"Ostap Bender Meets Turksib: Il’f and Petrov on the Sovietisation of Central Asia"

The Little Golden Calf (Zolotoi telënok, 1931), a still popular comic novel by Soviet writers Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov, culminates at the festivities marking the completion of the Turkestano-Siberian Railroad, or “Turksib”, a monumental achievement for Soviet industry and another step towards the Soviet domination of Central Asia. This chapter examines the ambivalent views on Central Asia’s modernisation that are expressed by the novel’s protagonist, Ostap Bender and whether his regret for the inevitable fate of traditional cultures before Soviet ex- pansion is shared by the novel’s authors. In order to better understand the extent to which Il’f and Petrov themselves had doubts about Turksib’s mission, we con- textualize The Little Golden Calf in their other writings that address the Soviet encounter with Central Asia, namely newspaper articles, diaries and postcards from Il’f’s first trip to the region in 1925 and the two authors’ joint reportage on traveling to the opening festivities of Turksib in 1930.