Duccio Colombo Len’ka Panteleev and the traditions of Van

AvtobiografiЯ-Number6/2017101

DuccioColombo

Len’kaPanteleevandthetraditionsofVan’kaKain:CriminalBiographyinXXthCenturyRussiaTheFighteragainstthemyth,orthememoiristwhoconsidershimselfaHer-cules (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov: an attempt at a characterization by N.M.Ezhov).Thevastcorpusaboutthe1920sPetrogradbanditLen’kaPanteleev,comprisedof different texts – such as newspaper articles, fiction, film and song,with acomplexandoftenambiguousinterplaybetweenfactualaccountsandfictionaladaptation– seemsuntypical for theera.Auseful termof comparison is thesimilar corpus concerning the 18th centuryMoscow rogue Van’ka Kain. Thelattershowsallthetypicalfeaturesof18thcenturycriminalbiographies,whichat the timewere popular throughoutEurope.According toMichel Foucault,this genre paves the way to the detective novel, where the punitivemecha-nismsaresubstitutedbythedisciplinaryones.Thedeedsofthe1920sPetrogradbanditLen’kaPanteleevinspiredanimpressivecorpusoftextsbe-longing to awhole setofdiffer-ent genres, spanning fromnewsto literature, film and song.Wecan hardly imagine a similarcorpusrelatedtoanyotherRus-siancriminalfromthesameera.Ausefultermofcomparisoncanbe found instead in the – like-wise vast and controversial –corpus concerning the famous18th century Moscow rogueVan’ka Kain. The comparisonreveals remarkable similaritiesandleadstounexpectedconclu-sionsconcerningthegenericsta-tus of contemporary Russiancriminalfiction–alargelyunex-plored field. It is important to

underline that the cases dis-cussedarenottheactualstoriesof the two characters involved1,but the two corpora of textsconcerning them and the cul-turalmythstheyexpress.Van’kaKainwas born IvanOsi-povin1714(or1718,accordingtoa different version).2 A runaway1 One writer, however, compares Pan-teleev directly to Kain: “Panteleev be-came a sort of Van’kaKain turned up-side-down–therewasinMoscowinthe18thcenturythisgeniusoftheft,treasonand detection. Only Kain from a thiefrose tobecomeadetective, andLen’katheotherwayaround,butIfeeltheper-sonalities of these two scoundrelshavesomething in common” (Konstantinov2004:I,51).2ThemainhistoricalsourceaboutKainisEsipov1869.

Papers


serf, he led a gang of burglarsrobbing rich houses and mer-chantestates.In1741hepresent-ed a petition to the authorities,offeringtousehisknowledgeofthe criminal underworld tocatch thieves. His proposal wasaccepted, and the results wereso outstanding that his pastcrimes were pardoned and hewas appointed detective (or, asdocuments state, “official in-former”: see Esipov 1869: 307).With his squad, he became theterrorofMoscowoutlaws.How-ever,heused thealmostunlim-itedpowerthathisnewpositiongave him predominantly as anopportunity to accumulatewealthinanywaypossibleuntil1749,when hewas arrested. Af-ter a five-year long trial,hewassentenced to death, but thecondemnation was eventuallycommutedtoforcedlabour.Afirst,shortaccountofhisfeatsappeared in print in 1775; thefirst edition of Kain’s purportedautobiography came out in 1777and in 1782 one of the pioneersof Russian popular literature,Matvei Komarov, published hisown version of the story. To-gether, these three versionsamounted to 15 editions in the18th century alone (Sipovskii1902: 98)3. During the following

3Sipovskii’sworkcontainsdetailedbib-liographicaldata.

century, Kain was the hero ofdozens of pamphlets – “appear-inguptothepresentday”,wroteV. V. Sipovskii in 1902 (ibidem),while Jeffrey Brooks mentions“oneofthelastworksofpopularcommercial fiction published inRussia”dated1918(Brooks2003:201), i.e.ananonymousseriesoften issues dedicated to Kain inwhich,however,theoriginalsto-ry had become almost unrecog-nizable– in thewordsofacon-temporaryscholar,“inaboutonehundredyearsliteraturewentasfar as to transform this ques-tionablecharacterintoanincar-nation of Cossack freedom, arighterofwrongsorachampionof national pride” (Raï-Gonneau2007: 101). In today’sRussia, thename‘Van’kaKain’stillseemstobe eponymouswith bandit – oris it perhaps now becomingeponymousbecauseof thewaveof criminal literature floodingthe book market in the post-soviet years? For example, Mi-khail Grachev’s 2005 work onthe history of Russian criminalslang is entitled From Van’kaKain to Mafia and the secondpartofTheValleyofDeath–An-atoliiPristavkin’smemoirsofhisyears as chairman of the presi-dential Grace commission –cameout in2001asThePassionaccordingtoVan’kaKain.Aslateas 1998, the writer Anatolii


Rogov published a new histori-calnoveldedicatedtoKain.4Len’ka Panteleev was born(probably) Leonid Pantelkin in1902(or1893,accordingtoadif-ferent version). Differentsources give very different ac-counts of his life, but they tendto agree that he was a typogra-phy worker before the revolu-tion, took part in the civil war,andafterbeingdischarged fromtheRedArmyservedintheChK.After being dismissed, heformedaganginearly1922rob-bingnotonly theapartmentsofthenewbourgeoisie of theNEPperiod,butalsocommonstreet-walkers. He was arrested andconvictedintheautumnof1922,but he escaped from theKrestyprisonandbecamethe terrorofPetrograd until, in March 1923,he was shot dead in a gunfightwiththepolice.The first texts devoted to hisdeeds – crime-news sections ofthe Petrograd newspapers ex-cluded – appeared in 1925: themagazine«Sudidet»publishedadetailedaccountofthecase(De-lo 1925), and ElizavetaPolonskaia’s short narrative po-emVpetle,dated1923anddedi-catedtohim,wasprintedinthe«Kovsh»almanac.Thereisasto-

