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One of the best condemnations of socialism in art, A Dog's Heart is a dark comedy and a must-watch post-Soviet classic. It is an adaptation of a story by Mikhail Bulgakov, who is mostly known in the U.S. for his Master and Margarita. Originally written in 1925 as a stream of consciousness of a stray dog in Moscow, A Dog's Heart was banned in the USSR until the Perestroyka in the 1980s. Sepia-toned to capture the feel of time, it was made for TV in 1988.

Here it is with English subs - make sure you click the CC option, or it won't show.

Some critics have called it a rip-off of the 1976 Italian film based on the same story, starring Max von Sydow. Even so, the Russian version has some really great acting and writing, and many of its lines have since become idioms in the Russian pop culture.

Watch Heart of a Dog (1976) by Alberto Lattuada, Italian, with English subs, on YouTube:

I decided to read the "book" instead of using precious Internet "bandwidth" to watch the movie.

I'm about halfway through as I write this.

A strange story.

Mikhail Lysenkomann wrote:I decided to read the "book" instead of using precious Internet "bandwidth" to watch the movie.

This is one of the rare instances when a movie adaptation is better than the original book.

The novella was written hastily, from January to March, 1925. The manuscript was then confiscated by the NKVD during a search of the author's apartment. It was never published during his life. An incomplete version of it was smuggled across the border in the 1960s and translated, but it was not an authorized author's version, but rather a draft.

The story has enough similarities to Flowers For Algernon that I have to wonder if Daniel Keyes had somehow got hold of an unauthorized copy of it.

But it doesn't seem likely, since Flowers for Algernon was written in 1958, before this story had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union.

Mikhail Lysenkomann wrote:The story has enough similarities to Flowers For Algernon that I have to wonder if Daniel Keyes had somehow got hold of an unauthorized copy of it.

But it doesn't seem likely, since Flowers for Algernon was written in 1958, before this story had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union.

All good research, comrades. Indeed, Laika the Space Dog stood on the shoulders of giants!