Icon (novel)

The Black Manifesto is a novel from 1996 by Frederick Forsyth, who plays mainly on the time after the actual Cold War in Russia.

Action

By chance, comes a document called the Black Manifesto, in the British Embassy in Moscow. It was written by the fictional populists Igor Komarov, a distinguished politician who leads an ambitious campaign and wants to win the next presidential election. Komarov is modeled in large parts of the Russian right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

The manifesto is Komarov program paper that its true, the public and the foreign carefully concealed plans outlined: reinstallation of the Soviet Union with hostile subjugation of the satellite states, expulsion and extermination of the Jews from the Russian territory, establishing a police -dominated dictatorship.

After the authenticity of the document is proven, fast decisions must be made in order to influence the election. Meanwhile, the British government wants to have nothing to do and refuses to turn on. The former head of the British foreign intelligence service takes the document then to a meeting with leading figures on which it receives the green light for action.

He recruited a secret service with Russia profound knowledge. This should go back to Russia and prevent the election Komarov after a long break. By chance, the agent still has an old contact in Russia, which is indebted to him and of which he is now requesting support.

Forsyth's intentions

As for Frederick Forsyth characteristic, it connects artfully actual problems of Russia in the nineties with visions of the future have quite realistic foundations: the deep-seated insecurity in Russia has found a long time, the incipient collapse of the federal structure ever offered any reason to suspect that again a dictatorship could threaten Gleichschaltung all state organs. The longing for the lost status of a world power plays perfectly to this day in Russia's foreign and domestic policies of a role.

Forsyth, an avowed conservative who is called as a remedy for the problems of Russia, the introduction of a constitutional monarchy under a new Tsar. A not so small part of the book is about how a country where 80 years earlier abolished the absolute monarchy and the royal family was murdered, again could come to a monarch, which demands political and genealogical nature would be made to such person and how to make population and politicians such a move tasty.

Filming

The book was made ​​into a film in 2005 with Patrick Swayze in the lead role.

Output

• Frederick Forsyth: The Black Manifesto. Translated from English by Wulf Bergner, last Goldmann Paperback, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-442-45752-6.