Only history buffs will understand "Monanieba"; most Americans under 60 will get the gist only. The idea of combining the traits (some only physical) of Stalin, Beria, Mussolini, and Hitler was an interesting move, universalizing - if only in a European sense - the tyranny of Varlam. The fact that he is only the mayor of a town, and yet able to act like a national dictator (sending people to slave labor at logging camps, rounding them up in mass imprisonment, speaking of how he embodies the fatherland, etc.) increases the general surrealistic bent. The government becomes something amorphous; modern in its methods, archaic in the way those methods are achieved (the midaeval knights as secret policemen/soldiers, the use of carriages to cart victims off), something that is both small and large at the same time. I like the fact that Varlam's corpse is constantly unearthed and yet never rots; a possible reference to Lenin's Tomb. That the new mayor is a dwarfish man may also be read as a commentary on how Soviet leaders after Stalin could never recapture the man's pitiless strength or his shadow over the Soviet citizenry. In the end, "Monanieba" is one Georgian's apology for another's deeds.
Review of Repentance
