Can you imagine what it must have been like to live in the Soviet Union during the time of Stalin’s Terror? Yury Dombrovsky, author of The Keeper of Antiquities, did not have to imagine it because he lived through it. The Keeper of Antiquities is a novel that follows our narrator, Dombrovsky himself, as he lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at that time called Alma-Ata. Many events are covered throughout the novel showcasing his job as the “Keeper of Antiquities” at the museum housed in the Ascension Cathedral built by the architect Andrei Pavlovich Zenkov. The reader learns of a rumored escaped boa-constrictor, the antagonist relationship between the narrator and the local librarian, and the keeper’s long-ago predecessor. One almost forgets that the novel takes place during the 1930s in the Soviet Union. However, as the novel progresses disagreements and other events turn into potentially dangerous situations for the keeper. He finds it difficult to live safely in the space that is cut out for him in the museum.
There’s a slow build of information in the story. As mentioned earlier, many events take place, but we don’t know which particular ones could be relevant later. Not until it comes up again we think “Wow, I remember him mentioning the Mountain Giant Collective Farm in chapter 2!” and the threads all come together. Dombrovsky’s way of storytelling feels very much like someone just describing their life and the events that take place, but by the end, the arc of the story becomes more clear. The seeds planted early on, grow and become fully-formed plot points that the protagonist has to contend with. Dombrovsky seems to create a cathedral of words not unlike Zenkov’s magnificent wooden one. He builds and builds with well-placed side-plots until the end of the novel when we take a step back, we can see how everything fits together.
Part of Dombrovsky’s cathedral transitions into the realities of living during the Terror. During the Great Terror, or Purges, there were waves of mass denunciations by the state but also from everyday people who wanted to protect themselves or truly believed in the world the Soviet Union wanted to create. Anyone could become an enemy of the state for any reason; there was no winning. Any action you take could be spun into a story where you are plotting the demise of the USSR.
It is clear from the first argument he gets into with Rodionov, an old man whom he calls a “treasure-hunter,” that the keeper has a tendency to butt heads with people. Memorably later in the novel, Clara, the young store-woman at the museum, asks the narrator, “Why do you always have to bait these people, infuriate them?” The keeper’s character of saying what he means, to a fault, makes for an incredibly compelling novel when paired with the backdrop of the Soviet Union. As a reader, we know that it must be inevitable that the keeper encounters the NKVD, especially since we never learn the exact circumstances of his departure from Moscow. We are left wondering who is the Keeper of Antiquities?
Although The Keeper of Antiquities absolutely stands on its own without further research into Dombrovsky, Dombrovsky had an intriguing life before and after the events of the story. He was exiled to Kazakhstan after being arrested in Moscow for “anti-soviet agitation and perpetuating cynical acts of hooliganism,” that is he apparently got drunk with some friends and tore down a soviet flag to the ground. Over the course of his life, he is repeatedly arrested and confronted by the NKVD, and it seems that no matter what he does, he is unable to keep his head down out of trouble. I, for one, found that I really admired his integrity and sense of justice, without which his tale could have been so similar to others just trying to stay alive during that period. No one of course is to blame for wanting to stay safe, but Dombrovsky’s simple courage in saying what he believed is inspiring to read.
If you want to read a book that provides a personal, human perspective on one man’s experience living in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, this is the book for you. But it’s also for the people who find joy in the little details and can see connections between disparate stories. This book is a recounting of his life, filled with anecdotes but also conversations that you don’t realize are relevant until 3 chapters later. I believe I will thoroughly enjoy re-reading The Keeper of Antiquities in a few years when the details have smudged around the edges in my memory, and I then can enjoy the foreshadowing with a little more knowledge of the plot.
