Abstract: The post Break-up period witnessed the birth of many small Chichikovs who would have put the famous character of Gogol to shame. Chichikov’s ingenuity was in his scheme of acquiring an estate on the basis of something ‘inexistent’. However, the modern-day Chichikovs not only managed to deprive the people of their life-long savings; drove many to suicide, but could also get elected to the State Duma using the support of the very same ‘deceived investors’.
Nikolai Gogol reminisces in one of his “Letters apropos of Dead Souls”, Pushkin having heard the first chapters of the novel, “grew gloomier and gloomier and at last cried, Good Lord, how sad is our Russia!”¹ Around 150 years later, in Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novel “Visyoliye pokhorony” [The Happy Funeral], the dying hero Alik, another Aleksandr, a Russian, a shestidesyatkik, settled in Los Angeles, U.S.A., while witnessing the GKChP’ putsch, in his dying breath reiterates the sad refrain that Russia is an “unhappy nation”.²
The present essay is an attempt to study the above-mentioned phenomena on the basis of Boris Ekimov’s “Chikomasov”.³

Keywords: Boris Ekimov, Chikomasov, Nikolai Gogol, Chichikov, Chichikovshchina, Sergei Mavrodi, MMM, pyramid and Ponzi schemes, zveno, zvenevoi, Perestroika reforms, Privatisation in Russia.