There is a refreshing terseness in this new biography.
As the author states, “the literature on Stalin and his era is impossibly vast.” But too often solid research gets mixed up with the slapdash. And there is no shortage of people who will cobble together a bit of both to make political points, to rewrite or even whitewash history.
Khlevniuk is one of the most respected scholars on Stalin and his era, and he seeks in this work to compile “only what we know for certain about Stalin and his time,” and to very directly counter those (particularly in modern Russia) who would romanticize the Stalin era.
This makes for a very digestible biography, yet one packed with revelations, if only because of the concise and clear way the author presents them. Khlevniuk demonstrates the linkage between the Spanish Civil War and the purges of 1937-38, catalogues Stalin’s catastrophic and repeated failures as a military leader, gives fascinating detail on the inner workings of the ruling circle and the tortured history of Stalin’s family life, and sheds light on the vozhd’s death and the surprisingly smooth transition to oligarchic rule. All in just over 300 pages.
Best of all, Khlevniuk soundly debunks revisionists who absolve Stalin from inciting and leading the purges, or exaggerate his significance as a military leader, economic thinker, or foreign policy strategist. The record is clear here: Stalin was the driving force behind the purges, and he succeeded as a leader in spite of his deficits, and largely as a result of the system of State Terror he forged. And the proof that “just one person” could have motivated such vast repression is found in the swiftness of change that followed his death – within weeks, the KGB was significantly reined in, the war in Korea was brought to an end, and economic reform was begun.
If you read just one biography this year, make it this one.
This lush novel is at once a fantastical tale of an alternative Russian future, while at the same time a subtly allegorical story of competing worldviews, personified in the diverging life paths of two twin brothers, once inseparable.
The tale begins with a long, rambling, first sentence that is steeped, like much of the book that follows, in the language and mysticism of Russian fairy tales, yet soon enough we are swept into a strange world where two brothers, Yarik and Dima, are laboring on the construction of a vast greenhouse whose relentless growth is quietly gobbling up the surrounding countryside and all that it represents.
The structure is heated by an orbiting mirror that provides prosperity and jobs, yet turns locals’ lives into a painfully, endlessly long day. And yet, life for the brothers is mostly good and uncomplicated, until a chance encounter with the reigning oligarch turns everything sideways. The twins’ deep, fraternal love is increasingly at odds with the daunting forces of conformity and development, and each much choose where their loyalties lie.
Beautifully written, this is a perfect summer read for Russophiles, and a healthy one too, clocking in at just under 500 pages.
It is nice to come across a documentary about Russia that is not all Sturm und Drang, Stalin and Purges, mafia and Putin. Yes, those negative aspects are an important part of Russian reality, but history is long and it has many stories to tell, far from all of them depressing.
The story of Peter Carl Fabergé and the jewelry empire he built is a truly remarkable story, and it is the focus of this new documentary from Arts Alliance. It is a lushly crafted, beautifully filmed documentary, full of glowing images of St. Petersburg and soaring Russian overtures. And it nicely weaves the arc of Fabergé’s tale into the broader context of the momentous Russian events of the 1880s-1920s.
The Fabergé story is one of commercial success and imperial excess, of an art restorer who went on to create a jewelry powerhouse in St. Petersburg, catering to the rich and famous, and especially to the Russian court.
Trained in Dresden and apprenticed in St. Petersburg, Carl Fabergé came to the attention of the imperial court in the 1880s and soon his workshop was making gifts and trinkets for those in the highest orbits of court life, satisfying the needs of a high society where, as one expert notes, “Fabergé gifts were extremely emotional. It was all about the extraordinary...”
The first Fabergé Easter Egg was crafted in 1887, and some 50 would follow, including an unfinished one from 1917 (the Pearl Egg) that was only recently discovered for what it was in a Moscow mineral museum.
Its workshop shuttered in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Fabergé family was forced to flee to Lausanne, Switzerland, where Carl died just a few years later. A worker looking at the closed St. Petersburg workshop that had once housed hundreds of the world’s finest craftsmen, remarked that “it was as though we had lost a dearly loved relative.”
Ironically, it was the forced emigration of Fabergé, the murder of the tsarist family, and the dire straits of Russian nobility in Paris (forced to sell off their precious snuff boxes and jewels) that brought the workshop’s art to the attention of a wider audience. That and the efforts of one Armand Hammer, who had parleyed his connections with the Kremlin into a tsar’s ransom of jewelry and eggs that he began selling off to the likes of Pratt, Post and Forbes.
“The love of Fabergé is an addiction,” one interviewee in the film notes, while another confirms the diagnosis by calling one egg “the closest thing that a group of men have come to perfection on Earth.”
Perfection or no, the historical Fabergé brand carries within it a dissonant duality: one of amazing beauty and mindless excess. The film does not gloss over this fact and historians point out the gaping chasm that separated Russia’s tiny, spendthrift nobility and the huge society they fed off, how even in the dark days of the First World War, Fabergé had a difficult time keeping up with orders for its luxury goods (demand straitened by the fact that many of the firm’s workers were being called off to war).
In 2009, the historical Fabergé brand (separate from the mass market shampoo and home products line) was resurrected as a modern jewelry brand. In fact, some of the most fascinating B-roll scenes from the film are taken from the modern factory, where finely tuned lathes shave a hair’s breadth of silver off of a sphere, and goldsmiths work much as they did in Fabergé’s day, only perhaps with better lighting.
The film ends with an old Chevy truck trundling down an American highway. And we are told – in something between the dulcet tones of an NPR broadcast and the “What do you think it is worth?” style of Antiques Roadshow – how an American scrap metal dealer “in a small town in America” acquired a tiny golden egg for $14,000, intending to melt it down for its component metals.
Only problem was, the value of the egg’s metals turned out to be far less than what he had paid. Luckily for him, chance intervened (internet+obscure news article) and his hopeless treasure was discovered to be the third Fabergé egg ever made (1887) and worth something north of $20 million.
As with many things, fine art has nothing to do with the cost of the materials that goes into its creation. And the best art often has a fascinating back story.
Trailer: fabergefilm.com
* Nora Favorov is Russian Life magazine’s translation editor.
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