Ilya Rozanov and Grigori Rozanov’s Father-Son Relationship

Ilya Rozanov and Grigori Rozanov’s father-son relationship is defined in the gala scene by a painful double bind: Grigori is both the parent whose judgment still commands Ilya’s obedience and the declining man whose confusion Ilya cannot dismiss. Their exchange moves between reprimand and disorientation, revealing how authority, shame, and concern coexist without resolving into either affection or estrangement.

Authority and the Gala

The encounter takes place before a government gala in Russia, an event Ilya is required to attend and dislikes. Grigori will be there, and Ilya expects him to parade his famous son before foreign dignitaries as though proud of him, despite having spoken to him that week only to say how badly he had let Russia down. Before the gala, Ilya is expected at his father’s hotel room. He wishes he could refuse, but he arrives five minutes before six because, in Grigori’s eyes, arriving more than five minutes early would already be late. The small calculation makes their hierarchy tangible: even as an adult and an accomplished player, Ilya measures his conduct against his father’s exacting standard.

Grigori appears in full dress police uniform, his stern expression visible beneath a gray beard. Almost fifty years older than Ilya, he lets his son into the room and waits for him to take off his wool overcoat before inspecting him. Ilya stands as if awaiting punishment. There is no evident fault in his appearance: his black tuxedo is perfectly tailored, his bow tie is impeccable, and he has shaved more closely than he has in years. Grigori nevertheless settles on Ilya’s hair, which he says needs cutting. The inspection turns the formality of the occasion into another test that Ilya cannot quite pass, however carefully he has prepared.

Criticism and the Measure of Shame

The gala is also a public reckoning with Russia’s loss to Latvia. Grigori tells Ilya he should be honored to meet the Minister of Internal Affairs, then links that opportunity to the defeat and asks how Ilya could have allowed it to happen. Ilya says he is ashamed; his father replies that he is not nearly ashamed enough. He criticizes the discipline of the American league and says Ilya has become sloppy, lamenting that his son once had such promise.

Ilya’s private answer—that he is only twenty-two and one of the best hockey players in the world—does not become a defense. He does tell Grigori that he is a better player than ever and that the team has not been working well together. Grigori turns that explanation back on him: as captain, Ilya is responsible if the team fails to work together. Ilya looks at the floor rather than answering and waits for his father to change the subject. The exchange makes the conflict larger than a disagreement about one loss. Ilya understands his own ability differently from his father, but in the room he remains subject to Grigori’s judgment and does not challenge it openly.

A Break in Grigori’s Certainty

The encounter’s sharpest reversal comes over Ilya’s mother. Grigori steps closer, sets down his vodka, and adjusts Ilya’s bow tie. He asks who tied it and suggests that Ilya’s mother did not know how to do it properly. Ilya freezes, catches his breath, and reminds him evenly that his mother is dead. Grigori also freezes; confusion crosses his face before he says he was thinking of Ilya’s stepmother.

The moment exposes a fracture in the authority Grigori has exercised throughout the visit. A moment earlier he was inspecting his son’s clothes and assigning blame for a national-team defeat; now he has forgotten, or momentarily lost hold of, a fact Ilya must repeat to him. Grigori’s reference to the stepmother does not erase the lapse. Ilya responds by asking where Polina is that evening, pointedly refusing to treat his father’s explanation as though it had settled what just happened. The exchange is not a reconciliation: it is an encounter in which Ilya has to manage his father’s confusion while still absorbing his criticism.

Care, Resentment, and Deterioration

Ilya’s feelings about his father remain deliberately divided. He does not like Grigori, yet he hates watching him deteriorate. He wonders whether it might be easier when his father’s brain is fully gone, so that Grigori no longer has to suffer the embarrassment of drifting in and out of himself. The thought is not presented as relief from responsibility so much as an awareness of how difficult it is to witness the decline while remaining the target of his father’s reproaches. Grigori’s command to come with him and behave, and to make up for the shame already brought on the country, restores the old pattern of judgment even after the memory lapse. Ilya answers that he will.

That obedience does not mean Grigori’s words leave him untouched, nor does his resentment cancel his distress at his father’s condition. The relationship’s tension lies in their coexistence: Grigori can humiliate Ilya and still be someone whose deterioration pains him. The gala scene offers no final change in their bond. Instead, it leaves Ilya going with his father into the evening, carrying both the demand to represent Russia properly and the private knowledge that the man making that demand is beginning to lose his grip on himself.