Nah, this is a fine thing to do and I support it heartily!
Especially recommend stuff like this when reading theory, Lenin likes to call dudes out by name and hyper specific organizations and membership etc, when those details don’t really matter much for my purposes reading this 120 years later
Ive never actually gone in and replaced names, but I kind of glance at them and go “this is guy 1” and move on
Or more specifically like “opportunist leader of anti-bolshevik faction guy” etc etc. It’s really not worth remembering every single name
Also, some people find remembering names hard, let alone unfamiliar ones
Yeah, he’s the brain genius that came up with super-imperialism i.e. the late stage of imperialism which creates world peace through cartelisation of the world powers into a one-world imperial cartel, the same way the banks and industry formed cartels to maximize profits.
If your cracker ass can remember hundreds of pokemon names for the duration of a game, you can remember a dozen russian names for the duration of a book
Cursed monkey paw: “Damn, I can believe that Squirtle’s brother got arrested by Tsar Lapris’s secret police for spreading the seditious works of Koffing.”
Best part of this is that Russians have three names (a first name, surname, and a patronymic) and they love using nicknames. So the main character is Rodion (first name) Romanovitch (patronymic) Raskolnikov (surname), but can (and is) called by any of those three names. He’s also got nicknames like Rodya, Rodenka, and Rodka. So this deranged individual (who decided to call Raskolnikov “Pete” I guess) is going to be hopelessly confused when somebody starts referring to Rodya, and he’ll think the book is filled with like five times as many characters as it actually is.
YES. When I studied Rus Lit my prof dedicated a whole lecture to this! With slides! I honestly love this part of Russian literature, it gives it so much character, and anyone who complains about it doesn’t deserve to read it.
But that’s kind of the rub; it’s never actually confusing. In context of the story it’s very clear when somebody is addressing Raskolnikov, even if they’re using a nickname or a name you’re not entirely familiar with. It’s like when you hear somebody has a nickname in real life. You might not know why they have that nickname, but you know that nickname is theirs.
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