Two Books

SUNLIGHT AT MIDNIGHT:

ST. PETERSBURG AND THE RISE OF MODERN RUSSIA

By W. Bruce Lincoln

2001 • 632 pages • $35

Serious Russophiles always welcome a new book by Bruce Lincoln. Sadly, this will be his last contribution to the field. The author of such books as Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia,  Conquest of a Continent: Siberia and the Russians, and In War’s Dark Shadow: The Russians Before the Great War, died in April of last year at the age of 61.

In the 1970s, Lincoln said, “I have become convinced that the historian who writes only for other specialists neglects an important part of an historian’s broader task. Therefore, I have begun to write for a broader audience in the hope that my efforts to explain Russia’s past may enable readers to better understand Russia’s present. I like to think that I have succeeded in that broader effort, at least to some extent.”

In this most recent, final effort, Lincoln again achieves his goal masterfully. Sunlight at Midnight is an affectionate, symphonic biography of St. Petersburg, a city the author visited countless times—in person and in his research—and one he clearly knew very well. In so many of his books, “Piter” has been the almost unnoticed supporting actor in his wider dramas; in this work, the city on the Neva takes center stage.

Elegant, tattered, rock solid, yet built on shifting sands, St. Petersburg seeMed to hold equal measures of exaltation and despair as the twentieth century began. The city was growing faster than any other capital in Europe, spreading further into what had once been an empty and desolate countryside. Rails, freight cars, locomotives, heavy guns for the army, battleships for the navy, machines of all sorts, hundreds and hundreds of miles of cotton cloth—everything that Russia needed—poured from factories and mills that worked day and night. The wealth produced was astounding, and its possessors would spend it lavishly to pursue fame as patrons of the arts. But the poverty was appalling, too, as the number of people living from hand to mouth grew larger.

Lincoln possessed a true gift for teaching that flowed over into his gently instructive and deeply evocative writing. The preceding passage, just five sentences, is thick with meaning and a depth of understanding for the times and place of Petersburg. And it is typical of this entire work.

There will always be plenty of academics who do their research and write their monographs for other academics to read. And while one might rush to conclude that Bruce Lincoln wrote “for the rest of us,” if you pick up this loving biography of Petersburg, you will soon realize that he also wrote very much for himself.

TRANS-SIBERIAN HANDBOOK

By Bryn Thomas

Trailblazer • 2001 • 432 pages • $19.95

As someone who has written, edited and published travel guides on Russia for the past 10 years, I am not easily impressed. Yet this latest edition of Thomas’ definitive guide to the Trans-Siberian is truly impressive.

First there is the size and heft issue. A travel guide needs to be compact and lightweight, but not sacrifice on info-value to be so. Weighing in at a modest 14.2 ounces (and an immodest 432 pages, to boot), the guide nonetheless fits nicely in the palm of the hand: A+.

On the information front, Thomas has done a wholesale update of this guide, stuffing it full of the latest info (and reviews) on restaurants, hotels and guide services, jamming in email addresses, websites and the like. And there is just enough “touristy” information about all the major stops along the Trans-Sib, that it will satisfy even the most demanding travelers.

Add to this train schedules, kilometer by kilometer route maps, city maps and the like, and you really could not ask for a more detailed, content rich guide.

Best of all, Thomas laces his information with an appreciable weight of dry British wit, as in this review of a Novosibirsk hotel: “It’s a typical Soviet place even down to the off-hand receptionists; they might tell you they are full, in which case hang around for a few minutes, then ask again and they’ll probably find a room, unless they really are full!.”

There are also great cut-boxes full of tips from previous travelers and quotes from historical accounts of riding the rails, including the affable Annette Meakin, the first British citizen to ride the Trans-Siberian in 1900.

In short, if you are even considering the Trans-Siberian, grab a copy of this book. The previous edition has been hard to get for almost a year. No telling how long this one will be easy to find!

— P.R.