Today, when the atmosphere in Russia seems to be returning to the old days of the Soviet Union,
in the sense that freedom is increasingly being suppressed and the citizens increasingly kept
under the power of a censored media, and when the world community is witnessing a resurge of
the authoritarian regime armed with nuclear missiles and with a monopoly in oil and natural gas
supply to Europe, there is an even more urgent need for a literary presentation of the period of
the Soviet Union’s fall.

Now, English translation of this novel is complete. Here is the synopsis of the novel.
Who knows? Perhaps this may become a making of yet another blockbuster.)

LAND OF LEGEND, LAND OF DREAM
The Tale of Ilya

The fate of a liberally-minded Russian during time of revolution is the theme of the famous novel
Doctor Zhivago. Akio Kawato’s novel Land of Legend, Land of Dream may well be called a Doctor
Zhivago for our times. During the chaos accompanying the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991,
people again fell prey to the merciless forces of the times. Without law and order people’s desires
and ambitions went uncontrolled. This period of crisis calls for a literary interpretation, but to date
no large-scale historical novel about the period has been published.

The author of Land of Legend, Land of Dream, Akio Kawato, is a retired high-ranking Japanese
diplomat who spent a total of eleven years in the Soviet Union and later Russia. Probably he is the only diplomat in the world who witnessed almost all the important events in the country during this period of tremendous change: the Brezhnev era, Brezhnev’s demise, the period from Andropov to
the coming of power of Gorbachev, the failed coup-d’etat in August 1991, the fall of the Soviet
Union, the shelling of the Parliament in October 2003, and the coming to power of President
Putin.

Having studied at the Soviet Research Center at Harvard University, the author has an extensive
knowledge of Russian history and culture, which is fully reflected in the novel. He did extensive
background research for the novel and also traveled to Russian rural areas.

Land of Legend, Land of Dream was conceived as a Russian novel and intended to become part of
the corpus of Russian literature. Although the original is in Japanese (published by “Soshisha” in
July 2004), the Russian translation was closely checked by the author, who has a good command
of Russian. The Russian version was published by the renowned publisher “Vagrius” in December
2003 to many positive reviews. Most Russians did not realize that the novel was written by a
foreigner.

The underlying themes of the novel are the historical aspirations of the Russian people for free-
dom and their deep ties to nature. The novel examines how the excessive capitalist values of mo-
dern times both clashed and merged with the Communist society that had existed there for
seventy years. Land of Legend, Land of Dream might be called a symphony of human evils and bigo-
try mixed with love and humanity.

The hero of the novel, Ilya Makoshin, has as a prototype the famous Russian poet, singer, song-
writer, and actor, the late Vladimir Vysotsky, a flamboyant and sincere man. Ilya, born in 1952 in a
remote province, moves to Moscow and becomes a prominent journalist during the time of perest-
roika. After Ilya’s work as a journalist begins to deviate from the Party line during Gorbachev’s
rule, the authorities often criticize his articles. Frustrated with incessant interference by the
Gorbachev government, he establishes his own newspaper, “The New Era” in 1990. He publishes a
lengthy article, advocating reform from the bottom, not from the top.

In the chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union, newspapers began to lose their power,
however. Ilya quits his job, and tries to become one of the new businessmen, and when he fails, he
sinks into depression and alcoholism. Later he realizes that his songs can soothe and inspire the
people in these difficult times and he becomes a popular singer-songwriter. Ilya’s popularity
threatens the president’s entourage, ultra-nationalists, and the newly rich, who are targets of
harsh criticism in his songs. At the end of the novel at an outdoor concert Ilya is shot by an
unknown assassin.

A Brief Outline of Plot and Characters
The novel is divided into two parts.
The first chapter in Part One, “Genesis,” describes Ilya’s birth in the village and his mother’s death. He is raised by his grandmother Agafiya.