4 A second edition was published in2003.

ry about Panteleev, dated 1939,in Lev Sheinin’s famous An In-vestigator’s notebook5 and thememoirs of Leonid Dimitriev, amember of the team that cap-tured him, were published in1967, in a collection titledChekisty,. In 1974, the thirdepi-sode of the TV serial Rozhden-naia revoliutsiei, dedicated tothehistoryof theSovietmilitia,wascenteredonPanteleev.6Twobooks about him, Maksim To-karev’sLen’kaPanteleev:Theter-rorof thedetectivesandMichailKniazev’s Len’ka Panteleev, theKing of Robbers appeared in2000and2001.Bythis time,theflood of histories and encyclo-pedias of Russian crime, whichrarelyoverlookthiscase,hadal-ready begun,7 and a number ofarticles started to appear in the

5 Iwasnotable to trace the firstprint-ingofthestory;ithasbeenincludedineveryeditionofthebook,sinceSheinin1957atleast.6 The novel written by the authors ofthe screenplay (Nagornyi-Riabov 1984)isusuallyreferredtoas ‘thebookuponwhich the serial is based’, but is,morelikely, based itself on the screenplay(although the possibility that it waspublished somewhere in the periodicalpress before the shootings cannot betotallyruledout).7Anecessarilyincompletelistoftextsofthis kind containing Panteleev’s storyincludes: Konstantinov 2004, Razzakov1996,Khrutskii2004,Tarasov2005,andKolesnik2012.

Papers


periodical press.8 In 2006 Pan-teleev was the hero of the se-cond episode of the successfultelevision ‘documentary series’Sledstvie veli (The investigationwas conducted by...), and in thesame year an eight-part series,LifeandDeathofLen’kaPantele-ev(screenplaybyV.Akimov,di-rectorE.Iasan)wasbroadcast.In 2009, the writer ElenaKhaetskaia,underthepennameof Elena Tólstaia, published atwo-partnovel:Len’kaPanteleev,the luckyman –Len’ka Pantele-ev,thesonofruin.In2012,atthePetersburg Young SpectatorTheater, M. Didenko and N.Dreiden staged an award-winningmusicalabouthim.The name of Panteleev also be-came eponymous; in 1927 twoyoung writers from Leningrad,Grigorii Belykh and AlekseiEremeev, published a bookabouttheirexperiencesinaspe-cialschoolforproblemchildren,whichwastobecomeaclassicofSoviet teenage literature, TheRepublic of SHKID. While theformer signed it with his actualname, the latter used the pseu-donym L. Panteleev. AlekseiErofeev, an obviously autobio-graphicalcharacter,bearsthisashis school nickname, given to

8 The list of articles is also necessarilyincomplete: Stepanov 2002, Khrutskii2002,Nikitin 2005, Liubvin 2007, Lur’e2012.

him when he told his newschoolmateshisturbulentstory:

ThentheGipsysoftlysaid:-Yeah,quitea life. Fullofadventuresandrisk.You’renot Erofeev, Len’ka, you’rea real Panteleev. A toughguy. (Belykh-Panteleev1927)9

The pseudonym would remainwith Eremeev (1908-1987)throughout his long career.Alt-houghheinsistedthathisbooksshouldbesignedsimply‘L.Pan-teleev’, some of them came outdisplaying the form ‘Leonid’ oreven‘LeonidIvanovich’.In2003,an apparently cheap criminalnovel, Pulp Fiction in Russian,appearedunder thesignatureofLeonidPanteleev.10Numeroussongshavebeended-icatedtobothKainandPantele-ev which creates yet anothersimilarity.Inbothcases,contro-versialquestionsarise.Komarov’sbook(Komarov2008)included a songbook, SongssungbyKain.Everynewedition9 In the 1961 revisededition, thewritersensibly altered this chapter; the char-acter’s real lastname isnowPanteleev,andthisiswhyheisnicknamedLen’ka.10Somecritics reactedwithanger:howcouldtheauthorassociatehismediocreworkwiththenameofarespectedchil-dren’swriter?SeeVasilevskii-Kriuchkov2004.


ofthe‘autobiography’appearingfrom this moment on also in-cluded songs, and their numbergrew in every new printed edi-tion of both texts (see Raï-Gonneau2007:101),whilesever-al collectionsof folk songs fromthe late 18th and 19th centuriesincludedaKainsongssection.Itisnowclear(andprobablyitwasalreadyatthetime)thatmostofthese songs (if not all of them)were not originally related toKain (see Raï-Gonneau 2007:101); their constant presence inthebook corpus,however,mer-its attention. Folklorist P. Bes-sonovcommentedin1872:

Inanycase,ofthesesongsthere is one that stuck toKain so strongly thatnowadays it is stillimpossible to separate itfrom his name. It is thefamous Ne shumi, matizelenaia dubravushka. Forthe connoisseur it isenoughtotakea lookat itortolistentoitonceanditiseasytorealizethatinitsorigins it is very muchmore primordial and oldthan Kain. (…) Such iseverysimilarcaseinwhicha song belongs to a well-known epic or historicalperson, it is forawhilehisproperty, and then itpasses, together with his

name, in the publicdomain(Pesni1872:71).

Thecaseinpoint,indeedoneofthe best-known Russian folksongs,refersclearlytoacountrysetting, and its connection toKain, a typical city bandit (alt-houghhepurportedlymovedhisgang to the Volga for a while,where they spent some time asmountedraiders),appearsprob-lematic; Kain’s best friendscouldhardlybethe“goodsteed”and“tautbow”mentionedinthesong,evidencesuggestinghisfa-vourite weapon is the stick.Making this a ‘Kain song’ is asteptowardsturningthecharac-ter into a highwayman, a peas-ant bandit, a Cossack. CossackscanbeclassedamongwhatEricHobsbawm(1985:70)called“so-cialbandits”.Thehistoriancon-sidered this kind of banditry atypical peasant phenomenon;however,headmittedthat:

where for one reason oranothersocialbanditrydidnot flourish or had diedout, suitable criminalrobbers might well beidealized and given theattributes of Robin Hood(…). Thus, in eighteenth-century France, Englandand Germany celebratedunderworldcharacters likeDick Turpin, Cartouche

Papers


and SchinderhannessubstitutedforthegenuineRobin Hoods who haddisappeared from thesecountries by that time(Hobsbawm1985:39).

