration while calling for political moderation and a return to pre-revolutionary cultural norms. At the same time, the longer the Fandorin series continues, the more intense the impression of the Revolution’s ultimate inevitability becomes. By forcing his readers to confront the tragic endpoint of Fandorin’s journey down the slippery slope of Russian radicalism, Akunin didactically emphasizes the importance of political moderation and even conformism in the present. Even as their format dangles the promise of agency before Akunin’s readers, the hidden agenda of ludic-literary hybrids like Soulagine underscores Akunin’s commitment to a political quietism that avoids the pitfalls of radical change even in the face of society-wide injustice or accelerating authoritarianism.