The History of a Town

The History of a Town (Russian: История одного города, romanized: Istoriya odnogo goroda; pre-reform spelling: Исторiя одного города), also translated as Foolsburg: The History of a Town, is an 1870 novel by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. The plot presents the history of the town of Glupov, which may be translated as the "town of fools", a grotesque microcosm of the Russian Empire. Written during the period of the "Great Reforms" in 19th-century Russia, it was neglected for a long time and rediscovered only in the 20th century. It is regarded by critics as the author's masterpiece and sometimes even compared to Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Background

In the 1867-1868 Saltykov-Shchedrin stopped working on his cycle of satirical sketches The Pompadours and started writing the novel, seeing it a kind of a spin-off for the cycle. In January 1869, the two first chapters appeared in the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine. A pause followed and lasted till the end of the year: the author wrote and published several satirical fairytales (such as "The Story of How a Muzhik Fed Two Generals") and satirical sketches. The rest of the novel was published in issues in 1870. The last chapter of the novel, which describes the rule of Ugryum-Burcheev, was written under the impressions of the murder of Ivan Ivanov by the socialist revolutionary group "People's Vengeance", later described by Karl Marx as "barracks communist".

Plot

The novel presents a fictional chronicle (letopis) of a provincial Russian town of Glupov (the name can be translated as Foolsville, Foolov, or Stupidtown), which depicts Glupov and its governors from its foundation by the tribe of Headbeaters to its end in 1825.