Kain was called “The RussianCartouche” by Komarov, whopublished his story under thesamecover as the translationofaGermanlifeofthelatter.11Applying the same interpretivecategories to Panteleev would11 D. Mordovtsev, a historical novelistwho wrote an essay about Kain in thesecondhalfofthe18thcentury,thoughtthat he was somehow envious of theglory of the Volga highwaymen andtried consciously to become one ofthem: “The mob Kain had joined wasnot such – they were simple citythieves. In their environment you cansee nothing poetic, nothing charming,while in theVolga highwayman’s envi-ronment there really was somethingcharming for a daredevil, and thischarmconstituted inasensethemoralforce of the Volga highwaymen. Kainhimself felt thisdifferencebetween themodest role his fate provided him andtheone theVolgahighwaymenplayed,and consequently, aiming to raise hisstatus in his own eyes and in the oth-ers’, did not restrain from posing: hewanted to present himself as a ‘gallantrogue’; he loved to sing daring songs(…);but inanycasehewasnotable toraise himself to that ideal positionwhere, in the eyes of the people, andfirstofallof theragged,stoodtheata-mansoftheVolgahighwaymenZamet-aev,Berkut, and, furtheroff,Razin,Er-mak,Kudeiar,Kol’tsoandsoon”(Mor-dovtsev1876:31-32).

be,ofcourse,ariskyoperation–social banditry, according toHobsbawm, flourished in prein-dustrial societies, and the not-so-few songs about Panteleevare mostly pop songs by well-known authors produced forcommercial purposes.12 There isone interesting, albeit dubious,exception: many versions ofPanteleev’s story mention asong, allegedly widespread inPetrogradatthetime:

Len’kaPanteleev,The terror of thedetectives,Braceletsonhiswrist,Blueeyes...13

These lines are fromPolonskaia’spoem.Thepoem isclearly modeled on Blok’sTwelve,anditisofcoursepossi-ble that the author includedlines fromanexisting song, justasBlokusedlinesfromtheVar-

12ThereareatleasttwoPanteleevsongsin thecorpusof thecontemporary, im-pressively popular, blatnaia pesnia orcriminal song: one,written by AnatoliiPolotno, appeared in his 1990 albumPrivet ot Len’ki Panteleeva, the secondwassungbyVikaTsiganovainher1991Guliai, anarkhiia album; anotherone isincludedina2007recordbyoneoftheseniorRussianrapgroups,BadBalance,titledLegendsofGangsters.13See,forinstance,Stepanov2002,Tar-asov2005:80-81;Lur’e2012.EvenintheSledstvie veli documentary these linesareread,notsung.


shavianka.Or,iftheywereactu-ally written by her (using aclearly recognizable song-like,rhythmical pattern to give thefeeling of a real street-song),theycouldhavebeenturnedin-to a song by the common peo-ple.However,whilethe ‘song’isquotedquiteoften,wewerenotable to discover any clues as toits tune. A definitive answer ishardlylikelytobereached,butarealistic onemight be found byturning the problem upsidedown: those who wrote aboutPanteleevmerelyneededasong,possibly a folk song, inorder toconstruct the image of a socialbandit, “the kind of outlawsabout whom men sing ballads:champions, heroes andavengers”(Hobsbawm1985:36).In the stories about Panteleevalmost all the characteristic at-tributes of the social bandit asoutlinedbyHobsbawmare pre-sent, albeit often under discus-sion (we read that Len’ka “wasno Robin Hood” more oftenthan the contrary – thismeans,however, that authors felt com-pelledtodiscussthepossibility);hewasfamed,ifnotforstealingfrom the rich and giving to thepoor, for at least not robbingproletarians (that is to say,membersofhiscommunity).Hehad turned outlaw because hewas a victim of injustice (inmany of the different accounts

of his dismissal from the ChK)andhewasbelievedtobeinvul-nerable; according to some ver-sionsheabstainedfromharmingwomen (“s babami ia nevoiuiu”).14 Finally, according toHobsbawm, social banditry“seems to occur in all types ofhuman society which lie be-tween theevolutionaryphaseoftribal and kinship organization,and modern capitalist and in-dustrial society, but includingthephasesofdisintegratingkin-ship society and transition toagrariancapitalism”(Hobsbawm1985: 18); Panteleev is a hero atthetimeofthetemporaryresto-rationofcapitalismduringNEP.Itis,ofcourse,hazardoustoap-ply this kind of model to suchdifferentconditions(Hobsbawmhimselfrepeatedlywarnsagainstit). However, the coincidences,nevertheless, are striking. Everytext about Panteleev calls himthe hero of a myth spreadthroughthelowerclassesofPet-rograd, but it is now virtuallyimpossibletotesttheveracityofthisinformation.Itisinanycaselikely that Robin Hood, Van’kaKain, the ‘social bandit’, maysimplyhavebeentheonlyblue-printavailabletowriterslookingfor a way to tell Len’ka’s story.Various additional traits are de-

14 According to the Sledstvie veli docu-mentary.

Papers


veloped in the corpus, and theyoften passed from one text tothe other to grow closer to theactual model. In the followingpages, we will pursue this hy-pothesis to its rational conclu-sion:itisherethatthecompari-son with the case of Kain canbecome the source of useful in-sights.Genre is the issue in questionand the Kain stories doubtlessbelong to a specific one, thatofcriminal biography, which wasat the time well established inEurope. The English case is thebestknown,perhapsbecause,assome scholars maintain, crimi-nal biography had its greatestdevelopment there, or perhapsbecauseitsrelationshipwithDe-foe’sworkdrewtheattentionofresearchersThesetextsmaywellbe interpreted as a Russian im-port of a European genre (SeeRaï-Gonneau 2007: 101). ThePanteleev corpus is less easilydefined, as it is composed oftextsbelongingtodifferentgen-res, from poems to newspaperarticles. The complex relation-ship between them, however,contributes to a blurring of thedifferences. Two examples mayhelpclarifythispoint.Sheinin’s work is ambiguous inits generic characteristic. It be-longstoacollectionoftextsthatpresent themselves as factual:

