The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

The Kitchen Boy includes significant critique of the Bolshevik government and how it affected not only Russia’s history, but the Russian people themselves. Through the microcosm of Volodya’s story (his connection to Kate, the Romanovs, and his fellow Bolsheviks), Robert Alexander speaks to how the Soviet state’s pervasive lies and oppressive atmosphere affected social relations. Alexander also interrogates how this suppression affects Volodya as an individual—Bolshevik influence having destroyed his spirit and the trajectory of his life. This critique of the Bolshevik state is historically and dramatically significant—the novel’s Bolshevik suppression, violence, and lies enlightening readers to true events via the fictional Volodya.

The Bolsheviks’ manipulation tactics are a central component to The Kitchen Boy, as their fake letters drive the chapters that take place in 1918. Alexander illustrates how such lies were instituted on a systemic scale, affecting the essential fibers of Russian life and society. Volodya bitterly recalls how he and his fellow countrymen were drawn to the Bolsheviks’ anti-war, pro-worker ideology—only to be recruited into their oppressive regime. When Volodya ruminates on the past, he pretends to be Leonka and describes “Volodya” as a young blonde guard who “had been recruited from the local Zlokazov Factory, where not long ago the workers, infected by the Reds, had revolted and killed their bosses” (11). Likening Bolshevism to a viral infection, Volodya’s disdain permeates the novel. As he describes his younger self, Volodya clearly feels he was manipulated and pushed to do things he otherwise would not have done. This quote reveals how Bolshevik ideology slowly began to push its followers toward violence; the young Volodya was encouraged to kill his superiors and was later summoned to execute his homeland’s royal family.

In Chapter 9, Volodya extends his critique of Bolshevik manipulation to Russian society as a whole. At one point, he describes how the frustrations of the Russian people were manipulated for the Bolsheviks’ political gain: The masses’ “emotions were so deeply stirred by the centuries of inequity and darkly spiced by the poisonous propaganda of the Bolsheviki” (98-99). Alexander paints the Russian Revolution as a historical event driven by the machinations of a manipulative political party. He subsequently draws a clear link between the Bolsheviks’ emotional manipulation and their systemic violence. In the novel, the Bolsheviks make empty promises of liberation to those like Volodya in order to goad them into murdering for the party’s political benefit. Chapter 17 illustrates the Bolsheviks’ cruelty through the Romanovs’ execution: Not only are the Romanovs traumatized prior to their murder, but so are the murderers. Volodya notes that the men were “vomiting and coughing” after the execution, both from the guns’ smoke and the horrific act they just committed (174). This chapter is especially disturbing when viewed within the larger framework of the Bolshevik state. The Bolsheviks did not simply murder an entire family that night. Through the character of Volodya, Alexander makes it clear that the Bolsheviks also pushed working class people drawn to their political ideology to commit rash acts of violence.

As a former Bolshevik, Volodya is a central component to Alexander’s interrogation of the party’s violence. Alexander uses his protagonist to explore how destructive Bolshevik ideology could be. Volodya himself is a victim of the Bolsheviks’ manipulation, representing the culture of fear that many Russians suffered while living in Soviet Russia. Volodya’s fear of the Bolsheviks follows him to the United States: He and his wife Maria maintain an entire life’s worth of lies because they fear being murdered by the Soviets—as the Soviet state did with those who disagreed with them. Volodya’s fractured relationships with his son and granddaughter Kate also speak to how the Bolsheviks’ manipulation affected every facet of his life, traumatizing him so thoroughly that he could not connect with his own kin.