The Little Golden Calf - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Ostap Bender is still alive, after somehow surviving the assassination in the previous book. This time he hears a story about an "underground millionaire" named Alexandr Koreiko. Koreiko has made millions, a truly enormous sum, by living on 46 rubles a month, through various illegal enterprises, taking full advantage of the widespread corruption in the New Economic Policy (NEP) period. Living in Chernomorsk (literally: Black Sea city, referring to the city of Odessa), and working as an accountant for a government office in charge of economic management, Koreiko keeps his large stash of ill-gotten money in a suitcase, waiting for the fall of the Soviet government, so that he can make use of it. Together with two associates, both petty criminals, and an extremely naive and innocent car driver, Bender finds out about him and starts to collect all the information he can get on Koreiko’s business activities. Koreiko tries to flee, but Bender eventually tracks him down in Turkestan, on the newly-constructed Turkestan–Siberia Railway. He then blackmails him into giving him a million rubles.

Suddenly rich, Bender faces the problem of how to spend his money in a country where there are no legal millionaires. Nothing of the life of the rich that Bender dreamt of seems possible in the Soviet Union. Frustrated, Bender even decides to anonymously donate the money to the Ministry of Finance, but changes his mind. He turns the money into jewels and gold, and tries to cross the Romanian border, only to be robbed by the Romanian border guards, leaving him only with a medal, the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Koreiko finds another job as an accountant. He hides the rest of his cash, and continues to wait for the fall of the Soviets.