Confession of a Russian Sinner
(How to make money in Russia)
By Tamara Alexeeva
LETTER
Dear ,
My name is Tamara Alexeeva, I am a professional Russian writer, a member of several writers’ associations and an Anton Chekhov medal winner for the contribution to Russian prose.
Confession of a Russian Sinner is a novel well-known in Russia in its original Russian version; it was published in my home country as a book by the International Association of Fiction Writers and Publicists. The novel has just been translated into English by Michael Blekhman, a bilingual Canadian Russian and English writer.
I do hope that you will be interested in my novel, and its English version will be published in the USA.
Sincerely,
Tamara Alexeeva,
Lipetsk, Russia
SYNOPSIS
Confession is based on real-life facts, it is about the life in Russia in the epoch now called “the dashing 90s”. It describes the author’s trials and tribulations, from the childhood through adolescence up to the adulthood and giving birth to her third child. The whole story is absolutely true to life, so, in a sense, it could be called “documentary fiction”, although it is a work of literature, no matter how documentary it is.
The main character of Confession shares my name, Tamara, simply because she is myself. Tamara’s life journey is a difficult one. In order to make both ends meet and feed her first two young children, she had to become a thief, and a very skillful one to avoid punishment.
She also worked in a marketplace and had to deal with all kinds of evil people there, such as cops, tax inspectors, and many others. And what is vitally important, the people who rendered Tamara invaluable assistance were not Russians but migrant workers from the former Soviet republics. In fact, they helped her survive. That is why nationalism, extremism and xenophobia are quite unacceptable for Tamara, they look ridiculous to her.
In order to understand her own personality and spirituality, Tamara joined a pseudo-religious sect and saw even more hypocrisy and evil there. In Tamara’s opinion, the sects were the major force behind the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Life was extremely tough on Tamara. Many of her spiritual problems had roots in her childhood and, in particular, in her complicated relationship with her mother.
There was a period in Tamara’s life when she could not bear the hardships, especially the loss of her unborn baby, and spent weeks in a psychiatric hospital. She loved her second husband Oleg with all her soul, but she thought that he distanced himself from her and paid all his attention to the sect whose member he also was.
Tamara tried to find a spiritual shelter in a monastery, but she was disappointed again since the monastery hierarchs were not true servants of God.
After overcoming all the psychological barriers and helping her loving husband return to her, spiritually and physically, Tamara and Oleg set up their own business, a factory manufacturing traditional Russian toys. It was hard because, in the 90s, Russia was inundated by cheap Chinese toys, which were not bad at all but had nothing to do with Russian culture. However, working very hard and exploring any legal ways possible to promote their products, Tamara and Oleg finally achieved success.
But even that was not the end of the ordeals. By mere accident, Tamara was captured by professional gangsters who were going to rape and kill her should she refuse to give herself away to them of her own accord. Surrounded by a dozen of bandits, Tamara managed to figure out who the ringleader was and agreed to sleep with him. The man, whom she called “Quasimodo” in her mind, and herself felt an irresistible attraction to each other, and “Quasimodo”, the leader, decided to save her life and let her go as he didn’t want to kill the woman he was in love with.
Tamara came back home and, gradually, returned to normal life. She dedicated herself completely to her family, her husband, their long-awaited newborn baby, and to their joint business. She got rich at last and she managed to preserve her soul.
This novel is the confession of a sinner.
It is, in fact, my own confession.