Chapter 2, “The Promised Land,” recounts the euphoric period of the first years of Mikhail Gorba-
chev’s reign. The main characters are introduced. Everyone has his or her own dream to realize.
Chapter 3, “The Broken Vessel,” shows how each person’s dream gets shattered as Gorbachev’s
perestroika policy spins out of control, causing economic failure and the collapse of Eastern Euro-
pe.

The characters in Part One include the following;
Ilya’s wife, Lyuba, is a good woman; they have a daughter, Yuliya. On a business trip to Spain, Ilya
has an affair with a beautiful, enigmatic KGB agent, Aurora. Aurora is a tragic Russian heroine.
When she was young, her beauty attracted the attention of Savva Gnoyev, a powerful and corrupt
bureaucrat in the Moscow City government. He secretly kills her father and adopts Aurora as his
daughter and abuses her. Her suffering leads her to work for the secret police and in that capacity she follows Ilya to Spain, where their affair begins. She is also the leader of a motorcycle gang, the
Hell’s Wolves.

Ilya’s daughter, Yuliya, who comes of age during the novel falls in love with Roman, the son of a
working-class family. Yuliya and Roman reflect the views of younger Russians untainted by Soviet
ways of thinking. Their romance is a union of different social backgrounds (their model is “Romeo
and Juliet”): the gap and the mutual hatred between the elite and the masses is a permanent pro-
blem in Russia.

Roman’s father, Yevgeny, a simple factory worker, hates Julia’s family. Roman later leaves Yuliya
to try his hand at becoming rich, believing that only wealth can raise him to the level of Yuliya’s
family.

Olga Makoshina, Ilya’s cousin, is a Moscow district Communist Party functionary. When the Gorba-
chev reform period begins, she starts her own business, quickly becomes successful, and goes on
to establish a political party to fight for the people’s well being. Her partner Alliluyev, an ex-math
teacher turned business oligarch, becomes obsessed by money, though he maintains spiritual aspi-
rations.

Gnoyev, the seducer of Aurora, is a totally immoral crime boss who thrives as law and order break
down in society. Usurping public property he later opens his own bank and forms a powerful con-
cern.
Aleksandr Sofronchuk, an old friend of Ilya’s, works as a speechwriter for Gorbachev, and after
Yeltsin comes to power, he emigrates to the US. Living in the Boston area, he writes letters to
Ilya, comparing Russia with the United States.
Madame Miller, Aurora’s aunt, is a famous poet with a turbulent past. Stalin executed her parents, and she was raised in a special orphanage for “Children of the Class Enemies”. Now during perest-
roika she hosts a salon where Moscow’s prominent intellectuals gather.

Part Two of the novel begins with a chapter called “The Burning Bush,” a recollection of the cha-
os that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. This part is written in a more crisp, dry, and rhythmic
style than the first half of the novel, reflecting the atmosphere of the time—merciless and amoral. The characters’ lives are presented in a rather fragmented way, for during the chaos the meaning
of an individual is reduced to a minimum.

Russia, in a fit of excitement, seems to have parted with her own past and now longs for Western
civilization. People fight with each other for wealth, small kiosks pop up, the names of streets are changed overnight, and the previous social law and order is upset. Money and violence come to
rule society. Ilya realizes that the times have changed and he now means nothing. Crimes now
affect the lives of ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, nightlife flourishes in Moscow, but it is tinted by a
sad, futile feeling like that of the Weimar Republic after the World War I.

Against this background Madame Miller receives a farewell letter from Aurora. After bearing a child
of Ilya and just after the coup-d’etat in August 1991 failed, disgusted by her own being, she has
commited suicide, throwing herself on a scarlet BMW motorcycle to Moscow River.

As the press loses its former influence on politics, Ilya leaves journalism and tries to become one
of the new businessmen, but he is too honest to succeed in the news grabs for power that follow privatization. After his failure he takes to drink, but in a visit to his home village Nanovka he expe-
riences a rebirth as a singer and songwriter. The Russian soil, the Russian village is what Ilya
always returns to and what he always draws his strength from.

