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.”