lieutenant Kijé

Lieutenant Kijé or Kizhe, originally Kizh (Киж), is a fictional character in an anecdote about the reign of Emperor Paul I of Russia, in which the cover-up of a transcription error leads to the creation of a fictional soldier, Kijé, and his rise through the ranks. When Paul asks to meet the now renowned officer, the creators of the hoax are cornered into a final lie that the soldier has died in battle. The story was used as the basis of a novella by Yury Tynyanov published in 1928 and filmed in 1934 with music by Sergei Prokofiev. The plot is a satire on bureaucracy.