Ilya’s daughter Yulia’s fiancé Roman had involved with the mafia and for a while fights as mercena-
ry in Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, his father Yevgeny, a worker, and mother Parasha become homeless
because the mafia appropriated their apartment.

Chapter 5, “Apocalypse,” continues the examination of human vanity and bigotry. It ends with the
shelling of the Parliament building by President Yeltsin. There are positive signs in Moscow: a
consumption boom. Not only foreign capital but also Russians open new shops, though most
Muscovites remain poor.

Aurora returns. She has been saved after her suicide attempt, but has lost her memory. She
becomes a prostitute. Madame Miller obtains a police document, which suggests that Aurora is
alive and asks Ilya to search for Aurora. Ilya finally finds her but she no longer knows who he is. Ilya becomes desperate. He drinks and goes out looking for one-night stands. One evening Ilya finds a
girl Oksana, who has run away from home. When they take to the street Oksana dances to Ilya’s
songs, and the performance attracts passersby.

After Oksana leaves Ilya, he spends one day at a monastery. A child comes out of the church, led by an elderly nun. The child reminds Ilya of someone. The nun tells him that two years earlier a
young woman on a scarlet motorcycle came by and with tears in her eyes left the child in front of
orphanage. Ilya realizes that the child is his son. However, he is afraid to declare fatherhood and
ashamed of his own appearance: a drunken beggar in rags.

Madame Miller and her husband decide to emigrate to California. She tells Ilya that Savva is sear-
ching for the young Ilya and proposes to adopt him and take him to the USA.
In a state of despair, Ilya decides to travel around the country. One day he realizes that an armed
conflict is approaching Sukhumi, where his wife, Lyuba, lives. Ilya rushes to Sukhumi to rescue
Lyuba. They reunite amid warfare.

In addition to the novel’s main plot, there is a subplot involving Medieval Novgorod. Ilya’s father
Volkhov, whom he never knew as a child, is a famous scholar of medieval Russia and pre-Christian
rites (“The search of father” is another leit-motif in the novel). He discovers an ancient text
from Novgorod that tells of the tragic life of a nun. The city of Novgorod, which used to have a
democratic form of government, serves as a symbol of the freedom lost in Russian history.

Maria, the nun in ancient Novgorod, falls in love with a warrior by the name of Ilya, but commits
suicide after being raped by a Church elder. The modern heroine, Aurora, is a reincarnation of
Maria, and when she later confronts her ex-seducer Savva Gnoyev, his voice resurrects her lost
memory, the memory of not only her own life but also the one thousand years’ plight of the Russian people. Aurora, set on revenge, shoots Savva and is shot by one of his guards.

In Chapter 6, “Resurrection,” in May 1994, Yuliya and Roman take their son Igor to Nanovka, her father’s native village.
Ilya is living with his wife Lyuba again. He is now a well-known singer and songwriter.
At an old pagan ritual of the summer solstice in Moscow, Ilya takes up a guitar and begins to sing,
thus drawing the attention of the audience and totally disrupting a rally of a right-wing political
party, which his sister-in law and daughter of Volkhov, Anastasiya, founded.

Ilya reads his father Volkhov’s book “The Story of Ilya and Maria---A Love in ancient Novgorod.”
He sees that the text of Maria the nun’s farewell letter is identical to that of Aurora.

Ilya gives a concert in the summer of 1994 sponsored by Olga’s Party for Prosperity. Olga
announces to the public that she intends to recommend Ilya as the new leader of her party. He
sings a number of political songs whose message is that the people have to build a society in which they can all work together. He understands it’s his mission to sing the ideas and emotions of the
people. As he sings, however, he is shot in the chest. In his last vision Moscow is flooded with
water, and out of its waves emerges the image of his old village.

The novel concludes with a brief “Epilogue” that takes the form of a letter from Madame Miller
written in San Francisco, where she has taken the young Ilya, the son of Ilya and her niece Aurora. Madame Miller confides that she has learned to love the open, liberal American spirit and promises to take good care of Ilya.