The Little Golden Calf
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| Author | Ilf and Petrov |
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| Original title | Золотой телёнок |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Satirical novel |
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Publication date
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1931 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Twelve Chairs |
The Golden Calf (Russian: Золотой телёнок, Zolotoy telyonok) is a famous satirical novel by Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, released in 1931. Its main character, Ostap Bender, also appeared in a previous novel by the authors called The Twelve Chairs. The title alludes to the "Golden calf" of the Bible; another possible rendering of it in English, less literal but better tuned to the air of the novel, would be "The Gilded Calf".
Ostap Bender is still alive (but sports a scar across his neck), after barely surviving the assassination attempt in the previous book, which he once briefly mentions as "stupid business". This time he hears a story about a "clandestine millionaire" named Alexandr Koreiko. Koreiko has made millions through various illegal enterprises by taking advantage of the widespread corruption in the New Economic Policy (NEP) period while pretending to live on an office clerk's salary of 46 rubles a month. Koreiko lives in Chernomorsk (literally: Black Sea city, referring to the city of Odessa) and keeps his large stash of ill-gotten money in a suitcase, waiting for the fall of the Soviet government, so that he can make use of it. Together with two petty criminals Balaganov and Panikovsky, and an extremely naive and innocent car driver Kozlevich, Bender finds out about Koreiko and starts to collect all the information he can get on his business activities. Koreiko tries to flee, but Bender eventually tracks him down in Turkestan, on the newly built Turkestan–Siberia Railway. He then blackmails him into giving him a million rubles.
Suddenly rich, Bender faces the problem of how to spend his money in a Communist country where there are no legal millionaires. Nothing of the life of the rich that Bender dreamt of seems possible in the Soviet Union. Frustrated, Bender even decides to anonymously donate the money to the Ministry of Finance, but changes his mind. He turns the money into jewels and gold, and tries to cross the Romanian border, only to be robbed by the Romanian border guards, leaving him only with a medal, the Order of the Golden Fleece.
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Wikipedia