Monument to Ostap Bender

Ostap Bender is a fictional con man and the central antiheroic protagonist in the novels The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf written by Soviet authors Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov. The novels belong to the picaresque novel genre, which was previously rare in Russian literature. In The Twelve Chairs he called himself Ostap-Suleyman-Berta-Maria-Bender-Bey, in The Little Golden Calf he called himself Bender-Zadunaysky, and he was called Ostap Ibragimovich by one of his companions.

Bender is an attractive, resourceful crook, full of energy while operating within the law; his description as "The Great Combinator" became a catchphrase in the Russian language.