Pifagorovich in “The Carriage”. The name is also a satire on new naming conventions in the early Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the name was chosen following the Russian tradition of “consulting the calendar”, with Poligraf’s name day being March 4. The name Poligraf has many possible meanings, including a printing process used for calendars.

The name of the donor of the human implants, who is an alcoholic and bum, is Chugunkin (“chugun” is cast iron), which can be seen as parody on the name of Stalin (“stal” is steel).

Adaptations

Film

The story was filmed in Italian in 1976 as Cuore di cane and starred Max von Sydow as Preobrazhensky.