Zapiski, Notebook, a definitionwhich usually applies to mem-oirs.15 The bulk of the collectedtexts are first-person tales withexact names and dates that, bethey true or false, are no doubtintended to be taken as factual.This,however,doesnotconcerneverysingleoneofthem–intheintroduction, the author referstothetextscomprisingthebookasocherkiandrasskazy, ‘sketch-es’ and ‘stories’ (Sheinin 1984:16)–andLen’kaPanteleevisoneof the cases most likely to fitmore easily into the secondclass. Sheinin’s Len’ka is a gen-tlemanoutlaw,appearingatpar-ties of the wealthy in a dinnersuit, robbing the guests whilstdisplaying excellent manners,proposing toasts to the hostessand even leaving a visiting cardwith a greeting to the police.Thescenerepeatsitself,afterhisescapefromjail,atthefashiona-bleDonon restaurant,whereheflirts with his lawyer’s partner.At Donon, according to the ac-count published in the «Sudidet» magazine, Panteleev withoneofhisganghadbeenarrest-ed for drunkenness.16Wemight

15Apartial translationof thisbookhasappearedinEnglishasDiaryofaCrimi-nologist(Sheinin2003).16Hemanaged, however, to escape be-fore reaching the police station thankstothe fact thathehadnotbeenrecog-nizedasthewidely-soughtbandit.


therefore consider Sheinin’sworkas anexercise inpureandtraditionalfiction,andhisuseofthenameof ahistorical charac-termoreorlesscasual;butthen,how to explain the fact thatsomeoftheepisodesanddetailshe first mentions reappear inpurportedly factual accounts?Eventhemostobviouslyliterarydetail–thevisitingcard,which,of course, comes from the talesaboutArsèneLupin–ispresent-edintheSledstvieveliserialandin Andrei Kolesnik’s BanditskiiSSSR as fact and dinner jacketraids on parties and restaurantsfound theirway into ‘documen-tary’ accounts long before.Sheinin’s story, therefore, hasbeentreatedasafullylegitimatesource by writers working afterhim and the corpus appears tohave more and more details ofspurious origin, which passfreely fromone text to another,irrespective of their genericspecificity.Kniazev’s book is defined as anovelonthetitlepage;whythenthe continual mention of exactdatesof events andof exact ad-dresses where they took place,why the repeated inclusion ofdocuments, with no guaranteeof their authenticity, but in aform that gives the impressionthat theymightwell be real? Ingeneral, even the more overtlyfictional texts in the corpus

(such as Khaetskaia’s novel orthe Life and death TV serial)takesgreatcare inshowingthatLen’ka’s first raid was on theapartment of the fur-trader Bo-gachev,on39,Kazanskaiastreet,on 3rd March 1922, at four (orthree) in the afternoon, whenMr.Bogachevandhiswifewerenot at home, although theirdaughterEmiliawassickinbed.Panteleev’s partners-in-crimebear the same names every-where: Belov, Gavrikov,Varshulevich and so on, thoughoften they have very differentbiographies and characteristics.On the other hand, this obses-sion with concrete details attimes generates comical effects:from the very first account, i.e.the «Sud idet» article,we knowthat, after Len’ka’s killing, hisbody was displayed for somedays at themorgue, so that citydwellers could be assured thatthe fiendwas indeeddead.Sub-sequent reports go as far as tospecifythelocationofthehospi-tal and its morgue, howeversometimes it is theMariinskaia,other times the Obukhovskaia,other times again the Aleksan-drovskaia.Recent Panteleev texts tend toinclude (with increasing fre-quency) allegedly original doc-uments,therealstatusofwhichis usuallyunclear.Thishappenseveninarapsong,whereanar-

Papers


ticle from «Krasnaia gazeta»(republished in «Sud idet») isquoted but introduced as a se-cret report toDzerzhinskii. Thegeneral impression thatmodernversions of Panteleev’s storyleaveisthattheirsourcesarera-ther to be sought in previoustexts–bothfictionalandfactual.ThePanteleevcorpus,moreover,offersarareoccasiontoobservein situ the process of creatingfictiononthebasisoffactualac-counts. Unsurprisingly, coinci-denceisoneofthedevicesmostfrequently used: in the Rozh-dennaia revoliutsiei serial, thehead of security of the Statebank, killed by Panteleev whilerunning from the police, is thedetective hero’s neighbour andfriend, whereas the bandit isrecognizedattheDononrestau-rant by the hero’s wife. In theLife and Death serial the detec-tive, Kondratev, was Len’ka’scolleagueandfriendat thetimethat the latter worked in theChK. Based on the fact thatKondratevwas the last name ofboth the detective leading thesearchforLen’kaandtheprisonguard who helped him escapefrom prison, Kniazev makesthem cousins. However, thesamestrategyisadopted,forin-stance, in theSledsvtie veli doc-umentary: every account men-tionsthefactthat,whenhewasarrested for the first timeat the

