The dual names Albat and Kuybyshevo

The dual names Albat and Kuybyshevo are not simply competing labels for the same settlement in Sergey Sergeyich’s experience. Albat is the village he perceives in lamplight: spacious, intimate, and seemingly alive in its own language. Kuybyshevo is what appears by day, or in darkness without electricity—a place that speaks Russian and recalls the familiar surroundings Sergey Sergeyich has left behind. The contrast turns light into a way of seeing belonging and difference.

Two names, one village

As Sergey Sergeyich leaves the village and climbs the mountain past vineyards, he looks back at the lights of Albat, while the road signs call it “Kuybyshevo.” The names coexist in the same view, but they do not carry the same feeling. The official signs identify the place as Kuybyshevo; the lights behind him allow him to see Albat.

The contrast becomes clearer when Sergey Sergeyich watches the village after nightfall. Streetlamps trace its roads and reveal a settlement of at least two dozen streets and lanes. In this light, he imagines Albat breathing and speaking an Albatian language behind illuminated windows. The name describes not just a location but a village made vivid and particular by the way he sees it.

Light, language, and recognition

For Sergey Sergeyich, the distinction changes with the hour. In daylight—or in the evening before darkness settles and the streetlights come on—the place is Kuybyshevo. It speaks Russian, or, as he thinks of it, Kuybyshevan, and differs little from Little Starhorodivka except for its southern vegetation. The comparison makes Kuybyshevo feel ordinary and familiar, rather than enchanted or distinct.

Electricity therefore does more than brighten the streets: it seems to disclose another version of the village. Sergey Sergeyich feels that he can actually see Albat in the lamps’ glow, although no road sign bears that name. When the power is absent, he thinks, the settlement remains Kuybyshevo even at night. Candles, rather than streetlights, are what might dispel the non-cosiness he associates with such darkness.

A temporary refuge from home

The evening view briefly draws Sergey Sergeyich away from thoughts of his home in the grey zone. He remembers the potbelly stove that warmed his house through winter and into spring, and knows that Pashka is looking after the house in his absence. The memory brings sadness, but the lights of Albat ease it and return him to a calm, almost joyful mood.

That calm is fragile: the narration describes it as an illusion that calmness itself is happiness. Yet the names’ contrast gives the moment its shape. The illuminated Albat offers Sergey Sergeyich a brief sense of discovery and repose; the unlit, Russian-speaking Kuybyshevo recalls the familiarity of the village he has left. Neither name erases the other, and the movement between them registers how place can change in meaning with light, language, and distance from home.