A gripping detective-love story “The Black Suit”
 Published in Kiev, January of 1993 in 25,000 copies 

From the article of Alkesei Onipko about Andrew V. Kudin’s romance “The Black Suit”

“A romance “The Black Suit” has a special place within a lot of “ documentary narratives” <...>

The book is maximally close to the real events, but on the other hand it’s a work of fiction. The author’s deep knowledge about this environment lets him restore, word to word, those episodes that didn’t have witnesses. <...>

This book is for serious people who have something to lose “besides their own chains” <...>

To read this book you have to have strong nerves. You will see how people get killed. You will see how they are tortured. But this is not a naked naturalism. Unexpectedly it becomes meaningful – why, from what does it happen, what is hidden under the outside of the “case”.

A Romance “The Black Suit” is a suffering of today. The criminal organization is not ours and not today’s creation. The author overcame the meaning of “reality”. Andrew V. Kudin tried to show us the deepest base, the reality of this occurrence, which indeed doesn’t depend on what kind of policy the government has today…”   

From Andrew V. Kudin’s book “The Black Suit”

“There are people-water and people-crystals. The humanity is like a river. The soft, complaisant water only turns into sharp, recalcitrant, pieces of ice when even one crystal gets into it. A few days and it becomes a huge space of constrained people.

 Same with people, look at the crowd of motley people. Like a puddle it flows onto the dirty streets. Hundreds of colors form the color gray. The weak crowd turns into a mighty, purposeful flow only when people-crystals get into it.

Interesting, did anyone think, when they turned the pages of history from boredom, why are some called “red”, others – “white”, third “brown”, some “green”? It’s only a color and type of large crystals.

In the romance “The Black Suit”, telling about organized criminality is only a reason, to look into carefully hidden from the outside eyes, human world.

“You can hide from the police, they don’t think with their brain. Hiding from your enemies is far more difficult. They have more reasons for seeking. Where can you hide from those, who only yesterday you called your close friends? They know all your spare ways and exits.

Separated from the outside world, Lyosha convulsively turned over in his mind the people he knew ten or even twenty years ago. Squeezing his hands, he tensely thought, while standing in the train “Leningrad- Rostov-na-Donu”

In the morning – a king, in the evening – a pauper, what awaits him in the future? Years of wandering around people he knew a little, and people who where total strangers to him; to whom his name was just an empty space? Years of animal fear being recognized, captured, tortured and finally, killed?”

“ -Why did you come with me? – Hanya didn’t recognize his own voice – You know as well as I do that we weren’t and never will be friends. The only thing that connects us is money. That’s all…

Lord mockingly grinned.

-         Turns out you can be honest… Sometimes…

Then continued.

“ You are a piece of shit. I don’t know worse or better than me. There on the field is a logic end to your biography or the start of your carrier. If you get lucky… Why did I come with you?   We are the same suit; you think in the same categories I do. You look at the world from the angle of camera, which also has a place for me. Bars separate everybody. Some people don’t notice it; others everyday smash their head through the steel bars. We are staying by each other not across. Is this clear?

-         Enough.

Trying to look careless, lord nervously rubbed his eye with his big finger.

- Partly I came with you because of money. If lucky I get a part, mostly because of boredom. Life – is such a delusion, if you don’t cheer yourself up time-to-time, then after a while you can burn in white fever…”

This book clearly shows the destinies of most common, seeming unknown people, unexpectedly for them binds with the whole government’s destiny.    

“… On April 28, 1986 the government of U.S.S.S.R finally admitted the fact of Chernobyl’s explosion on AES. On the streets of Chernobyl, Pripyat, Kiev children still played who were destined to die from the radiation of the explosion. They will not be in the article accounts because they didn’t die directly at the moment of the catastrophe. In 1986 nobody was interested in what will happen next. At the same time in Bucharest they cancelled a festival celebration in May, changing it into meetings in closed rooms, when in the countries of West Europe parents forbade their children to play outside, – in Kiev (from the center of the explosion in the straight line only 100 km) with special pomposity people celebrated First of May.

They spit on the nation. Here they come – happy, passing the tribunes, waving flowers. Let the whole world see how easy we breathe! Why someone has to think that the water, food and land are poisoned? In the name of October’s honored ideas; in the name of a bright future!”