Kozhtrest shoe-store on theNevskii prospekt, Panteleevkilled the head of the third de-partment of the Petrogradmili-tia, Pavel Bardzai (or Borzoi, orBarzai). The latter had enteredthestoretobuyhimselfapairofsandalsandhad fallenuponthebandit. Barzai, about whommuchdetailisgiven(andapho-tographisshown)wasinchargeofthesearchforPanteleev.Thismaybe the truth;buthowcuri-ous that Kondratev, passing by,ends up putting handcuffs onLen’ka!Both Sheinin’s and Kniazev’stexts, therefore, areuntypicalofthe fictional genres to which,individually taken, they appearto belong. While factual ac-counts of the case display fic-tional features, the differenceappears blurred in the corpus.The features of the individualtextscouldbebetterexplainedifwe include them all together inthe same category – that ofcriminalbiography.ThecaseofKain isnotverydif-ferent: researchhas proved that“theautobiography isnota reli-able historical source” (Raï-Gonneau 2007: 104), howeverhistorians used it as suchthroughout the 19thcentury.AsforKomarov’sbook,it isusuallyread as a novel, or proto-novel.In the introduction, the authorreveals his sources; he had spo-


kentoKainwhenthe latterwasdetained for questioning inMoscow and to people whoknew himwell. The decision towritecameafterhehadreadtheautobiography (most likely, infact, the short text), which“…although […] copyists com-mitted bigmistakes […] howev-er, based on the content, weshould think that the originalmust have been written eitherby Kain himself or by someoneelse according to his [oral] nar-rative” (Komarov 2008: 283).Komarov, therefore, vindicatesthe reliability of his writing,while criticizing a preexistingtextonthesamesubject.Such vindications are almostubiquitous in 17th- and 18th-century criminal biographies(seeFaller1987:197-200),aswellas in early novels, whose con-nection to thegenreofcriminalbiography has already beendemonstrated (see Davis 1980:116-118).Infact,LennardDavis,aspecialistonearlyEnglishnovel,maintains that the genre couldoriginallyhavebeenoneforall–thatofprosenarrative (whathecalls the “news/novel dis-course”), where “no narrativeform had become the locus ofwhatwemightcalltodaynonfic-tion”(Davis 1978: 125-27),where“thefactualityorfictionalityofaworkwasnotcrucialtodefiningthe genre of that work before

approximately the second quar-ter of the eighteenth century”(ibid.: 130). This is merely a hy-pothesis, and it is for historiansof 17th-18th century English lit-eraturetodiscussit.However,ifweacceptitastrue,thePantele-ev corpus should be consideredas proof that, in Russia (as re-gards, of course, popular litera-ture, a category to which, any-way,thetextsconsideredbyDa-visdoubtlesslybelongedaswell)thisdistinctionhasnotyetbeenfirmlyestablished:thereappearstobenoelements,neitherintheparatexts,norinthetexts,allow-ing to finally identify an unam-biguous pact, either referentialor fictional (see Lejeune 1989:22), nor does this appear to betheauthors’aim.There is another way in whichthePanteleev corpus appears tobe archaic: according toMichelFoucault,“broadsheetliterature”on crime disappeared togetherwith the punishment as specta-cle, and was substituted, in thenew disciplinary society, bynewspapersandthecrimenovel,constitutingtogether

...a patient attempt toimpose a highly specificgrid on the commonperception of delinquents:to present them as closeby,everywherepresentand

Papers


everywhere to be feared.This was the function ofthe fait divers, whichinvadedapartofthepressand which began to haveits own newspapers. Thecriminal fait divers, by itseveryday redundancy,makes acceptable thesystem of judicial andpolice supervisions thatpartition society; itrecountsfromdaytodayasort of internal battleagainstthefacelessenemy;in this war, it constitutesthedaily bulletinof alarmorvictory.Thecrimenovel,whichbegan todevelop inthe broadsheet and inmass-circulationliterature,assumed an apparentlyoppositerole.Aboveall,itsfunctionwas to show thatthedelinquentbelongedtoanentirelydifferentworld,unrelated to familiar,everyday life. Thisstrangeness was first thatof the lower depths ofsociety (Les Mystères deParis, Rocambole), thenthatofmadness(especiallyin the latter half of thecentury) and lastly thatofcrime in high society(Arsène Lupin). Thecombination of the faitdivers and the detectivenovelhasproducedforthe

lasthundredyearsormorean enormous mass of‘crime stories’ in whichdelinquency appears bothas very close and quitealien,aperpetualthreattoeveryday life, butextremely distant in itsorigin and motives, botheveryday andexotic in themilieu in which it takesplace(Foucault1991:286).

Developing a possible parallelbetween this phenomenon andthe formation of the moderndistinctionbetweenfactandfic-tionasoutlinedbyDaviswouldbe a very delicate endeavour,whichwillnotbepursuedhere.What appears to be particularlyrelevant for the purpose of thisarticleisthepoliticalinterpreta-tion of the transition from ‘an-cien régime’ criminal biographyto themoderncrimenovel.Theformerwas,inthewordsofFou-cault,anessentialcomponentofthepunitivesystem:

In one sense, thebroadsheet and the deathsongwerethesequeltothetrial; or rather theypursued that mechanismby which the publicexecution transferred thesecret,writtentruthoftheprocedure to the body,gesture and speech of the


criminal. Justice requiredthese apocrypha in orderto be grounded in truth(Ibid.:66).

This kind of literature, howeverfunctional, contained seriousflaws and would have been oflittle use because of .the devel-opment of the disciplines in-volved:

Buttheeffect,liketheuse,of this literature wasequivocal.Thecondemnedman found himselftransformedintoaherobythe sheer extent of hiswidely advertised crimes,and sometimes theaffirmation of his belatedrepentance. Against thelaw, against the rich, thepowerful, the magistrates,the constabulary or thewatch, against taxes andtheir collectors, heappeared to have waged astrugglewithwhichonealltoo easily identified (Ibid.:67).

