Bury Me Behind the Baseboard by Pavel Sanaev was, for many years, a bit like Pasternak was for Soviet citizens. Meaning: I hadn’t read it, but I’d heard so much about it from all sides that, deep down, I didn’t even want to read it—I “disapproved” along with everyone else.
But the years went by. The book kept coming up, stage adaptations were made, and it even got a screen version with fantastic actors. So at some point I decided you can’t judge a book based on third-hand retellings.
Pavel Sanaev is the son of the actress Yelena Sanaeva, whom most people know as Alice the Fox from the film The Adventures of Buratino. He’s also the stepson of actor and director Rolan Bykov (a name that really needs no introduction). And he’s the grandson of the famous actor Vsevolod Sanaev (he appeared in all sorts of films, but Belarusians probably know him best as Fedos in White Dew).
And Bury Me Behind the Baseboard is a slightly fictionalized set of the author’s memories of his childhood. The names have been changed, but overall he’s simply telling the story of how he lived—separated from his mother—under the care of his grandmother, and to some extent his grandfather too.
And the story there was anything but simple. From what it seems, the grandmother in the family was deeply ill and despotic. Unable to survive the loss of her older child in the war, she decided to devote herself entirely to raising first her daughter, and then her grandson. Framing it as love, she psychologically destroyed everyone close to her. After breaking her daughter’s childhood and youth, she took her son away and set about raising him in the same way—while her husband, a stern and strong man on screen, couldn’t find the strength to stand up to a woman he had stopped loving long ago, and even ended up going along with her against their daughter and grandson.
The grandmother is a martyr to her love. She blames everyone for not appreciating her sacrifice—for the fact that she gave her whole life, her whole career, to doing what was best for her family. And at the same time, because of her condition, she clearly doesn’t understand that it’s precisely she who is destroying the lives around her. Rolan Bykov, meanwhile, becomes, in her mind, a malicious dwarf who did everything against their family—and who supposedly tried to snatch the adopted son from the hands of the “loving” grandmother.
It seems that for a long time it simply wasn’t done to talk about a tragedy like this in the Sanaev family. And that’s exactly why the book, published in 1996, caused such an uproar. It was a lifting of the veil—and it was written very well, even, probably, with real talent.
And it isn’t just fiction. That’s why I couldn’t treat the book as a heavy but made-up story. It deals with real people and is presented as autobiographical. So it’s hard to accept that all of this is true—and that it was written “with love” for the author’s family (Sanaev has said many times that the book was written with love for his loved ones; he even dedicated it to Rolan Bykov).
Yes, there is a thread of love for his mother, whom he so rarely gets to see. But everything else… From the very first chapters you feel like you’re being dunked into a barrel of filth and nastiness. Because either the author is bending the truth about reality, or if he isn’t, then I have a lot of questions for the whole family. How can you hand a child over to a woman who constantly humiliates him and threatens to kill him? A grandfather who says, “Don’t let him come near me, I’ll kill him.” And the mother herself, who allowed her parents to take her little boy away.
It’s written vividly, with real talent, but you’re basically forcing yourself to keep reading it, while everything inside you—as a parent—is screaming and resisting. And you just don’t understand why you’re reading it.
However, closer to the end of the book, my view started to change. The author increasingly shows that the situation is hellish, but that his grandmother “loves” him in her own way—it’s just that she’s genuinely a mentally unstable person. The grandfather essentially removed himself from the situation, and even went along with the grandmother, adopting both her view of the grandson (his “illnesses” and what a bastard he supposedly is) and her view of their daughter. And the “dwarf” simply can’t do anything. The last chapters (of the first official version of the book, since I read the expanded edition with three additional chapters) make it very clear how, despite everything, the boy wants to be with his mother—but doesn’t believe it’s even possible.
So the further you go, the more horrific the situation becomes—and the more you pity the child and even his mother. But you don’t feel sorry for the grandmother and grandfather at all.
At the same time, I’ve seen many readers comment on how funny the book is—how they laughed out loud at some episodes. I’m honestly baffled. Where is the humor here? This is a tragedy for almost everyone in that family. And even though, when it comes to the grandmother, you more often want to prescribe something like punitive therapy, rationally you still understand that she’s a deeply ill person.
And the child, in the meantime, manages to live in that hell—and even find rare moments of joy. So what exactly is there to laugh your head off about?
Yes, I agree that Pavel really did manage, very skillfully, to convey this whole situation through the eyes of himself-as-a-child. Strange love and hatred, mixed with curses, practically pour from every page. It’s genuinely powerful. But did I need to read it? I don’t know. In the end, my opinion of Sanaev (the grandfather) changed drastically, and I gained respect for Rolan Bykov, who—maybe not immediately, but eventually—managed to pull his stepson out. Beyond that… the book doesn’t leave the kind of aftertaste you want to savor. Only bitterness, and the urge to wash yourself clean of all that filth.
P.S. A couple of words about the screen adaptation. I think there were even two, both made in the same year. But I tried watching the version directed by Sergey Snezhkin. In that film, the grandmother was played by the wonderful Svetlana Kryuchkova, the grandfather by Aleksey Petrenko, and the boy Sasha by Aleksandr Drobitko (later he appeared in the series Mosgaz). That trio is a perfect match for the roles. Kryuchkova’s grandmother practically radiates all that malice and hatred, eating her from the inside.
But watching it was even harder than reading it. Especially since the filmmakers also deviated from the book. In the book, the grandmother does call her daughter’s new “boyfriend” the most vile things, but he himself (Rolan Bykov in real life) is never actually shown as a bad person. The child’s view is shaped by the grandmother’s comments and labels, not by any real facts. And as you read, you gradually understand that neither the daughter nor her new husband are as bad as the grandmother paints them. In the film, though, he (played by Konstantin Vorobyov) starts appearing in scenes—and specifically in the way the grandmother described him in the book. I don’t know what Bykov was really like, but I strongly disliked this kind of interpretive liberty. And even though the main actors are excellent, that’s where I broke: I realized that after a book like this, I wasn’t ready to watch it all over again on screen.
I don’t regret reading the book. At the very least, I saw that one common accusation against the author isn’t true—that he supposedly dragged our wonderful Rolan Bykov through the mud while dedicating the book to him. No, that isn’t there. Even though there’s plenty of that kind of thing when it comes to other characters. But it’s always better to form your own opinion.
Would I recommend it? I’m not sure. It’s heavy, brutally honest. And I’m sure the Sanaev family isn’t the only one where this kind of nastiness existed. But one read was enough for me—I will never reread this book.
My rating: 3.5/5
