In the Soviet Union in 1927, a former Marshal of Nobility, Ippolit Matveyevich "Kisa" Vorobyaninov, works as the registrar of marriages and deaths in a sleepy provincial town. His mother-in-law reveals on her deathbed that her family jewellery was hidden from the Bolsheviks in one of the twelve chairs from the family’s dining room set. Those chairs, along with all other personal property, were taken away by the Communists after the Russian Revolution. Vorobyaninov wants to find the treasure. The “smooth operator” and con-man Ostap Bender forces Kisa to become his partner, as they set out to find the chairs. Bender's street smarts and charm are invaluable to the reticent Kisa, and Bender comes to dominate the enterprise. The "conсessioners" find the chairs, which are to be sold at auction in Moscow. They fail to buy them and learn that the chairs have been split up for resale individually. Roaming all over the Soviet Union in their quest to recover the chairs, they have a series of comic adventures, including living in a students' dormitory with plywood walls, posing as bill painters on a riverboat to earn passage, bamboozling a village chess club with promises of an international tournament, and traveling on foot through the mountains of Georgia. Father Fyodor, their obsessed rival in the hunt for the treasure, follows a bad lead, runs out of money, ends up trapped on a mountain-top, and loses his sanity. Ostap remains unflappable, and his mastery of human nature eliminates all obstacles, but Vorobyaninov steadily deteriorates. They slowly acquire each of the chairs, but no treasure is found. Kisa and Ostap finally discover the location of the last chair. Vorobyaninov murders Ostap to keep all the loot for himself, but discovers that the jewels have already been found and used to build the new public recreation center in which the chair was found, a symbol of the new society. Vorobyaninov also loses his sanity.
Themes
The novel, though short, resonates with all the important events of the time. Numerous side characters, places and institutions are caught in a sharp light, sometimes of satire, sometimes of gentle irony: the operations of a Moscow newspaper, the 3% government bonds, New Economic Policy decadence and so on. The two main characters, among other things, are social types: the Bender is an individualist foreign to both the old, discredited hierarchy of birthright, epitomized by Vorobyaninov, and the new Communist order. A sort of Reynard the Fox specific to the time and setting, Bender claims to know “four hundred comparatively honest ways of relieving the people of their money,” and he has no future in the Soviet Union.
Legacy
Sequel
reappears in the book's sequel The Golden Calf, despite his apparent death in Chairs.
Adaptations
The novel has inspired at least twenty adaptations in the Soviet Union and abroad. The first cinematic adaptation of the novel was the joint Polish-Czech film Dvanáct křesel. The original plot was considerably altered, yet many following adaptations were primarily based on this film rather than on the novel itself. In Nazi Germany, Thirteen Chairs was based on this novel. However, the film did not credit the novel's authors. In England, the book inspired the film Keep Your Seats, Please, directed by Monty Banks at Ealing Studios and starring George Formby. The action takes place in Britain and involves seven chairs, not twelve. In Hollywood, the comedyIt's in the Bag! starring Fred Allen was very loosely based on the novel, using just five chairs. A Brazilian version called Thirteen Chairs, starred comedians Oscarito, Renata Fronzi, and Zé Trindade. In this version, the main character, played by Oscarito, inherits his aunt's mansion, which is soon confiscated, leaving him with only 13 chairs. After selling them, he finds out that his aunt had hidden her fortune in the chairs. He then goes on a quest to have the chairs back. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea made a Cuban version titled Las Doce Sillas with Reynaldo Miravalles as Ostap. Set in a tropical context, in this version the hero "sees the light", becomes corrected and joins Cuban revolutionary youth in zafra campaign. The story also served as the basis for the 1969 filmThe Thirteen Chairs starring Sharon Tate. A Syrian TV series entitled Hamam al-Hana is based on the premise of this novel. It involves three guys looking for the hidden treasure all over Damascus, with a chair for every episode. In the last episode, they find the right chair, but the treasure turns out to be old paper money which by then had become useless. Mel Brooks made a version titled The Twelve Chairs. His film followed the novel more closely, but with a sanitized "happier" ending. Frank Langella played the part of Ostap Bender, Ron Moody played Vorobyaninov, and Dom DeLuise played Father Fyodor. In the 1970s, two adaptations were made in the USSR: a film in 1971 by Leonid Gaidai with Archil Gomiashvili as Bender and a miniseries in 1976 by Mark Zakharov with Andrei Mironov as Bender.