Henceitssubstitutionbythede-tective novel/news pairing.17 Its

17AninterpreterofEnglishcriminalbi-ographiespointsout – coming close toFoucault’s time scale – that “From the1750s onwards... a new strand of crimeliterature emerged inwhich the detec-tion process was the main, sometimes

survival well into the twentiethcentury appears to be closelyconnected to thepeculiar situa-tion of Soviet Russia.18 Pantele-ev’sstoryisloadedwithpoliticalovertones, and there is hardly atextthatavoidsapoliticalinter-pretation. Their conclusions,however, strongly differ fromoneanother.Polonskaia’s poem set the toneby presenting Len’ka’s criminalchoiceasthereactionofarevo-lutionarytotherestoringofcap-italismduringNEP:

We stood against thepalace.IwasinthefirstlineatthestormFor freedom! For bread!Forpeace!Wartothecapitalists!“Godie,oldworld!”Theyshivered,thebitchesAtthesightofourflags!Andnowtheyjustlaugh,

theonly,topic”(Rawlings1992:25).Jef-frey Brooks (2003: 208) underlines thesubstitution of tales of banditry by de-tectivestoriesinRussiaaftertherevolu-tionof1905.18 Foucault’s own interpretation of theSoviet penitentiary system was some-what hesitant (see Plamper 2002); ten-tative readings in Foucaultian terms ofboth this system (Dobrenko 2001) andof the Soviet system as a whole (En-gelstein1993)constantlyunderlinetheircontradictorynature.

Papers


They disdain the sailors!(Polonskaia1925:114).

NEPisdepictedastheparadoxi-cal situation in which the Bol-shevik police are protecting thebourgeoisie:

The leather jackets willstandguardoverthecityForthefatandrichtosleeppeacefully.[...]Sleepsafe,jeweler!Theoldwordwon’tdieout!The revolution is here toprotectyou…(Ibid.:115).

Robbing them, therefore, be-comesthelogicalthingtodoforanoldcommunist.19This paradox, played down indifferent ways, repeats itself atthe coreof every text. InShein-in’s story, after the robbery at

19 Eighty years later, Kniazev explicitlymaintains the same stance. DuringNEP,hewrites,aclasssystememergedagain, “And if there are two classes,there is also class hatred. And peoplewill always be found who, out of des-perationorasamatterofprinciple,willdecide to ‘again expropriate what hasbeenexpropriated’byanymeans.Therewere not so few of these people, and,like a dark cloud, they kept the wholetown in a state of fear” (Kniazev 2001:6).

the Donon restaurant, a signifi-cantscenetakesplace:

For a minute a heavysilence reigned in therestaurant, then acorpulent, aged man in adinner suit jumped upfrom a table and, pullingoff his fashionable pince-nez with a golden chain,eyeswideopenwithstrain,gave off a heart-rendingyell:- The police! The policeright now... Hey, boy,phonethepolice...A gray-haired, skinnywaiter respectfully bentdown towards him andsaid,quietlybutdistinctly:- It’s six years already thatthere’s no police anymore,sir.ThemilitiaIwillphoneright now… (Sheinin 1984:167)

The author’s position is self-evident; so self-evident, in fact,thatadisclaimerhadtobeadd-edtothestory:

The fact is that all theseromantic details andeccentric tricks were justcheap props and a cynicalgame.Under the roughly andfondlypaintedmaskofthe‘gentleman robber’, the


valiant knight, the boynextdoorandthe‘terrorofthe NEP’ hid and lived acircumspect, greedy, cold-blooded and verydangerous criminal, readyto the most horrid crimes(Ibid.,157).

Given his peculiar position asheadoftheinvestigativesectionof the Soviet State Procuracy,Sheinin’scontradictionsarepar-ticularlyenlightening.OfallSo-viet crime writers, he can beconsidered the closest to thegovernmentpositions.HisNote-books are filled with sympathyfor the criminals, the “sociallyfriendly element” as comparedto the bourgeoisie (and the in-telligentsia, constantly suspect-ed of sympathizing with thebourgeoisie) – they also featuremany stories exemplifying theirconversiontoconsciousbuildersof the socialist future (see Fitz-patrick1999:78-79).The identification of the readerwith the criminal, in this con-text, should not necessarily beavoided; to a certain extent, infact,itiseventobesoughtafter.Sheinin’sparadoxistheparadoxofSovietpower–arevolutionarypower becoming state powerwhilstpretendingtoremainrev-olutionary.Decades later, the state ap-proach has become dominant,

and, in the Rozhdennaia revoli-utsiei serial, Len’ka becomes acounterrevolutionary. Every ac-count mentions the fact that aprisonguardhelpedhimescapefromtheKrestyprison;theusualsuggestionisthathedidthisformoney. It is often hinted thatthemilitiaattemptedtoensnarePanteleev at the place that hewas supposed to meet and paythe guard. In this version, theguard has become amember ofthesocialist-revolutionaryparty,freeing Len’ka for ideologicalreasons–heconsidershiscrim-inalcareerapoliticalact,an‘ex-ample’.“Doyoupromisetocarryon the fight until the end?” (Inthenovelversion,evenmoreex-plicitly: “In essence, you are aterrorist”, see Nagornyi-Riabov1984).Inthisguard’swords,crit-icismoftheNEPbecomesapar-ty slogan: “The Bolsheviks soldouttherevolution”,androbbingthe NEP bourgeoisie is an anti-communistundertaking.A similar version, but with acontrasting evaluation, appearsin an article in 2002 in theNa-tional-Bolshevik «Limonka»newspaper. Here, the guardhelping Panteleev is “of peasantorigin,filledwithfieryhatredforthe rich” (Stepanov 2002).Thisarticleis entirely aimed at a positivepolitical interpretation ofLen’ka’s feats: “the Nepmanylose their sleep and theirpeace,

Papers


and in the workers’ quarterstheyrejoice”.The«Limonka»interpretationisexplainedby the journal’s pecu-liar political stance. Comparedwiththemajorityof textsof thecorpus, here several details arealtered and no source is men-tioned; e.g. Chmutov, the headof Gosbank security killed byPanteleev while running fromthepolice,herebecomes “a for-mer workman, now an im-portant Gosbank functionary”;Manulevich,robbedofabagfullof money at the corner ofMorskaia Street andPochtamtskii Alley, usually re-ferredtoasamemberofacoop-erative carrying from the bankthe money for his comrades’pay,becomeshere“therichmanManuilov”.Here,onceagain,thebanditisonthesideofthepeo-plefightingagainsttherich.Thegovernmental position is againhighly contradictory: when hecomes to the specialChKsquadin chargeof the search forPan-teleev, the author comments:“Yes, this clash emerged whenthese straight-out fighters forsocial justice were ordered tocatch and destroy othersfightingferociouslyforthesamething”.Thesamecontradictioncanleadto a completely different read-ing.EduardKhrutskiiremember

his puzzled reaction after read-ing,asachild,Sheinin’sstory:

…Ipictureda tall, elegant,fine-looking man, takingthe money away from thedamned bourgeois, andthere was no way I couldunderstandwhythemilitiadefended the nepmanywho, how they explainedusatschool,“drewbucketsofbloodfromtheworkingclass”(Khrutskii2002).

