Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1982)

Private Ivan Chonkin is a short, clumsy, good-natured Red Army soldier sent to guard a plane that has made a forced landing near a remote village on the eve of the German invasion of 1941. Then everyone forgets about him. He settles in with a local woman, and by the time the authorities remember, rumor and paranoia have turned him into a dangerous enemy of the state. If Švejk is your thing, this is its Soviet cousin, and the comedy of a system chasing its own tail is just as sharp. The Russian original could not be published at home and first appeared in Paris in 1975. Richard Lourie's 1977 translation remains the English version, and his translation of the sequel, Pretender to the Throne, continues the story.