September 01, 2011

Review: Three World War Two Histories


Review: Three World War Two Histories

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, $29.95)
Leningrad Anna Reid (Walker, $30)
The Damned and the Dead Frank Ellis (Kansas, $34.95)

It is the great, cruel paradox of World War II in Russia that heinous, unanswered crimes coexisted with truly heroic, astonishing human achievement. That – be it out of fear or love of the Motherland or self-defense – Soviets fought so bravely to defend a system that treated them like cattle, confiscating from them the land, the bread and the peace that the Revolution had allegedly been all about, shipping them and their relatives off to Siberian labor camps, sentencing soldiers unfortunate enough to have been captured in war into “penal battalions.”

Taken together, these three books offer a stunning and deeply documented indictment of the Stalinist regime. Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands is the most unequivocal. “At a great distance,” he writes, “we can choose to compare the Nazi and Soviet systems, or not. The hundreds of millions of Europeans who were touched by both regimes did not have this luxury.” Trapped between colluding or colliding totalitarianisms, between 1933 and 1945, some 14 million Europeans perished as a result of non-combat, deliberate killing policies of the Hitler and Stalin regimes. And that is more or less a low estimate. The number could have been as high as 21 million, Snyder asserts. The crimes, Snyder explains, were committed under cover of Big Lies, the pursuit of unattainable utopias: “Stalin’s utopia was the forced collectivization of the Soviet Union in 9-12 weeks, Hitler’s was to conquer the Soviet Union in the same span of time…” When the utopias instead lead to catastrophe, Stalin and Hitler “blamed the enemy of their choice, and then used the death of millions to make the case that their policies were necessary or desirable.” This is a harrowing history that succeeds by connecting individual tragedies with epic events and trends, drawing on an amazing breadth of research.In Leningrad, Anna Reid explores one particularly inexcusable horror: the Siege of Leningrad. And she focuses mainly on the first, deadliest winter of 1941-2.

One might wonder what new there is to write about the Seige, given Harrison Salisbury’s monumental 900 Days. But that was published in 1969, and much more has become known since then, archives have been opened, diaries discovered or disclosed. And it is on diaries and the words and memoirs of those who experienced the Siege firsthand that Reid’s moving documentary is based, stripping away painfully encrusted ideological versions of the Seige. While Reid does seek to understand how the Siege could have been allowed to happen, and to show that it might have been far less deadly had Russia been ruled by a different regime, her main intent is for the Siege to be a prism for examining the human experience, “to remind ourselves of what it is to be human, of the depths and heights of human behavior.” That human dimension is also of interest to Frank Ellis, in The Damned and the Dead. Ellis is concerned with constructed memories of the War in Soviet and Russian literature. It is an ambitious and thorough survey of the works of writers from the 1940s to the 1990s, from Grossman and Simonov to Astafyev, Bykov and Vladimov, and it is superb in showing that, censorship notwithstanding, there has never been just one clear and uniform view of the War. Yet one of the central themes of these works, Ellis finds, is the untenable dilemma of the Red Army soldier: “How is it possible  to wage a just war against Hitler and on behalf of Stalin and his regime?”

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

About Us

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.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955