The Ostap Bender dilogy: What the authors omitted to mention

The article refines the plot source of the novel “The Twelve Chairs” byIlya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. The author puts forward a reasoned hypothesis accordingto which the list of sources traditionally mentioned by researchers consists not only ofworks by Arthur Conan Doyle, Lev Lunts and Aron Erlikh, but may as well includethe court report signed “A. Trol” and published in the “Gudok” newspaper in February1927. The pseudonym “A. Trol” was used by the poet, translator, critic and poetryscholar Georgy Shengeli during his 1925 – 1928 period of work in “Gudok”. Thearticle questions the believability of a well-known story stating that the basic storylineof the novel was granted to Ilf and Petrov by Valentin Kataev. The plot of the chapter“The End of the Crow’s Nest” from the novel “The Little Golden Calf”, accordingto the author, is entirely borrowed from the court report by “A. Trol”, published in“Gudok” in October 1926. Boris Flit’s critical essay published in “Gudok” in August1928 is proposed to be considered the first review of “The Twelve Chairs”; Flitwas eventually imprisoned and executed. In the penultimate section of the article apossible origin of the protagonist’s surname is specified: supposedly, Ostap gained hissurname from a pseudonym of a “Gudok” worker correspondent. Thus, observationsand conclusions presented in the article make significant adjustments to the study ofthe creative history of Ilf and Petrov’s dilogy.