This is the saddest dog story you will ever read.
Translated from the Russian by Michael Glenny, Georgi Vladimov’s novel is told from the perspective of Ruslan, a guard dog in a Soviet prison camp. Ruslan has been trained from puppyhood to be violent, to bite, bare his teeth, intimidate prisoners, and round up runaways. And the Gulag labor camps, which housed millions of political prisoners and criminals in the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s, are Ruslan’s Soviet Union.
Ruslan is in a sense a prisoner, though he does not intuit this. He worships his sadistic master, the only man (or dog!) who pays attention to him. Unconsciously, Ruslan adopts his master’s attitudes (the dog’s Russian is fluent) and scorns the prisoners who converse seriously about leaving the camp to return to a better life in towns and cities.
And then in the 1950s, Ruslan wakes up one morning to find the camp deserted. All the guards, dogs, and prisoners are gone, except Ruslan’s master, who drives Ruslan out of the camp to town. Ruslan does not understand that he and his master must be separated forever: he spends his days searching for his master in town.
Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, writes the excellent introduction to Faithful Ruslan. Adams knows dogs very well: his novel The Plague Dogs is the story of two dogs who escape an animal testing center.
Adams writes, “For Ruslan, of course, whether man or dog, is a Soviet citizen, an honest, decent fellow (like Boxer in Animal Farm), self-respecting, good-hearted, full of courage, trying his level best to do what he feels is expected of him by those – men? gods? – who must surely know better than himself.”
And certainly I am taken by the idea of Ruslan as a Soviet citizen. He is loyal to the Gulag system: he doesn’t understand the town. He is absolutely faithful to his master, and cannot comprehend how other dogs can transfer their affection to new masters.
Thinking of other dogs in literature, I am reminded of Gabriel Oak’s enthusiastic dog, George, in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. Instead of herding the sheep, George chases the entire flock over a precipice.
Hardy writes, “As far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, still under the impression that since he was kept running after sheep, the more he ran after them the better, had… collected all the ewes into a corner, driven the timid creatures through the hedge, across the upper field, and by main force of worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a portion of the rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge.”
As for Ruslan, he has many adventures and eventually is adopted by a kind ex-prisoner. A small dog, Treasure, befriends him. When Ruslan is thoroughly beaten up by some men, Treasure licks his wounds and leaves because he expects him to die soon.
“It was, however, Ruslan’s fate that even in his last hour the Service did not leave him. It summoned him at the very moment of his crossing to another shore – calling upon him to make some last response.”
The most loyal of Soviet citizens, a dog, fantasizes while dying about the days when the master would say, “Get him, Ruslan!… Get!”
As I said, the most tragic dog story.