This is the first book by
Orlando Figes that I have been unable to put down. I'd managed to work my way through Natasha's Dance, just, but got stuck halfway through his book on the Russian Revolution - all those people with Russian names, who keep popping up and disappearing - one gets confused. Also it seemed to go into quite endless detail....I had meant to finish it before launching into the Whisperers, but if I had done that, the Whisperers would still be lying in the shelf.
This, too, contains many Russian names (what else could I expect?), and some names keep popping up and disappearing (literally, given the circumstances); but there are not that many of them, and he seems to be better at linking them - perhaps he had to remind himself who was who.
So it's about the Stalin period (and its consequences) in terms of family life, from about 1923 or so until 1956, and to a lesser degree the period beyond then until now. It must have been horrendous! Essentially it's all about families being broken up, persecuted, hounded, and sent to the camps (ie Siberia); for being a bit better off in the 20s ('kulaks', small land-owners), for saying things (anything) in the 1930s, for being denounced by envious people, for being caught in the war by the Germans (WWII), for being Jews (late 1940s), and on and on. Few families can have been missed out, in one way or another. At the same time living conditions were terrible, with whole families sharing a tiny room, with a single bed in it, living in shared flats (kommunalkas) with thin walls, hence they could only whisper. Private conversations as good as did not take place, and opinions were not uttered, especially not in the front of children (you know what children are like, they chatter about anything). Family backgrounds were kept secret, eg being the child of a kulak could mean you could not go to university. Apparently many people kept these stories, their suffering etc quiet until much later on, eg the 1980s or 1990s. Those who came back from the camps, and many did not, lying now in the concrete of major building works, did not talk about their experiences, suppressing all emotions, coming back emotionally dead.
And still, people thirty years later look back with some nostalgia to Stalin's days; some of those who worked in those camps on those huge building projects are proud of their contribution to Soviet glory. Go figure. Now most of the people directly affected by Stalin are slowly dying out.
There is little about the Baltic states in the book; perhaps because of language issues - from my point of view that would have been nice, though I expect that the situation was much the same throughout the former Soviet Union.
Gripping stuff - it really is. Strangely, I find Natasha's Dance, a cultural history of Russia until the end of the 19th century, still more relevant to life in Russia today. