The Little Golden Calf (Russian: Золотой телёнок, Zolotoy telyonok) is a satirical picaresque novel by Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, published in 1931.

Ostap Bender is still alive (but sports a scar across his neck), after barely surviving the assassination attempt in the previous book, which he once briefly mentions as "stupid business".

Koreiko has made millions through various illegal enterprises by taking advantage of the widespread corruption in the New Economic Policy (NEP) period while pretending to live on an office clerk's salary of 46 rubles a month.

Expecting a long time of search for Koreiko, Bender decides to legalize himself and sets up a fictional enterprise "Horns and Hoofs", allegedly in charge of procurement of raw material for hair comb and button industry, headed by "sitz-chairman Funt [ru]", a professional "prison-sitter" (German "sitzen" means to "sit"), whose sole responsibility was to "sit" in a prison in the case of legal troubles, with salary doubled.

[1] Together with two petty criminals Balaganov and Panikovsky, and an extremely naive and innocent car driver Kozlevich, Bender finds out about Koreiko and starts to collect all the information he can get on his business activities.

According to the first, Ostap Bender, after obtaining his "million", gets to know the sorrow of a lonely man who has fulfilled his purpose, renounces the fortune, and marries his beloved, Zoya Sinitskaya.