In the First Circle
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Harper Collins (October, $18.99)
After One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, this is Solzhenitsyn’s greatest novel.
Solzhenitsyn originally thought he might be able to publish In the First Circle in the Soviet Union, and so “lightened” it, removing some of the more “objectionable” material, including nine full chapters. All excisions are restored for the first time in English in this new edition.
Told in Solzhenitsyn’s compelling polyphonic style, the novel recreates the surreal, morally charged world of the sharashka—a secret institute within the Gulag system where scientists were assigned research tasks by those who locked them up in this “first circle of hell.” Yet Solzhenitsyn also conveys the hyper-paranoid world of the Soviet apparatchiki, and offers what may be the most vivid portrait of Stalin anywhere in literature.
The central moral issue of the novel is whether to collaborate with a regime if this might enable the oppression of other innocents, or whether one should instead hold true to one’s principles. The protagonists are tasked with identifying a traitor from only a tape recording, knowing that success in their research will condemn the man; if, however, they choose not to cooperate, they will be shipped off to a brutally severe labor camp.
There is no preachiness here. This is a gripping novel in the best traditions of Russian realism, not one of the Nobel laureate’s strident political statements. Masterfully translated by Harry T. Willets, it is rich with memorable characters, finely crafted episodes and beautiful language. In fact, the use and misuse of language is a central theme in the novel, juxtaposing the truthful, spare language of the inmates with the diarrheal nonsense of the corrupt regime.
How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin
BBC (2009)
Alan Woodhead, Director
Cast aside your conventional notions. It was not (as neocons aver) Ronald Reagan and the threat of Star Wars that won the Cold War. It was not (as mainstream economists would assert) the bankrupt ideology and practice of a Centrally Planned, authoritarian economy that caused the Soviet Union to fail. No, the Beatles brought down the USSR. The Fab Four.
The Beatles, says Artemy Troitsky in this rollickingly fun documentary, “turned tens of millions of young people into another religion and the understanding that we are living in a monster state and we needed an alternative. They changed everything.”
“The Iron Curtain was like a fence with holes after the Beatles,” says super fan and collector Kolya Vasin. “And we breathed through those holes.”
Through interviews with cultural observers, musicians and leaders (including an amazingly English-fluent deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov), Woodhead shows that the Beatles spearheaded the cultural revolution in the Soviet Union, coming to symbolize and sustain a counterculture from the mid-1960s onward.
Rich in archival footage and fascinating details (e.g. the persistent rumors of a secret Beatles concert in St. Petersburg; how the black market for records worked; a hilarious extract of Joseph Kobzon singing a Beatles song in broken English), this entertaining film offers a magical tour through the final decades of the Soviet regime. And it offers a fairly convincing case, as one interviewee puts it, that the Beatles changed the Soviet Union even more than Gorbachev.
[Airing in the US in 2010.]
There is No Freedom Without Bread!
Constantine Pleshakov
FSG (November, $26)
The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this November is sure to witness a multitude of new books, republications, retrospective news stories and countless replays of Ronald Reagan’s stirring 1987 Berlin speech (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”).
But what we can be sure of is that there will be few in-depth news reports, and many of the same tired, superficial conclusions about Cold War winners and losers. (In the end, it was not Gorbachev who tore down the wall, but masses of young Germans, after a confused, weakened East German leader misspoke.)
And so a book like Pleshakov’s is a breath of fresh air. Delving deep into the events leading to the collapse of the Soviet empire, Pleshakov portrays them in the context of domestic imperatives. Within each regime were those for and against the status quo, and most times events were the result of these two groupings clashing with one another in some guise, independent of larger, international forces. The 1989 revolutions were less battles of Germans or Romanians against occupying Russians, than Germans versus Germans, Romanians versus Romanians.
Chock full of revelatory details, There is No Freedom Without Bread! offers invaluable context for anyone interested in understanding how, and why, the world fundamentally changed two decades ago.
Brief Lives: Alexander Pushkin
Robert Chandler
Hesperus (2009)
This superb, short (152 pages) book is a masterwork. Chandler dares to wrestle with the icon that is Pushkin and delivers a digestible, readable biography that is as mindful of the mountains of Pushkinian research as it is of the knowledge and interest level of the general reader.
Most importantly, Chandler does an excellent job of showing how inextricably Pushkin’s art was bound up with his life, spicing up the narrative with enlightening vignettes, such as how General Intsov, Pushkin’s overseer in Bessarabia, had to confiscate the poet’s boots to enforce a house arrest; how Pushkin composed through the night and one house guest woke up to find Alexander Sergeyevich nude on the couch, surrounded by papers; how Pushkin faked an aneurism in a sloppy attempt to escape to Paris…
Tightly composed, this volume nonetheless includes useful summaries of Pushkin’s works, matter-of-fact discussions of the poet’s foibles (from gambling, to procrastination— he wrote best when confined by sickness, to philandering), and superlative translations of Pushkin’s poetry and prose.
NOTED IN BRIEF
If you know a Russian recently emigrated to the U.S. or staying here long term for work or study, get them them a copy of Привет, Америка (Privet, Amerika: $24.95, russia-on-line.com, ph. 301-933-0607). Packed into this dense survival guide is everything a long-term visitor or new resident needs to know about everything from the vicissitudes of health care to getting married to civil rights, to car rental, lodging and making cultural adjustments. And it is all in Russian!
Meanwhile, in the “additional reading” department, for those whose interest is piqued by this issues’ story on Elizabeth, there is Henri Troyat’s excellent Terrible Tsarinas (Algora, 2001; $18.95), a nicely translated multi-biography of the five women who led Russia after Peter the Great’s death. Wonderfully written, it pulses with court intrigues, diplomatic conspiracies and vivid descriptions of court life.
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