Hisadultselfhasatentativeex-planation: Len’ka might in facthavebeenworkingfortheSovietpowers, robbing the NEP bour-geoisie to finance the govern-ment. This would help explainwhy, if he was arrested whenworkingfortheChK,hewason-ly fired, and not executed. Itwould also explain why herobbed only private apartmentsand shops, and never a govern-mentalenterprise,and,perhaps,evenhisescapefromprison.Khrutskii’s hypothesis becomesthekeyaroundwhichtheplotofthe Life and Death series re-volves. Here, the good, honestLen’ka is tricked by an overtlybad commissar,who has Len’kaworking for him and then failsto take responsibility; in apost-Soviet reading, the governmentis no longer on the side of thepeople. Even in post-Soviet


times, the serial sparkeda reac-tion – an article in «The Shieldand Sword», theMinistry of In-ternalaffairsmagazinereads:

Here the film creatorsseemjustthewinnersoverthe “false and too hastySovietcourt”.Theywanttocondemn such a noblebandit!Theauthorsof theserial wanted so badly tomake a Robin Hood or aVladimirDubrovskiioutofhim.Thus,thewolfishnatureofthe bandit and of hisaccomplices, theircynicism, their cruelty,their impertinence, theirgreedfinallyremainedoff-screen(Liubvin2007).

Panteleev’s story, therefore, isstill the object of discussioneven in a fictional reworking.ThePetrogradbandit is still theobject of political reworkings,includingarapsong(whereourherois“Attheheadofthebare-foot mob” in “The swamp city”which “doesn’t spare the bour-geois”)andevenamusical,witha pastiche of songs from the1920s and with retro-constructivist set design, theplot being overtly inspired bythe Threepenny Opera. Onceagain,we encounter the bandit,

therich,the lowerclasses,pow-errelationsandsoon.Can this unresolved politicaltensionhelpexplainthearchaic,Van’ka Kain-like nature of thePanteleevcorpus?Onemorede-tail can be read through a Fou-caultian interpretation: the pu-nitivetechnique,inthewordsofFoucault,impliedavisiblemani-festation of power inscribed onthebodyofthecondemned.Wementioned the fact that, afterPanteleev’s death, his body wasleft exposed (though at themorgueandnotonthegallows)“at the nepmany’s instance”,writes the «Limonka». Moreo-ver, his head was allegedly cutoff and preserved in alcohol afact which, according to Kon-stantinov’s 1995 book, was ahard-to-believe legend (Kon-stantinov 2004: 57). However,the fact appears to be true. Ac-cording to Sledstvie veli, theoriginal jar was found someyears ago at the St. PetersburgStateUniversity(andwasshownin theTV show),while a repro-ductionofit isondisplayatthecity’s militia museum.20 If true,this offers the most impressive20ThewriterElenaKaetskaiapublishedareport(withphotographs)ofhervisitto the museum on her blog –http://haez.livejournal.com/650223.html, 19November 2017. Thehead ismen-tioned on the museum’s website –http://kcguvd.spb.ru/museum.htm, 21February2014.

Papers


testimonytothemechanismsofthe NEP era; in any case, giventhe insistence on this detail innumeroustexts inthecorpus, itoffersastrikingtestimonytothe

way in which Russian cultureperceivesitself.

Bibliography

Belykh-Panteleev 1927: G. Belykh, L. Panteleev, Respublika Shkid:

povest’, Gos. Izd-vo, M.-L., 1927; http://www.respublika-shkid.ru/book/1927/ljonka_panteleev/,19November2017.

Brooks2003:J.Brooks,WhenRussiaLearnedtoRead:LiteracyandPopular Literature, 1861/1917, NorthwesternUniversity Press, Evanston,2003.

Davis 1978: L. J. Davis, A Social History of Fact and Fiction:Authorial Disavowal in the Early English Novel, in E. W. Said (ed.),Literature andSociety: SelectedPapers from theEnglish Institute, 1978,TheJohnsHopkinsUniversityPress,BaltimoreandLondon,1978.

Davis 1980: L. J. Davis, Wicked Actions and Feigned Words:Criminals, Criminality, and the Early English Novel, «Yale FrenchStudies»,1980,LIX,pp.106-118.

Davis 1983:L. J.Davis,FactualFictions:TheOriginsof theEnglishNovel,ColumbiaUniversityPress,NewYork,1983.

Delo1925:DeloshaikiLen’kiPanteleeva,«Sudidet»,1925,IX-X.Dmitriev1967:L.Dmitriev,KonetsLen’kiPanteleeva, inA.Saparov

(ed.),Chekisty,Lenizdat,L.,1967.Dobrenko 2001: E. Dobrenko, Nadzirat’ – nakazyvat’ – nadzirat’:

Sotsrealizm kak pribavochnyi produkt nasiliia, «Révue des étudesslaves»,2001,LXXIII,4,pp.667-712.

Engelstein 1993: L. Engelstein, Combined Underdevelopment:Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia, «AmericanHistoricalReview»,1993,XCVIII,2,pp.338-353.

