The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!, a 1975 Soviet Film

The two-part feature film, directed by Eldar Riazanov, was first broadcast on January 1, 1976, at 18:00 on the First Program of the Central Television of the USSR. The premiere attracted an audience of approximately 100 million viewers, and due to overwhelming public demand, it was re-aired on February 7 of the same year. According to estimates by film historian Razzakov, by 1978, around 250 million people had watched the film [1]. Its immense popularity quickly cemented The Irony of Fate as an integral part of Soviet New Year’s traditions, alongside champagne, caviar, chimes, and the ritual of holiday television viewing.

The film opens with a short satirical cartoon, created and animated by Vitaly Peskov, who lived in Moscow’s Cheryomushki district. This animated sequence critiques the uniformity of Soviet urban planning, presenting a conceptual contrast between “standardized” and “individual” designs, as well as the tension between “bureaucratic” and “creative” approaches. The story follows an architect who envisions an original, elaborate building adorned with columns, staircases, and balconies. However, as his design passes through various levels of bureaucratic approval, each revision strips away decorative elements until the once-distinctive structure is reduced to a standard Soviet “box.” Though only three minutes long, the cartoon serves as a crucial part of the film’s prologue, reinforcing themes later echoed in the opening monologue on Soviet architecture.

This monologue, delivered over visual plans of a typical Soviet city, sets the stage for the film’s central motif:

“In the old days, when someone arrived in a new city, they felt lost and out of place—unfamiliar streets, unfamiliar houses, an unfamiliar way of life. But today, things are different. Now, wherever a person goes, they feel at home. How foolish our ancestors were, agonizing over every architectural project! Today, every city has a typical ‘Rocket’ cinema where you can watch a typical feature film. <…> Street names are the same: almost every Soviet city has its own Cheryomushki, indistinguishable from the rest. What city doesn’t have a 1st Sadovaya, 2nd Zagorodnaya, or 3rd Fabrichnaya? A 1st Parkovaya, 2nd Industrialnaya, or 3rd Stroitelnaya? It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Identical stairwells painted in the same pleasant colors, standard apartments filled with uniform furniture, and faceless doors fitted with identical locks.”

Following this ironic monologue, visually accompanied by architectural plans of a typical Soviet city, the film presents its epigraph: “A completely atypical story that could only happen on New Year’s Eve.” This text, set against sweeping shots of a snowstorm and a multi-story residential building, underscores the film’s fairy-tale quality, aligning it with the tradition of Christmas (or, in Soviet culture, New Year’s) stories, where the extraordinary is always possible. While this epigraph signals the film’s whimsical nature, its true significance becomes clear only in relation to the opening monologue, which emphasizes the monotonous uniformity of Soviet urban life.

The film tells the story of an accident that irrevocably changes the lives of two completely different people: Zhenia, a doctor from Moscow, and Nadia, a teacher from Leningrad. As Zhenia prepares for New Year’s Eve, he follows tradition by visiting a bathhouse with his friends. After consuming excessive amounts of alcohol, his intoxicated friends mistakenly put him on a plane to Leningrad instead of sending him home. Upon arrival, Zhenia gives a taxi driver his Moscow address—only to find himself in an identical apartment building in Leningrad. Even more absurdly, his key, issued by Soviet authorities along with his Moscow apartment, fits perfectly into the lock of a stranger’s home. Inside, he encounters Nadia, a woman expecting to celebrate New Year’s Eve with another man. Despite the absurdity of the situation, the audience is captivated by the unfolding relationship between the two protagonists, as the plot takes on the quality of a fairy tale about unexpected happiness. At its core, the film satirizes the standardization of Soviet architecture—identical buildings, streets, and even apartment keys across different cities. The humorous message that “all cities are the same” resonated deeply with Soviet audiences, who lived in a world dominated by modernist uniformity, where individuality was systematically erased.

The premise—that the uniformity of Soviet urban planning allowed a drunken man to mistakenly enter another person’s apartment in another city—exposes the extreme standardization of Soviet life. This uniformity functioned as an ideological fantasy: Soviet socialism promised egalitarianism and predictability, ensuring a structured life free from capitalist excesses. On the surface, the film seems to affirm this ideology, as Zhenia’s mix-up is only possible because the system appears to work so efficiently. Yet by pushing this logic to its extreme, the film unintentionally reveals its inherent absurdity: identical apartments erase individuality, the impersonal nature of Soviet architecture enables such mistakes, and the characters’ personal lives are dictated by the very sameness that was meant to create a more functional and harmonious society. This phenomenon aligns with what Slavoj Žižek calls a “symptomatic excess of ideology”—when a system’s defining characteristic (in this case, standardization) produces unintended consequences that ultimately undermine its very foundation [2].

The central theme of Riazanov’s film is the emergence of the unique—love and human relationships—within the standardized and uniform world of Soviet residential architecture and daily life. This creates a paradox: a film about the spontaneous, unpredictable nature of love unfolding against a backdrop of identical buildings and rituals is itself broadcast on television—an instrument of standardization and social normalization in the Soviet system. Television sought to reinforce the idea that society was structured in the same way for everyone, yet at the same time, it presented a story that revealed irreducible differences even within this supposedly uniform reality. By turning standardized experiences into intimate, singular emotions, The Irony of Fate resonated deeply with viewers, making each televised screening feel like a unique and personal event. The film captured a key contradiction of the Soviet era: the desire to carve out a private, autonomous space beyond ideological regulation within a system designed to standardize all aspects of life. In a society where state control permeated even the most personal spheres, this struggle for individuality and privacy became a subtle act of resistance.

