Overburdened with Evil (Russian: Отягощённые злом) is a philosophical novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, written in 1986–1988, the last major work of the co-authors. It was first published in the magazine Yunost (issues 6–7 for 1988), and in 1989 it was included in the second volume of Selected Works by the publisher Moskovsky Rabochiy. The first separate book edition with illustrations by Yana Ashmarina and an afterword by Sergey Pereslegin was published by the commercial publisher Prometheus. After 1989, the novel was constantly included in all collected works of the Strugatskys. It has been translated into English, Bulgarian, German, and Polish.
The plot is constructed on the principle of a novel within a novel; both plot lines are presented through the perception of the main characters, who exist in many plot and space-time layers. The manuscript OZ, whose formal author is the astronomer Sergei Manokhin, tells of the coming to the late 1980s Soviet Union of the Demiurge, concerned about the fate of the world he created. He is served by the cunning Agasfer Lukich and some other authors of world salvation projects, whom the Demiurge keeps with him. Finally, it is Ahasuerus (in Overburdened with Evil he is also the immortal apostle John the Evangelist, a collector of human souls who was also at the origins of Islam under the name Rakhkhal) who brings to the Demiurge the Man with a capital M — Georgy Anatolyevich Nosov. In the second plot line, events are presented from the diary of G. A. Nosov's student — Igor Mytarin. Nosov is a great pedagogue, practitioner, and theorist who heads a lyceum in the city of Tashlinsk in the first third of the 21st century. Unexpectedly for the city authorities and even his own students, he stands up for a subculture completely alien to everyone, the so-called Flora (in which hippies are recognized), and, defending his ideals, sacrifices himself to the enraged crowd.
The novel was published during the perestroika era and was negatively evaluated by critics, who perceived it as a creative failure: a political pamphlet or paraphrase of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. 21st-century researchers emphasize the misunderstanding of the novel by contemporaries and its milestone character for the Strugatskys' work, as Overburdened with Evil is entirely devoted to utopia and pedagogy as means of saving the world, and to the relations between power and culture.
Plot Doomed by Evil is the third of the Strugatskys' works that are constructed based on the "novel within a novel" device (also Snail on the Slope and Lame Fate). The chapters alternate: these are excerpts from the diary of a student at the Tashlinsk Lyceum, Igor Mytarin (covering events from July 10 to 21), and chapters from the manuscript OZ, which the teacher G. A. Nosov gave to Igor. Inside the OZ manuscript are chapters about the Demiurge and his assistants (the events in these chapters are presented from the perspective of the astronomer Sergei Manokhin), as well as a peculiarly interpreted Gospel plot and the adventures of Ahasuerus in the first century of Islam. The main leitmotif of the novel is the distortion and unreliability of history: "It wasn't like that at all, not like that at all".
Manuscript OZ At the end of the 1980s, in an apartment in one of the Soviet panel blocks, the Demiurge materialized, served by the sardonic sophist Ahasuerus Lukich Prudkov as an insurance agent (in appearance, he resembles Yevgeny Leonov). The "insurance agent" addresses the Demiurge by the names of all humanity's gods — Yahweh, Ptah, Khnum, Ilmarinen, the Weaver and the Potter, and others. The Demiurge is a somewhat eerie creature who is compared to Woland: with greenish skin, black hands that have more joints on the fingers and elbows than a human should have, a nose disfigured by disease, a brow without eyebrows, and eyes speckled with bloody streaks on the whites. His eyes always burned with one expression: "furious frenzied onslaught mixed with disgust". As it turns out later, Ahasuerus was in ancient times the apostle John the Evangelist, who became the Eternal Jew, and the Quranic , a companion of Musaylima and the lover of the prophetess Sajah of Mesopotamia. The Demiurge receives the persons he needs at his place, fulfilling their cherished dreams, for which they pay with service. The role of secretary to the Demiurge is played by the astronomer Sergei Korneevich Manokhin, who once made a mistake in his scientific work and begged to change the laws of the universe so that the astrophysical effect he invented would manifest in reality. He is in constant bewilderment, for he has fallen into the service of "some global experimenters embroidering satin stitch on all of humanity," but he is not sure of their dark nature. Manokhin secretly writes memoirs, narrating the affairs of the Demiurge and Ahasuerus. Over time, the Demiurge begins to summon people from the present, the past (including Judas), and the future to his apartment, wanting to learn their recipes for correcting humanity. Mostly, he encounters ideologues, politicians, and military men; the Demiurge is deeply dissatisfied and grumbles that "they're all surgeons or bonesetters. There's not a single therapist among them!" Such are the dry pedant Pyotr Petrovich Kolpakov, the neofascist Marek Parasyukhin, and the caricatured Jew Matvey Matveyevich Gershkovich (Mordechai Mordekhaevich Gershenzon). Sometimes, relatively harmless romantics in construction brigade jackets come across, but their thoughts are simple and easy to confuse. In the finale, Ahasuerus brings the true Man to the Demiurge — Georgy Anatolyevich. The manuscript breaks off here; it is reported that its ending was probably destroyed by G. A. Nosov himself "out of modesty".
