ABSTRACT
It would seem that a need to accept love’s destiny (that is, ‘‘because I can do
so little myself’’) is also what drives the need for the battling heroes of
detective series like Kamenskaia to be socially active (‘‘I hope those heroes
can at least do something, because I cannot’’). Love and barely self-suffi-
cient detectives are both embodiments of social amelioration. Detectives, as
we have seen, also need that love in their own private lives – in domestic
emphases that must be palpable, lest we fall to the complaints suffered by confident, institutionally sustained Turetskii. Even detectives must be roman-
tic and it is their small, often unworkable dream (not dogma) of social bet-
terment that allows for some aspects of Soviet storytelling to be redone, as
in The Brigade or A Policeman’s Beat. Storytelling is redone with romance.
Without the roles of Guseva and Poroshina, these two series would be
completely different (that is, considerably uglier).
