The eternal struggle between conscience and power

Pavel Nilin represents the classic example of a great writer who, after being very popular for a long time in his homeland – and in this case we are talking about the Soviet Union – then fell, unjustly, into oblivion.

A writer and journalist born in 1908, Nilin embraced the ideals of the Russian Revolution at a young age and worked for years as a police officer in the most remote regions of Siberia. This was a demanding task, during a period between the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the Soviet government struggled to control the vast Russian territory and many areas, such as the Siberian wilderness, were plagued by bandits and counterrevolutionaries.

Drawing on his own experiences in the remotest and wildest areas of the Soviet Union, Nilin wrote his masterpiece, Cruelty (Readerforblind, 2025, pp. 300), published in 1956 during the Khrushchevite Thaw.

Cruelty is an atypical detective story, a sort of Soviet western set in the Siberian taiga , where the struggle is not between law and crime but between conscience and power.

The story begins with the arrival of Yakov Uzelkov, a pseudo-journalist seeking news for his readers, in Dudari, in the heart of the taiga, where the Soviet regime is struggling to assert its power among bands of bandits, former Tsarist soldiers, and rebellious peasants. In this place forgotten by all but the Soviet authorities, Uzelkov contacts the OGPU, the investigative police charged with suppressing all forms of dissent and banditry. In particular, the journalist meets Veniamin Malysev "Ven'ka", an investigator endowed with a singular humanity. Unlike his superiors, Ven'ka does not use violence or threats, but believes that justice can have a human face: he chooses persuasion and respect to gain the trust of the local population. Thanks to his belief in dialogue and kindness, the investigator wins the friendship and collaboration of former bandit Lazar Baukin, who helps him capture the ferocious Vorontsov, the self-proclaimed "emperor of the entire taiga." But when his superiors imprison Baukin to increase the police's authority in the eyes of the people, Venka finds himself confronted with the ruthless cruelty of the state he has served. A ruthless cruelty exemplified by the belief that "sometimes, in political matters, it is necessary to punish someone severely, so that the example may serve as a lesson to all the others," as one of Venka's colleagues states regarding a boy who has attended a baptism and is undergoing a sort of trial.

A powerful and deeply disturbing novel, Cruelty was a great success in the Soviet Union, selling hundreds of thousands of copies and becoming a cult film in 1959 , and also received considerable attention in the West: driven by an unbreakable morality and an unshakable faith in his ideals, its protagonist Ven'ka represents an ethical, fallible and tormented hero, completely atypical for the canons of Soviet fiction.

Unlike much literature, Cruelty offers neither certainties nor redemption: it raises questions, exposes contradictions, and reflects on what remains of an ideal when the system betrays its principles. Often, nothing remains except loyalty to one's own conscience and nostalgia for the dreams of one's origins, as happens to Veniamin Malyshev "Ven'ka."