Night Patrol - C

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russian writers like Mikhail Kuraev have concentrated on reclaiming their history. In the opening novella, ``Captain Dikshtein: A Fantastic Narrative,'' Kuraev chronicles a day in the life of a man who leaves his house to purchase beer. Woven within the work is the history of the Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921, during which a sailor assumed the identity of one Igor Ivanovich Dikshtein. Kuraev's paramount assertion is that this life, and every life, is somehow ``fantastic.'' In the title story, a brutal guardsman, oblivious to the fate of his prisoners, waxes almost sanctimonious about the call of the nightingale. The third entry, ``Petya on His Way to the Heavenly Kingdom,'' is a tale of a developmentally diasabled man who is the village's patron rather than its idiot. As a former screenwriter, Kuraev seems to storyboard his work rather than have it unfold. In a feat of literary pointillism, he applies layer upon layer of detail in describing his characters until they fade as people and become, instead, personifications of Russian history. Writers like Kuraev give hope that, as the writer says of his post-Kronstadt citizens, Russian letters may indeed ``begin a new life under a new sign.'' (Apr.)