As the British journalist and comedian recounts the history of her emotional and intellectual fulfillment through the Russian language and its literature, she discusses 11 classics and their authors. Her gift beyond being an entertaining writer herself is that of giving us the desire to go read or reread those great books. She realizes how for the most part they show us how not to live. Turgenev, Chekhov, Pasternak, they all show us how we deceive ourselves, how we go too far, how we believe one thing but do the opposite. Groskop is such a wonderful host of these discussions because she conveys her excitement and knowledge with a sense of humor. One wants to continue conversing with her about the books’ intriguing and maddening and astounding parts and about their authors. Of Tolstoy:
“Even the most cursory glance at his life shows that he was an immensely and amusingly complex character. That is why—with reservations—I love him. He is a tricky bugger, with many bad character traits and psychological inconsistencies, which plagued him his whole life and which he tried desperately to overcome. But aren’t these very much the qualities anyone should seek in a lifelong friend?” [25]
As a girl Groskop threw herself into Russian literature, and while at university spent a year teaching English in St. Petersburg just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. She imagined becoming Russian, but eventually learned that
“Russian is not something that I will ever master, regardless of what my roots are, but it is something that can bring me great joy from the attempt at mastery alone. I will never give up on the language, and I will never give up on trying to understand these books.” [188]
Her romance with a Ukrainian “God’s gift” ended with rejection, but also gave her a great story to tell.
Her life is always connected to her discussions:
“For those who already know and love The Master and Margarita, there is something of a cult-like ‘circle of trust’ thing going on. I’ve formed friendships with people purely on the strength of the knowledge that they have read and enjoyed this novel. I have a friend who married her husband almost exclusively because he told her he had read it.” [157-8]
Russian literature matters to Groskop because for most of her 45 years she has seen herself or wondered about herself through it, from Anna Karenina (natch!) to Crime and Punishment to Eugene Onegin and Dead Souls to Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem. She quotes brilliantly from biographies but never stumbles into pedantry.
Her impetus for The Anna Karenina Fix, she says, was an interview she conducted with Elif Batuman, whose The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them attracted praise in 2010. But Batuman’s book was like front-line reportage from a brief affair, while Groskop’s half-comical much superior study is the result of a long yet thriving marriage.
- Bob Blaisdell
Geography matters. And if you want to understand Russia, to understand what it means to be the world’s largest country, with few natural boundaries and countless neighbors (and thus invaders and competitors), you must grapple with its geography, its physical size and its place in the world.
Security has impelled Russia (and the USSR) toward empire, because nations and organisms natural push toward their boundaries, in order that the Center be better supplied and more secure from attack.
But of course there is not just the immensity of Russia that is germane here. For the country is also rich in natural resources – from precious metals to timber, from oil to water. And, while we are speaking about water, let’s not forget about Russia’s endless quest to have warm water ports for trade and security.
No question about it, geography has played a major role in the unfolding of Russian history. And this beautiful volume from Belknap Press (a division of Harvard University Press) offers an incomparable lens on that unfolding.
Yet this is not just a compilation of maps of historical turning points. Instead, it is a general history of Russia from the coming of the Slavs to the present day. Broken up into digestible chapters it uses maps to illustrate everything from the distribution of languages to the disposition of military forces, from battle lines to hotbeds of revolt. And even if one feels well read in Russian history, this will prove an invaluable reference work for seeing where the border lines were, who Russia’s neighbors and rivals were, at specific points in history.
An essential volume for any Russophile’s bookshelf.
- Paul E. Richardson
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.
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