The Blue Man

Lagin’s fantastic experiment: what would a convinced socialist do when thrown into pre-revolutionary Russia? The author’s last and deepest novel, “The Old Man Hottabych.” The fantastic novel “The Blue Man” by Lazar Lagin was written for seven long years, from 1957 to 1964. In it, the author poured his ideas and dreams about an exemplary Soviet person.

The main hero, Yura Antoshin, a student at the Energy Institute and a convinced socialist, is somehow transported from 1959 to 1893. Immersing himself in the everyday life and culture of late 19th-century tsarist Russia, he becomes convinced of the correctness of his views and creates an underground communist circle. In the writer’s imagination, “The Blue Man” is an idealist and a revolutionary—someone who is able to “look above his own personal well-being.”