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Vovochka, The True Confessions of Vladimir Putin’s Best Friend and Confidant

Vovochka, The True Confessions of Vladimir Putin’s Best Friend and Confidant

by Alexander J. Motyl

Anaphora Literary Press, Augusta, Georgia 2015

Reviewed by Mykola Mick Dementiuk


     There is a curious scene in the dim humorous novel Vovochka when the two lead characters, both named Putin and both called Vovochka, are in Communist-controlled East Berlin and decide to hop over the Wall and partake of the heady pleasures of West Berlin.

     To a typical Alexander Motyl reader this may be chuckled at and passed over as a typical playful Motyl-jokesterism but to this reader, walljumping was a dire and deadly risk that East German young men partook of very often, as documented by Peter Schneider in his book The Wall Jumper, published in 1982, seven years before the Fall of the Wall but which as a political science professor Motyl would certainly be aware of. They’d daringly get over the Wall, drink and drug and party, then cross back over and resume their dull, boring lives.

     Hard to fathom this but with a young Putin Vovochka and his buddy, another Vovochka, these daring walljumping events became common place and clearly in their world-view certainly obvious. Their boldness and risk daring sets them apart and in good stead of each other as they grow and function in Berlin, Leningrad, Moscow burrowing their way through the quagmire that is the Soviet government and into the secret service, the KGB.

     But in a world which is rapidly and constantly changing, and with the troubled appearance of an old and senile Brezhnev, a drunken Yeltsin, and an inept Gorbachev, the stage is set for young Vovochka to play his part.

     Motyl shows us Vovochka as an egomaniac ruler of Russia, slowly and horribly taking back the Russian empire which was his under the Tsars and the Communist rulers, but lost and rapidly disappearing in the past decade or so, is getting back to where it was destined to be, under Vovochka’s strict control.

     The first part of the book is humorous, playful as the two Vovochka’s come out, but in the second part the funny cheer becomes humorless, stern and regimented as Vovochka holds his power and strengthens it in every direction. Thus once again becoming what he was destined to be, the supreme ruler of Russia, Tsar Vovochka. If you want to know what Russian history could be or is becoming, I highly recommend this book.

Alexander J. Motyl (b. 1953, NYC) is a writer, painter, and professor. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2008 and 2013, he is the author of six novels, Whiskey Priest, Who Killed Andrei Warhol, Flippancy, The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, My Orchidia, and The Taste of Snow, Fall River. He has done performances of his fiction and poetry at the Cornelia Street Café and the Bowery Poetry Club. Motyl’s artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows in NYC, Philadelphia, and Toronto and is on display on the Internet gallery, www.artsicle.com. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark and lives in NYC.

Reviewed by Mykola Mick Dementiuk

The Berlin Wall, 25 years ago

The Berlin Wall, 25 years ago

25 years ago, November 1989, I was traveling about in Europe when suddenly the whole scene exploded into cheers and jubilation, the Berlin Wall had come down... What do they say about all the King's horses and all the King's men?

I had just spent a grueling three years on my first novel, Holy Communion, which did come to win the Lambda Award and a nice Christmas break in Europe would be ideal. I was planning to go to the land of my teachers, Strindberg, Ibsen, Knut Hamsen, but in Malmo, Sweden the news was constant, something was happening in Eastern Europe. I took the train to Copenhagen and another to West Berlin, it was November 9, 1989...

These are a few photos of the event I saw during that historic week (a few were shown a week earlier).

Mykola Dementiuk-web page
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Lambda Literary Awards Winner 2013/Gay Erotica, 2009/Bisexual Fiction

Fall River

Fall River

by Alexander Motyl

published by Alternative Books Press

reviewed by Mykola Mick Dementiuk


In trying to probe into and remember the past, Alexander Motyl, author of Fall River, gives us a new meaning and resonance to the characters who lived so long ago, the 1920s, the 30s and the 40s, lived, worked, suffered and were erased by History.

There is a faint memory, a theme permeating the entire novel, echoing at certain points but uncertain of what the reality actually is. “ Smo’getsinyorize,” is constantly being repeated over and over by some characters until a Soviet overlord puts a bullet between the eyes, after much torture and castration,  and brings the entire charade to an end. The melody is “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” and seems to be one of the memories carried by the three main characters, Mike, Manya and Stefa, all brother and sisters at certain points of their lives, as they travel back and forth from nation to nation as if confused where to settle and live, Fall River, New York City or in Poland/Ukraine.

It starts off with Mike in a new country, learning the new tricks and the language of America and hitting up on every woman he comes upon, Edna, Wanda, or who? Poor Mike, what pain and suffering he brings upon himself.... Between Manya and Stefya, his sisters, they too are confused by the new country but they must work and raise families in the new homeland. But, of course, their father drags them back to Polish Ukraine after their mother’s death, only to live with the German Nazis coming into power in the late 1930s, early 40s.

Motyl paints a beautiful picture of the confused characters as they struggle to survive in a blustering country at a time when chaos seemed the order of the day. Being Ukrainian myself, I fully understand how almost impossible it may be to track down and isolate the scant moment of that past...

And Motyl does an excellent job in recreating the tenements, the moods, the feeling that was not only Polish Ukraine but the entire Ukrainian Lower East Side. Again, you could get lost and disappear in it. An excellent job, New York City and the Ukrainian Lower East Side lives again!


Alexander J. Motyl (b. 1953, NYC) is a writer, painter, and professor. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2008 and 2013, he is the author of six novels, Whiskey Priest, Who Killed Andrei Warhol, Flippancy, The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, My Orchidia, and The Taste of Snow. He has done performances of his fiction and poetry at the Cornelia Street Café and the Bowery Poetry Club. Motyl’s artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows in NYC, Philadelphia, and Toronto and is on display on the Internet gallery, www.artsicle.com. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark and lives in NYC.

