"Kill Lenin" is a multi-layered novel whose main character, Sveta Maeva, grew up in an Orthodox environment. For a little girl, demons, "Jews" and eschatological prophecies are as familiar and commonplace as a Teddy bear and walks in the Park. Now Sveta works in the editorial office of a daily newspaper, where the tradition of heavy drinking is still preserved, and low-grade yellow materials and sharp political articles are side by side on the same page.             Nationalists, thieves in law, opposition rallies and writers' gatherings in the present are interspersed with storylines from the past. There, on the stairs of the Moscow state University, her parents meet, the pages of the novel describe: the Mordovian zone for political prisoners, the everyday life of the Soviet humanitarian Institute, life 101 km after the release from the camp, the collapse of the family and the remarriage of the mother, who played a key role in the fate of the heroine.             The end of the world becomes a special circumstance of the novel. Sveta is waiting for it as a child, but in the present it suddenly appears as an information guide, because it should happen in 2012 according to the Mayan calendar and the media are happy to savor this topic.             The father told the little heroine about the speed of light: "If the sun goes out, we won't know for eight minutes." Or four hundred and eighty seconds. Therefore, in difficult moments, she closes her eyes and starts counting. "It doesn't go out," Sveta states each time, either with relief or with sadness.             Lenin lies in the Mausoleum, but continues to live as an archetype, an image, a demon, a myth about himself, a nostalgia for the past, a symbol of historical tragedy. It's time to kill him. This is decided by one of the secondary heroines. But her act becomes only an episode, lost in the dense interweaving of times and events.             The internal dialogue with the deceased father, which continues throughout the novel, allows Sveta to keep a distance from her past and present. At the end of the novel, this dialogue breaks the fabric of time. And there are still more questions than answers: is Lenin alive? was there a father? has the sun gone out?