Review of 'The Twelve Chairs' by Ilf and Petrov

I saw the Mel Brooks film years ago, and remember it as quite funny - enjoyable to watch as a socialist, not horribly anti-Soviet and with some jokes that appealled to someone who knew a bit about the history. So I have meant to read the book but never got round to it until I came across a copy on someone's shelf.

It's also quite funny, and quite surprising too. It's set in the late 1920s, which I think is the period of the NEP, so the economic and political situation feels quite fluid, open and a bit unresolved. I read in the afternote that Ilf and Petrov wrote political humour and satire, and never had any trouble from the authorities, and it's not hard to see why - there's really nothing at all anti-Soviet in the book at all. The targets of the humour are a venial priest, a grasping ex-noble, a grifter...all people that the Soviet authorities would be pleased to see ridiculed, as long as it was OK to acknowledge their existence. There's a ridiculous group of anti-Communist conspirators too. I wonder if all satire ends up being small-c conservative, so that in a Communist country it's also pro-regime.

That said, it really is quite enjoyable, well-written, and funny.