At its core, The Irony of Fate presents Soviet standardization as a force of fate, orchestrating an encounter between Zhenia and Nadia through a bureaucratic accident. On one level, this is a utopian romantic fantasy where chance triumphs over rigid planning. Yet the film also highlights the absence of true personal agency: Zhenia and Nadia do not actively choose each other but are brought together by the absurd logic of standardization. Their romance mirrors the structure of Soviet life, where decisions are often impersonal and dictated by external forces. The resolution of their love triangle—Nadia leaving her fiancé and Zhenia abandoning his bride—feels almost inevitable, shaped less by individual emotions than by the narrative’s own internal logic, much like Soviet ideology dictated “correct” social roles. Thus, the film both affirms and satirizes the notion that love can exist within a system of socialist uniformity, suggesting that romantic choices in the USSR were, in their own way, as standardized as Soviet housing.

In The Irony of Fate, Lacan’s concept of the “real” (chthonic desire), which stands in opposition to the “symbolic order” of socialism, manifests through alcohol—one of the rare moments when Soviet citizens allowed themselves to indulge, often without restraint. The bathhouse scene, where Zhenia and his friends drink excessively, is an act of jouissance—pleasure taken to an extreme that transgresses social norms [3]. This excess destabilizes the symbolic order, setting the stage for the film’s central plot of confusion and chance. 

Alcohol also functions as a liberating force, enabling Zhenia to break free from his structured, predictable life and stumble into a chaotic but seemingly more “authentic” romance. The film suggests that alcohol, within Soviet culture, operated as a release valve—a socially tolerated form of rebellion that provided a temporary escape from the monotony of socialist life, yet remained ultimately contained within the system itself. A particularly memorable line in the film is spoken by Zhenia’s rival and Nadia’s fiancé, Hippolytus, who, in a fit of jealousy, drinks and then absurdly steps into the shower fully clothed:

“How can there be programmed, expected, planned happiness, eh? Mmm… Lord, how boring our lives are! We have lost the spirit of adventure, we have stopped climbing through the windows of our beloved women, we have stopped doing big, good things. What an abomination… what an abomination is this bay fish of yours!”

This quote encapsulates a deep sense of frustration, boredom, and the loss of genuine emotion in Soviet life. It critiques the predictability of existence, where everything—even happiness—is planned, much like the state’s vision for the inevitable arrival of communism. Hippolytus laments the disappearance of adventure, passion, and sincerity, hinting at the monotonous reality in which even New Year’s celebrations have been reduced to mechanical rituals devoid of true feeling. His reference to the “bay fish” becomes a metaphor for Soviet everyday life—a routine so standardized that even festive moments follow a predetermined script, leaving no space for spontaneity. More broadly, the quote reflects the existential crisis of the Soviet individual in the 1970s: life under socialism may have provided material stability, but it also stripped people of personal freedom, individuality, and the ability to act outside a predefined role.

The ending of The Irony of Fate is deeply ambiguous and ideologically charged. While Zhenia and Nadia appear to embrace a new relationship, the cyclical nature of the story—its repeated traditions, the New Year’s ritual, and the predictability of Soviet life—suggests that nothing truly changes. This reflects the persistence of Soviet ideological structures, which create an illusion of transformation while ultimately reinforcing the same system. The characters seem to “break free” from their predetermined relationships, yet their new romance is equally dictated by fate and ideological constructs. The setting—identical apartments in interchangeable cities—suggests that such a love story could happen to anyone, reinforcing the notion that personal life is ultimately shaped by a larger ideological order. Even the film itself has become part of an annual ritual, watched every New Year’s Eve, turning an ironic critique of Soviet standardization into a standardized cultural product. What initially appears to be a film about personal choice and romantic destiny ultimately serves as a perfect allegory for the workings of Soviet ideology: it offers the illusion of spontaneity within a rigid, predetermined system.

One could argue that The Irony of Fate functions as an ideological symptom, a film that both celebrates and critiques Soviet life without directly confronting its contradictions. On one hand, it affirms the Soviet dream of modernity, depicting a world where infrastructure and social organization create an orderly, predictable existence. On the other, it subtly exposes the alienation generated by this very system, illustrating how love, fate, and identity have become as interchangeable as Soviet housing. By framing these contradictions within a romantic comedy rather than a tragedy, the film neutralizes its critique, making it palatable within Soviet culture. Ultimately, the joke is on the audience. They laugh at the absurdity of Soviet life while actively participating in it. The Irony of Fate can be read as an ideological dream which, when examined too closely, reveals itself as a nightmare—one that underscores the existential meaninglessness of Soviet life against the backdrop of socialism’s modernist project.

References:

[1] F. Razzakov. The death of Soviet cinema. The mystery of the backstage war 1973-1991 (Moscow: Exmo, 2008), 133.

[2] Slavoj Žižek conceptualizes ideology as a system that operates through a surplus of fantasy—both structuring subjectivity and obscuring inherent contradictions. Ideology does not merely conceal the truth; rather, it generates an excess of meaning that serves as its symptom—something overlooked yet simultaneously exposing the system’s internal inconsistencies. Žižek develops this idea through a Lacanian reading of symptoms, viewing them as sites where hidden conflicts surface and become legible. For a more in-depth exploration of this concept, see The Sublime Object of Ideology (Verso, 1989).

[3] Jacques Lacan explores jouissance—a complex notion that intertwines pleasure, pain, and excess—particularly in relation to the symbolic order, law, and the Other. He frequently links the Superego to a demand for excessive, even punitive, pleasure. Rather than merely prohibiting desire, the Superego paradoxically commands the subject to enjoy, making this “enjoyment” both coercive and contradictory. For a deeper exploration of this concept, see On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Encore 1972-1973, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (W. W. Norton & Company, 1998).