Tale of the Troika (Сказка о Тройке) is a 1968 satirical science fiction novel by Russian writers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, with illustrations by Yevgeniy Migunov.
Although the novel itself is not directed against the state per se and a number of points underlined are true of modern-day bureaucracy and science in general, it met with a cold reaction during the Soviet era and was quite difficult to obtain, therefore achieving a "forbidden fruit" status.
The novel exists in two slightly different variants, known as Smena and Angara by the names of the magazines in which they were published.
They differ by characters and some plot lines necessitated by Angara's editorial request to fit the novel for the magazine volume.
The other version takes place in Tmuskorpion' (literally: "darkness-scorpion", a pun with "Tmutarakan", which is a cliché for a remote, obscure place; tarakan means cockroach, hence the pun, on a previously unexplored and unreachable floor of the Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry described in Monday Begins on Saturday.