To Kiss the Crocodile

The Crocodile is a great piece of satire, suppressed in the Soviet Union and largely ignored in the West. This wild lampoon is vicious and satirical, dreamlike, and one of the funniest things that Dostoevsky ever wrote. During the Soviet period it was not published separately (and only in passing even in multi- volume academy editions). Dostoevsky's hatred of communism and socialism is rarely as direct and apparent as in this tale. He ridicules the "new men," making Chemyshevsky a laughing-stock by having his think-alike get swallowed by a crocodile - only to survive and preach socialist theories from the beast's belly.