the board of trustees of the Vera hospice. Vladimir Voinovich died on the night of 27 July 2018 of a heart attack. Work The first and second parts of his epic magnum opus The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin ("Жизнь и необычайные приключения солдата Ивана Чонкина") are set in the Red Army during World War II, satirically exposing the daily absurdities of the totalitarian regime. "Chonkin" is now a widely known figure in Russian popular culture. The book was also made into a film by the Czech director Jiří Menzel. Many have pointed out the similarities between the story about Chonkin and The Good Soldier Švejk. The third part of the novel was published in 2007. Not as well known so far as the previous two parts, it portrays the post-War life of the characters until the present, including Chonkin's involuntary emigration to the USA. Much attention is also paid to the figures of Lavrentiy Beria and Joseph Stalin, the latter being mockingly depicted as a son of Nikolai Przhevalsky and a Przewalski's horse. According to the author, the writing of the whole novel took him almost fifty years. The novel has been described as a Soviet Catch-22. In 1986 he wrote a dystopian novel, Moscow 2042 (published in 1987). In this novel, Voinovich portrayed a Russia ruled by the "Communist Party of State Security" combining the KGB, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Communist party. This party is led by a KGB general Bukashev (the name means "the bug") who meets the main character of the novel in Germany. A Slavophile, Sim Karnavalov (apparently inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), eventually overthrows the Party and enters Moscow on a white horse. The similarities between the plot of the book and the actual political developments in Russian following the fall of the Soviet Union have been noted by several observers. Voinovich's other novels have also won acclaim. The Fur Hat is a satire alluding to Gogol's Overcoat. His Monumental Propaganda is a stinging critique of post-Communist Russia, a story that shows the author's opinion that Russians haven't changed much since the days of Joseph Stalin. Monumental Propaganda has been described as "an illuminating comment on the persistence of false idols and historical delusions". His darkly humorous memoir The Ivankiad tells the true story of his attempt to get an upgraded apartment in the bureaucratic clog of the Soviet system.