FICTION

A RUSSIAN REQUIEM by Roland Merullo (Little Brown: $21.92; 368 pp.) From the beginning, the Russians have been unable--unwilling?--to function without a Daddy. “Altogether too much adulation,� says a character in “A Russian Requiem,� “the feudal lord, the czar, the state, Lenin, Stalin. . . . It (has) turned Russia into a land of perpetual children.� Indeed, the latest poll (before, of course, the current travails) indicates that a majority of Russians would have preferred the rightists to succeed in the abortive putsch of 1991.

Here, then, is a novel--uneven but provocative--exploring the conflict between Daddy, all the Daddies, and the occasional, isolated act of defiance in a land where “there was a price to be paid for even the smallest heroism. In this country things had blood on them.� The setting is “Vostok,� one of those ghastly, anonymous cities defacing the provinces, “singularly gray and featureless and bereft of beauty.� The time is the fortnight preceding the ’91 coup--in a sense, the recent future. The hero is Sergei Propenko, minor Russian government functionary, self-described “party member with no sausage on his plate,� who, after a lifetime of conformity, finally dares to defy. The catalyst is Anton Czesich, minor U.S. government functionary with plenty of sausage.

Merullo’s writing is serviceable, with a pepper of grace notes. Fittingly, the outcome of his story largely remains in doubt. In the end, his prayer is poignant: “I ask of (Russia) the courage to live unprotected.