Esipov 1869: G. Esipov, Van’ka Kain, in P. Bartenev (ed.),Osmnadtsatyivek:istoricheskiisbornik,knigatret’ia,T.Ris,M.,1869,pp.280-342.

Faller1987:L.B.Faller,Turnedtoaccount:theformsandfunctionsof criminal biography in late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-centuryEngland,CambridgeUniversityPress,Cambridge,1987.


Fitzpatrick1999:S.Fitzpatrick,EverydayStalinism:OrdinaryLifeinExtraordinaryTimes:SovietRussiainthe1930s,OxfordUniversityPress,OxfordandNewYork,1999.

Foucault 1991:M.Foucault,DisciplineandPunish:TheBirthof thePrison,Penguin,London.,1991.

Grachev 2005: M. Grachev, Ot Van’ki Kaina do mafii: Proshloe inastoiashcheeugolovnogozhargona,Azbuka-klassika,Avalon,M.,2005.

Hobsbawm 1985: E. J. Hobsbawm, Bandits, Penguin,Harmondsworth,1985.

Khrutskii2002:E.Khrutskii,Krasivyimif,«SovetskaiaBelorussiia»,07/06/2002, http://www.sb.by/articles/krasivyy-mif.html, 19 November2017.

Khrutskii 2004: E. Khrutskii, Tainy ustavshego goroda, Detektiv-press,M.,2004.

Kniazev 2001: M. Kniazev, Len’ka Panteleev: Korol’ naletchikov,Eksmo,M.,2001.

Kolesnik2012:A.Kolesnik,BanditskiiSSSR:Samyeiarkieugolovnyedela,Eksmo,M.,2012.

Komarov 2008: M. Komarov, Obstoiatel’noe i vernoe opisaniedobrykhizlykhdelrossiiskogomoshennika,vora,razboinika ibyvshegomoskovskogo syshchikaVan’ki Kaina, in S. Baranov (ed.),Van’kaKain,Eksmo,M.,2008.

Konstantinov 2004: A. Konstantinov, Banditskii Peterburg:Dokumental’nyeocherki,Neva,SPb.,2004.

Lejeune 1989: P. Lejeune, On Autobiography, University ofMinnesotaPress,Minneapolis,1989.

Liubvin2007:R.Liubvin,Geroemsdelalibandita,«Shchit imech»,2007, IX, http://www.simech.ru/arhive-nomerov/2007/2447/, 19November2017.

Lur’e2012:L.Lur’e,Brat–0:kakloviliLen’kuPanteleeva,«Ogonek»,03/12/2012,p.48.

Mordovtsev 1876:D.Mordovtsev,Van’kaKain: Istoricheskiiocherk,Tip.Gratsianskogo,SPb.,1876.

Nagornyi-Riabov 1984: A. Nagornyi, G. Riabov, Povest’ obugolovnomrozyske,Priokskoeknizhnoeizdatel’stvo,Tula,1984.

Nikitin 2005: A. Nikitin, Petrogradskii labirint, «SekretnyematerialyXXveka(Xfiles)»,2005,XIII,166,p.115.

Pesni1872:Pesni,sobrannyeP.V.Kirevskim,izdannyeobshchestvomliubitelei russkoi slovesnosti, pod redaktsiei i s dopolneniiami P. A.Bessonova,vyp.9,M.,1872.

Papers


Plamper 2002: J.Plamper,Foucault’sGulag,«Kritika», 2002, III, 2,pp.255-280.

Polonskaia 1925: E. Polonskaia, V petle: Liricheskaia fil’ma, in S.Semenov (ed.),Kovsh: literaturno-khudozhestvennye al’manakhi, kn. 1,GIZ,L.,1925,pp.113-119.

Pristavkin2001:A.Pristavkin,Dolinasmertnoiteni:kniga2:StrastipoVan’keKainu,AST,Astrel’,Olimp,M.,2001.

Raï-Gonneau 2007: E. Raï-Gonneau, Van’ka Kain, le Cartoucherusse: Essai de biographie criminelle dans la Russie de Catherine II,«Revuedesétudesslaves»,2007,LXXVIII,1,pp.99-105.

Rawlings 1992:P. Rawlings,Drunks,Whores and Idle Apprentices:CriminalBiographiesintheEighteenthCentury,Routledge,LondonandNewYork,1992.

Razzakov 1996:F.Razzakov,Bandity vremen sotsializma:Khronikarossiiskoiprestupnosti1917-1991godov,EKSMO,M.,1996.

Rogov1998:A.Rogov,Van’kaKain,OLMA-press,M.,1998.Sheinin 1957: L. Sheinin, Staryi znakomyi: Povesti i rasskazy,

Goslitizdat,M.,1957.Sheinin 1984: L. Sheinin, Zapiski sledovatelia, Glavnaia redaktsiia

Kazakhskoisovetskoientsiklopedii,Alma-Ata,1984.Sheinin2003:L.Sheinin,DiaryofaCriminologist,UniversityPress

ofthePacific,Honolulu,2003.Sipovskii1902V.Sipovskii,IzistoriiromanaXVIIIv.(Van’kaKain),

«Izvestiia Otdela russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Akademii nauk», 1902,VII,2,pp.97-191.

Stepanov 2002: V. Stepanov, Len’ka Panteleev – syshchikov groza,«Limonka»,2002,CLXXXVII.

Tarasov2005:A.Tarasov,BandityvRossii,AST-Astrel’,M.,2005.Tokarev 2000: M. Tokarev, Len’ka Panteleev: Syshchikov groza,

Detektiv-press,M.,2000.Tolstaia2009:E.Tolstaia,Len’kaPanteleev:Kn.1:Fartovyichelovek;

Kn.2:Synpogibeli,Amfora,SPb.,2009.Vasilevskii-Kriuchkov 2004:A.Vasilevskii, P. Kriuchkov,Periodika,

«Novyi mir», 2004, 2,http://www.magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/2004/2/v22.html,19November2017.

Documents

Duccio Colombo Len’ka Panteleev and the traditions of Van