“It’s the start of 1987. People’s consciousness isn’t awakening yet. Irreversible process of finding the true values is only starting.  Payments and incomes don’t go into the normal frames people understand, who are from childhood used to being poor, and that all evil comes from the rich. The police aren’t in a hurry to protect the innocent from the criminals, they follow the principle “Saving the ones who are drowning – is the job of those who are drowning”. The word “rack”, hides in it, how it turned out, not a bad income.  In jails and camps they only talked about it. Obviously no one was going to work. Everyone wanted a tribute, and it was necessary to combine into packs, moreover in well-organized packs. Principally different from those who were before.”

Good stem, a sure argument in the capable hands. Otherwise, turns out it’s not enough, for more serious actions you also need brain.”

“Stupid, soviet people believe again that tomorrow will be better than yesterday, forgetting that a whole history of their government shows the opposite, yesterday, and not today is better than tomorrow…”

“ People are mistaken who think that the politic system intersect with the needs of people. Small politics, logically reflect everything that is happening in the higher power, like a mirror in the room of laughter, where every small detail turns into an ugly shape…”

A detective story is in front of us is written by all the rules of the genre. At the same time it’s an unusual book in the highest levels, that forces us to think about the meaning of life and a place for each of us in this world.

        “How much does life of a person cost? Life is priceless. To measure it with money measurement is mean, stupid and finally impossible! This idea was imbued to Hanya and me from very early childhood, and I believed in it. How sad that I don’t believe in it now. I don’t believe in it because at thirteen years old I knew how much it would cost to break an arm, a nose, a jaw, a head… It depended on the results (where the person was taken, home, maybe to the hospital, in a coma, or maybe to the morgue) the price changed.

        “Life is priceless”. After a few years when I ran into a concept of “work”, I understood why it can’t be true, because what is work? What is a standard and not standard wok day? It’s a part of life, which we consciously or unconsciously sell for money for the sake of the other part, to live humanely with the money we earned, (“humanly” how nice to call it that). If we sell ourselves for money, is it immoral that others sell us to each other?

       On the markets people calmly sell lives of animals and birds. The fact of selling a person’s life gives us an unpleasant feeling, because we are still people and putting ourselves in the place of the sold or killed person, is far, more difficult than putting ourselves in a place of an animal or a bird, whose meat we eat from day to day.”

This book is about love.

     “… someone quietly came from behind and carefully touches the shoulder. Hanya slowly opened his eyes.  He turned around; black hair fell in waves on the naked chest, almond-shaped eyes, a perfect feature of the woman’s body.

-         What do you want Rina?

Her full name is Marina. A woman’s wrist cuts through the icy stream of water above her head.

-         You will freeze, get sick and die… What will we do without you?

Voice of obedience like a quit whisper of grass, which is within the never ending, fields.

-         You will live, like always, like everyone…

-         What do you mean “like everyone”? Everyone doesn’t exit. Every person lives his own life and everyone fills a part of life for another person…”

“Oleg lovingly kissed the ends of her fingers.

-         Who am I to you?

She carefully looked at him from top to bottom.

-         You are part of my life. You know that after you left me, for a couple of years I couldn’t find a place for myself. I tried to forget, erase everything from my memory that was connected to you. Then I understood that it was stupid. You can’t change the past and I am thankful that you were in my past.

-         You can return the past.

His hand touched her thighs and moved down but she softly stopped him.

-         The past isn’t returning. Sometimes, present is alike with the past, but I don’t want it anymore. Too many things changed over the past years…”

This book is about a choice that you have to make on the certain intersection in life. From the choice of a person, depends his fate and fate of people surrounding him.   

       “- What do you even know about me, and what right do you have to judge me? Yes, I don’t live by the rules of the government I was born and raised in, but I am not a criminal. Can’t you see that it’s impossible to live by the rules of the politic system? First rules contradict with others, other rules contradict with third, and third ones are absolutely absurd. However they all have something in common – they all try to destroy the smallest showing of individualism in the person. We can be sent behind bars only because we breathe – there will be always a reason. To be an individual – that’s the highest crime in this society…

            I know there are countries worse and better than our country, but I didn’t have a choice where to be born. We want or we don’t we are part of this land but I don’t to be part of this society. Because of this I created my own world, I live by my own principles.”

            “In our childhood, mostly in school years, we had conflicts and usual childhood fights. Some very rare and some a few times in a day. We hurt people and people hurt us. The interaction of those two kinds of pain formed our character, our attitude toward the world, toward ourselves…”

       “ It’s normal for people to reject the real blessings in the name of illusion. Too often we look for something to have that unfortunately we can’t have. Maybe it’s connected with the sense of existence that isn’t concluded in reaching a goal, but the urge to reach it, in the movement of once chosen road.”