Meet Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, also known as Pyat. Tsarist rebel, Nazi thug, continental conman, and reactionary counterspy: the dark and dangerous anti-hero of Michael Moorcock's most controversial workPublished in 1981 to great critical acclaim—then condemned to the shadows and unavailable in the U.S. for thirty years—Byzantium Endures, the first of the Pyat Quartet, is not a book for the faint-hearted. It's the story of a cocaine addict, sexual adventurer, and obsessive anti-Semite whose epic journey from Leningrad to London connects him with scoundrels and heroes from Trotsky to Makhno, and whose career echoes that of the 20th century's descent into Fascism and total war.This is Moorcock at his audacious, iconoclastic best: a grand sweeping overview of the events of the last century, as revealed in the secret journals of modern literature's most proudly unredeemable outlaw.
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Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski (Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff) - Narrator
Yelisaveta Filipovna - His mother
Captain Brown - A Scottish engineer
Esmé Loukianoff - A friend
Zoyea - A gypsy girl
Professor Lustgarten - A schoolmaster
Frau Lustgarten - His wife
Sarkis Mihailovitch Kouyoumdjian - An Armenian engineer
Alexander (‘Shura’) - Maxim’s cousin
Evgenia Mihailovna (Aunt Genia) - Maxim’s great-aunt
Wanda - Her poor relation
Semyon Josefovitch (Uncle Semya) - Maxim’s great-uncle
Esau - Slobodka tavern-keeper
Misha the Jap - Slobodka gangster
Victor the Fiddler
Isaac Jacobovitch
Little Grania - Denizens of Esau’s tavern
Boris - The Accountant
Lyova
M. Savitsky - A drug-trafficker
Katya - A young whore
Katya’s mother - A whore
H. Cornelius - A dentist
Honoria Cornelius - An English adventuress
‘So-So’ - A Georgian revolutionary
Nikita the Greek - Maxim’s friend
Mr Finch - An Irish sailor
Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov (‘Seryozha’) - A ballet dancer
Marya Varvorovna Vorotinsky - A student
Miss Buchanan - Her ‘nanyana’
Mr Green - Uncle Semya’s agent in St Petersburg
Mr Parrot - His assistant
Madame Zinovieff - Maxim’s landlady in St Petersburg
Olga and Vera - Her daughters
Dr Matzneff - Tutor at the Petersburg Polytechnic Institute
Professor Merkuloff - Another tutor
Hippolyte - A catamite
Count Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff (‘Kolya’) - A Petersburg bohemian
Lunarcharsky - A Bolshevik
Mayakovski - A poet
‘Lolly’ Leonovna Petroff - Kolya’s cousin
Alexei Leonovitch Petroff - Her brother
Elena Andreyovna Vlasenkova (‘Lena’) - Marya’s flat-mate
Professor Vorsin - Head of the Polytechnic
Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskya - A puppet dictator
Ataman Semyon Petlyura - Effective leader of Ukrainian Nationalists
General Konovalets - Commander of the ‘Sich Riflemen’
Vinnichenko - Ukrainian Nationalist leader
Potoaki - Ukrainian Bolshevik
Marusia Kirillovna - Ukrainian Bolshevik
Sotnik (Captain) Grishenko - Hrihorieff officer (Cossack)
Sotnik (Captain) Yermeloff - The same
Stoichko - Cossack officer
Brodmann - Socialist ‘liaison officer’
Nestor Makhno - Anarchist leader
Captain Kulomsin - A White infantry officer
Captain Wallace - Australian tank commander
Major Perezharoff - A White commander
A Jewish journalist In Arcadia
Madame Zoyea - An hotelier
Captain Yosetroff - White Intelligence officer
Major Soldatoff - Maxim’s CO
Chief Engineer of the
Korylenko (a postman); Captain Bikadorov (a Cossack); whores and entertainers in Odessa; whores, entertainers and artists in St Petersburg; revolutionaries in St Petersburg; Cossacks (Red, Black, White); policemen, Chekists, naval officers, army officers, ‘Haidamaki’ soldiers, beggars, a drunken couple, the Jews of a shtetl near Hulyai-Polye, the inhabitants of a village in the Ukrainian steppe, and, off-stage, Leon Trotsky, Deniken, Krassnoff, Ulyanski, Prince Lvov, Kerenski, Putilov, Josef Stalin, Stolypin, Lenin, Antonov, sikorski, savinkoff, catherine cornelius, H. G. wells.
THE MAN WHO was known for years in the Portobello Road area as ‘Colonel Pyat’ or sometimes simply as ‘the old Pole’, and who, in the 60s and 70s, was Mrs Cornelius’s regular evening consort at The Blenheim Arms, The Portobello Castle and The Elgin (her favourite public houses), collapsed during the August 1977 Notting Hill Carnival when a group of black boys and girls collecting for Help The Aged in Caribbean fancy dress entered his shop (one of the few open) and demanded a contribution. His heart had failed him. He died at St Charles Hospital some hours later. He had no next of kin. Eventually, following a great deal of unpleasant publicity, I inherited his papers.
