Moloch

Moloch (Молох) is a short novel by Alexander Kuprin, first published in Russkoye Bogatstvos December 1896 issue. A sharp critique of the rapidly growing Russian capitalism and a reflection of the growing industrial unrest in the country, it is considered Kuprin's first major work. Synopsis Engineer Andrey Bobrov works for a ruthless capitalist industrial enterprise, feeling more and more uncomfortable with what is going on around him. After losing Nina, the woman he loves, to the amoral industrialist Kvashnin who owns that enterprise, he suffers a nervous breakdown and is left a broken man, prone to frenzied and futile debates with his own 'double'. The story's finale hints at the outbreak of a workers' revolt. Characters Andrey Bobrov, a sensitive and socially conscious man who recognizes the factory he works for as an insatiable Moloch, the brazen god of the Ammonites for whom children were made "to pass through the fire" in ritual sacrifice (2 Kings 23:10). Kvashnin, the owner of the enterprise, "gluttonous, debauched, monstrously fat" whom Bobrov sees as the very embodiment of "industrial amorality". Svezhevsky, a loathsome careerist, "a modern day Uriah Heep" (Nicholas Luker). Zinenko, a man in charge of stores at the factory; he fawns on his superiors, gossips about his colleagues, and tyrannizes his subordinates. Nina, Zinenko's daughter, a beautiful young woman whom Bobrov falls in love with and who's more impressed with Kvashnin's wealth. To be married to Svezhevsky so as to become Kvashnin's mistress under the cloak of respectability. Goldberg, physician at the factory and Bobrov's only friend. Andrea, a well-educated and highly intelligent Belgian engineer. Background According to scholar Nicholas Luker, "thematically Moloch belongs firmly in the 1890s, and reflects many of the social and economic issues of that decade."The second half of the 1800s saw the rapid development of Russian capitalism, with its concomitant industrial expansion. As her rail network was enlarged and her textile, metallurgical, and mining industries expanded, Russia's output rose steadily. The All-Russian Industrial Exhibition of 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod, to which Kuprin refers in "The Yuzovsky Works," was designed to demonstrate the impressive achievements of Russian industry.