Fitzpatrick "World of Ostap Bender"

Bender is the Soviet version of a confidence man. he is a sort of trickster of folklore origin subverting social comventions and authority. he makes people realize that the accepted pattern has no necissity. Everything that orders society is subjective and arbitrary. It also may have no other purpose, but to produce the thrill of freedom. 535

The classic Russian literary example is Gogol's Klestyakov from Revizor.

Shklovsky said that Bender came out of the picaresque trickster literature in Europe and America like Fielding's Tom Jones, Twian's Huck Finn. 537

B has the ability to switch personalities, get himself out of trouble using the materials at hand, win the confidence of the people looking for a return to the past. His great skill is in speaking Bolshevik with fluency in a way that threatens others because they cannot. He uses this skill to seem legitimate to gullible people.

Bender and the novels by I and P were not necessarily approved by the powers that be or the intelligentsia because they are seemingly light-minded and lack a moral stance. 537

The conman in society is a good social commentator. He must have a good hold on the bureaucratic organizations in order to inspire trust in the people he fools. B is able to manipulate the Soviet bureacracy. He knows how to get the good that are only available to the upper crust of society. He knows how good travel from the top to the bottom and how to get them and use Blat. 538

The fictional stories are influenced by the real life versions that existed and vice versa.

Revolutios are if nothing else a time when people need to reinvent themselves in a time of crisis. 539

Real frauds took many forms including: posing as an official with the Soviet language that intimidated people, Forging documents with letter-head.540 Or posing as an olf Bolshevik hero of the revolution or civil war - and other claims of official status. 542

Sometimes it involved the invention of entire government institutions with fancy acronyms, stamps, seals and paper. Inpersonating the NKVD/OGPU.

People claimed skills in order to get jobs in a field and learned on the job. Often conmen arrived in distant provincial towns, committed the act and got out of town. it was easier to get away with it in the country, but there was less money in it.

Like with Bender the connection of conmen and ethicity especially jewishness was common.

There was both overt and covert anti-semitism at the time. the official line was never so forward, but its actions towards the jews showed the opionion. Despite the dates of publication there is no conincidence of the rise in antisemitism and the novels of Bender - of Turkish origin, but read as a Jew. 546

The frauds were based on three circumstances: the need for documents in the new Soviet world, the credulousness of officials in the face of any document, the ease in which documents could be made. 540

Even honest people had to resort to this sort of thing because all their documents were destroyed in the war or to hide the fact that their family had been dekulakized.541

It was common for conment to pose as relatives of officials and important people than the actual people. 541

Bender had to pose as a journalist as did other real life conmen.

The official response to the novels is that they should not be published and there was a ban until 1956. they were seen as disrespctful toward soviet life. Bender was seen as "bold, resourceful, witty...and the people he meets are stupid." 555