Остап Бендер: Ұлы Комбинатордың өмірі мен қылықтары

Fictional con man from Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov's novels

Ostap Bender (Остап Бендер) is a fictional con man and the central antiheroic protagonist in the novels The Twelve Chairs (1928) and The Little Golden Calf (1931) written by Soviet authors Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov. The novels belong to the picaresque novel genre, which was previously rare in Russian literature. In The Twelve Chairs he called himself Ostap Suleyman Berta Maria Bender Bey, in The Little Golden Calf he called himself Bender Zadunaysky, and he was called Ostap Ibragimovich by one of his companions. Bender is an attractive, resourceful crook, full of energy while operating within the law ("Bender knew 400 relatively legal ways to make the population part with their money. "); his description as "The Great Combinator" became a catchphrase in the Russian language. His exploits have been enjoyed by readers throughout the Soviet times and in modern Russia. In post Soviet times Bender's character was elevated from the status of a con man to that of an entrepreneur. His statues may be found in several cities, and a commemorative plaque was set in Odesa, the city of his birth.

The Twelve Chairs was released in January 1928. In the first novel, Ostap Bender searches for a stash of diamonds hidden in one of the twelve eponymous chairs. The action takes place in the Soviet Union in 1927 during the New Economic Policy era. At the end of the novel, Bender is killed by his partner, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, who does not want to share the treasure when it seems like they are about to reach their goal. In the second novel, The Little Golden Calf, published in 1931, Bender is alive, he says, because "surgeons barely saved my life", Ilf and Petrov having conjured the character's death away retroactively. This book provided an extended satire on certain elements of Soviet life. Here, Bender follows Soviet underground multi millionaire Koreiko, hoping to acquire some of his riches and thus amass a fortune. Bender gets his money, but soon discovers he cannot spend it in the USSR. He proceeds to lose it as he attempts to flee the country by crossing the border into Romania. Film makers have produced a number of screen adaptations of the novels; see The Twelve Chairs adaptations and The Little Golden Calf adaptations. Over the years, the part was played on screen by Frank Langella (The Twelve Chairs (1970 film)), Archil Gomiashvili (The Twelve Chairs (1971 film)), Andrei Mironov (actor) (The Twelve Chairs (1976 film)), Sergei Yursky (The Golden Calf (1968 film)), Oleg Menshikov (The Little Golden Calf, 2006), etc.

Ostap Bender's origins are mysterious; he mentions only that his father was "a Turkish subject", his mother was "a Countess and received unearned income" and that his full name is Ostap Suleyman Berta Maria Bender Bey (Остап Сулейман Берта Мария Бендер Бей). In the comments to the Complete Works of Ilf and Petrov by M. Odessky and D. Feldman, this phrase is explained as a hint to his supposed Jewish origin from a port city in Novorossiya, most probably Odesa, where many Jews claimed Turkish citizenship to evade discrimination and conscription for military service. Some of them indeed held Turkish citizenship, such as Julius Martov. In The Little Golden Calf, Ostap Bender is also called "Бендер Задунайский" ("Bender Zadunaisky", literally: "Bender Trans Danubian") and "Остап Ибрагимович" (Ostap Ibragimovich, where "Ibragimovich" is a patronymic, literally meaning "son of Ibrahim"). The city of Bender and the Danube river are historically and geographically close to both the large regional city of Odesa and the former Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Bender dreams of travelling to Rio de Janeiro, "the city of his dreams", while admitting the futility of that obsession. There were a number of possible prototypes for Bender, most famously Ostap (Osip) Shor (1899–1978), a friend of the authors who spent his youth in Odesa gaining money as a con man and then—as a Cheka inspector. He was a good story teller, and many of his tales inspired the adventures of Ostap Bender. Valentin Kataev who came up with the idea for the novel (which, in turn, is dedicated to him) is named as another prototype; he also led an adventurous life and was known as a literary hoaxer, adding many original touches to the biography of Osip Shor whom he saw as fitting the readers' expectations of a "real life combinator". Another suggested influence was the character of Alexander Ametistov from Mikhail Bulgakov's play Zoyka's Flat that had been written and staged in 1926, before the work on The Twelve Chairs was even started. Also an elegant con man with many names and occupations, he is seen as a direct inspiration by a number of modern researches, to the point that some of them believe that both novels were ghostwritten by Bulgakov.