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http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com
 Lambda Literary Awards Winner 2013/Gay Erotica, 2009/Bisexual Fiction

Baby Doll

Baby Doll

by Mykola Dementiuk
edited by Sally Miller

Mykola Dementiuk has again brought us an unusual story of a youth growing up in New York City. Skipping school as a daily routine, the main character of Baby Doll finds himself spending time at the East River Park, looking for girls. Instead he finds a pair of pink underwear which take him on an adventure that shapes his future.

Baby Doll gives us a literary look at the complicated psychodynamics of love and sex between a boy and a man in America in the early ’80s (the beginning era of AIDS, sex-offender witch-hunts, and gay/transvestite visibility). Like a good movie, Baby Doll is definitely worth giving a second (or third) read. Mykola’s mastery at storytelling and excellent writing will keep you engaged the first time through, but subsequent readings will help you understand the complex forces that unfold between the characters. You may question his opinions on femininity and relationships, but you won’t be able to ignore Mykola’s love for words as well as his understanding of a boy’s feelings and behavior.

One of the best things I'd written, still gets me hard...

read more: Baby Doll

Tenement Tales of New York

Tenement Tales of New York

James William Sullivan

reviewed by Mick Mykola Dementiuk

    “Pat Murphy, boy of eight years, whose clothes were dirty, whose hair was tousled, face smudged, and hands blackened…” Thus begins Tenement Tales of New York, an out-of-print book, published in 1895, and whom we have to thank Ephemeral New York for bringing it to our attention.

     I enjoyed reading this book of tales; it brought old New York to my touch and grasp. Such as Slob Murphy, the rowdy boy of New York streets in the late 1880-90s, who injures his hand and is at death’s door as a result. He has remorse for all the street fighting and shenanigans he’s done over his short years and seeing a vision of his dead mother, says the Lord’s Prayer and passes away.  A bit maudlin but I suppose that fits in with the time. His friends and acquaintances sadly look upon his passing, till someone says, " Wot's dey a-goin to do wit' his old cloze ? " Each hungry for getting something or other to take care of them; a shrug at the dead boy. Meanwhile his father, who is angry, but dares any police office to get at his son’s dead body. He speaks with a typical Irish accent, reminiscent of Charles Dickens characters, declaiming, avowing, and swearing. In a way, it sounds like a pleasant blarney which we no longer hear in these parts. (Oh, how New York has changed…) We follow the funeral procession to a solemn burial and what else? his father ends up dead drunk, and life in New York goes on…

     In another tale, Minnie Kelsey’s Wedding, a girl sits in a tenement all bundled up from the chill and looking out a window. “(D)oors slamming, children wailing, women scolding, boys hallooing, all mingling with the endless clatter of kitchen labors.” She had arrived in the city expecting a very different life but very quickly was trapped in its poverty and go-nowhere existence, nothing but a factory girl working day after day at the same tedious labor. Still, she has friends who invite her to attend a ball, and though she isn’t sure of going she says yes. At the ball she sees the man of her dreams. At first she intimidated when she hears other gossiping about his fiery nature and that he has a different girl every weekend. But alone with her the two-timing man proposes… A schmaltzy story, still with the rest of the tales in the book it fits right in.

     Cohen’s Figure is about a sewing machine operator, a boring lackluster job, but which has been done for countless year after year, while Luigi Barbieri concerns a new Italian merchant at Mott Street fruit emporium, who arranges every fruit on his stand but still can’t get any customers, just a few. “If he could but learn to speak fluently to the Americans, like his padrone, he might some day become a man of influence himself. He might even aspire to an East Side grocery store, with a stock of Italian goods.” He helps a little girl from getting run over by a truck and he himself is struck down. The only tears someone sheds is the vague obituary "I wonder what killed off the last one — laziness or bad whisky?"

      Leather’s Banishment is about a boy pick-pocketing a woman on the subway and disappearing with her screaming behind him; he’s done this countless times and will do it again. In Not Yet dreamer Ivan, whose always dreaming of ‘castles in Spain’ reads the paper and takes the subway each morning to work, where he labors before his sewing machine and reads reports from Russia and Germany.  At work it’s payday and suddenly he feels cheated, being fined for a ruined jacket collar which did didn’t do. Is outraged by the injustice but what can he do? He sinks back into his socialist dreams of the future where the world is all right and fair. Instead “…from the open doorways of the tenements, and falling into the broken lines of passers- by hurrying along on the sidewalks, were poor-looking work-people,— men, women, children.”

    While in A Young Desperado a rich 7 year old boy accidentally wanders into the poor neighborhood where the poor kids attack him. He meets other boys; one takes him around the city, on buses and cars and tells him that he eats about once a week. Teaches him the way of the streets...

     These different tales about immigrant life in New York City in the 1890s show that the city is always throbbing and booming, and always one step ahead of everybody. In many of the stories we get glimpses of what it was like among the poor folk. What this book does is bring the street life into clear focus and vision, the different crowds, the traffic on the street, the rubbish, the debris and the countless other little things which were a part of living in New York, uptown, downtown, the poor are everywhere, East Side, West Side, all around the town…so to speak. Still, I enjoyed it very much; captures the mood of New York and how it was so very long ago. As it is drastically changing now it has been constantly changing on and on…  

An aside: Though I very much liked reading this there is a more recent book about New York in the early 1900s The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker A book that will certainly set your old New York imagination spinning. A grand book!

Ephemeral New York
http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com