Lieutenant Kijé

Yury Tynyanov, who had been researching the period for his historical novels Kyukhlya (1925) and Smert Vazir-mukhtara (The death of the ambassador plenipotentiary, 1928), wrote a novella based on Dahl's story that was published in 1928 in Krasnaya Nov No.1.

Several sections of the novella are devoted to Sinyukhaev's fruitless attempts to get himself restored (he ends up wandering the roads of Russia, living on the charity of strangers).

In the end the emperor, increasingly paranoid and lonely, feels the need to have someone as dependable as Kizhe (who has had a spotless career) near him, promotes him to general, and orders him brought to his palace in Saint Petersburg.

The last line of the story reads "And Pavel Petrovich [the emperor Paul] died in March of the same year as General Kizhe — according to official reports, from apoplexy."

The story was made into the 1934 film Lieutenant Kijé, directed by Aleksandr Faintsimmer, which is now remembered primarily for its soundtrack, the first instance of the composer Prokofiev's "new simplicity".