Igor Mytarin's diary The action unfolds forty years later in the provincial town of Tashlinsk. Here exists an elite lyceum where people demonstrating pedagogical talent are selected and educated. The director of the lyceum, Georgy Anatolyevich Nosov, a deputy, merited teacher, member of the city council, a famous person, preaches an ethical teaching that is more Christ-like than the Demiurge's, and his students resemble the Apostles. The text is filled with Gospel allusions, and the narrative associated with the figure of G. A. Nosov is almost entirely placed in the diary of his student with the telling surname Mytarin. Nosov's task is to cultivate a pedagogical elite, turning students into educators of the world; therefore, he is the "therapist of the Demiurge." He teaches to approach one's work responsibly, moreover, he instructs not only the lyceum students in this, but also people in power; he teaches to work constantly and love people even if they are ugly, sick, and exude malice. Therefore, he sends his lyceum students to hospitals to care for the dying and assist in operations, to gain experience of "non-squeamish love." In the Teacher's view, humanity is above all rules, and his main requirements are "understanding and mercy".Understanding is the lever, tool, instrument that the teacher uses in his work.
Mercy is the teacher's ethical position in relation to the object of his work, a way of perception.
Where there is mercy,—there is education. Where there is no mercy or everything except mercy,— its training.
Through mercy, the Man's education occurs.
In its absence, the production of semi-finished products occurs: engineer, worker.
In the production of semi-finished products, humanity has undoubtedly succeeded. Is it easier? Or has there never been enough time for the Man's education? Or resources?
No, apparently, there was simply no need.Nosov's ethical teaching became the subject of heated debates: G. A. defends a strange cluster of youth—the so-called Flora. Its participants —"flowers"— gather together, lead a vegetative lifestyle, speak in "woody" jargon understandable only to their subculture, like hippies, consume alcohol, drugs, and practice promiscuous relations. They have rejected the world around them, full, in their opinion, of lies, greed, and coercion. Flora has an ideologue —""— preaching only one law: "do not interfere" ("If you don't feel like doing it, do nothing"). Nosov does everything possible to fend off Flora from attacks by Komsomol members, city authorities, and the education department, for he seeks to instill in people a thirst for understanding. In the finale, Nosov, accompanied by a few students, arrives at the Flora camp when the dust from the column of townspeople marching to disperse the informals is already visible on the horizon.
Creation and publication Boris Strugatsky wrote in Comments on the Past:This was the last novel , the most complex, even perhaps overcomplicated, the most unusual, and probably the least popular of all. The authors themselves, however, considered it one of the best—too many emotional efforts, reflections, disputes, and most cherished ideas had been invested in it to feel otherwise. Here is the favorite, long-cherished idea of the Teacher with a capital T—for the first time we attempted to write about this person "live" and were pleased with the attempt. Here is the long-standing, long-cherished dream of writing a historical novel—in the manner of Lion Feuchtwanger and from the position of a person who in no way wants to believe in the existence of objective and reliable historical truth ("it wasn't like that at all, not like that at all").
Concept's development The initial concept arose in the autumn of 1981, when Arkady Strugatsky, working on the story Details of the Life of Nikita Vorontsov, sought consultations from Arkady Weiner. Then the co-authors came up with the idea "to write a joint science fiction detective—so to speak, 'with four heads'". The meeting of the Strugatsky brothers with the Weiner brothers took place on November 9, 1981, where the general principles of the future work were discussed. The idea was roughly as follows: a Pale Man wanders through the remote province buying up living human souls. The novel was to consist of two parts—the mystical one, which the Strugatskys were to write, and the detective-realistic one—by the Weiner brothers. In the notes on this meeting, the main characters figured: the astronomer Sergei Korneevich Manokhin (narrator) and Ahasuerus Kuzmich Prudkov (soul buyer). The setting was to be the non-existent town of Tashlinsk. However, due to Arkady Weiner's illness, the project stalled, and then the writers had other matters. In 1982–1983, the Strugatskys periodically returned to the concept under the tentative title Chichikov, 20th Century, and on November 4, 1983, Arkady Strugatsky discussed this project with Georgy Weiner. In the end, negotiations with the Weiners proved unproductive, and attempts at co-authorship finally ceased.