Sažajte, i vyrastet di Andrej Rubanov: ritratto di un eroe degli Anni Novanta

On the morning of August 15, 1996, the twenty-seven-year-old Andrej Rubanov, co-owner of a small and semi-secret banking institution, was arrested for laundering money. On April 28, 1999, he is released from a detention that has lasted two years, eight months, and thirteen days. Since he lacks money, the only (and supreme) commodity recognized in Yeltsin's Russia, Rubanov is unable to count on outside help. And he is unable, in his constant efforts to resist prison, to find comfort even in the myth of the radiant future, from which Soviet heroes drew their moral force, while nothing in his autobiographical novel authorizes us to suppose that he possesses the gift of religious faith. "Andrjucha the Dealmaker", as he is renamed by his fellow inmates, basically manages to avoid being destroyed by the experience of prison thanks to personal qualities such as obstinacy, self-control and a sense of his own dignity. And he is honest enough to not crow about any inner misgivings for having broken the law. For this reason, the personage of Andrej Rubanov that emerges from this novel deserves the appellation "hero" in an era as grossly amoral as that of Russia in the 1990s.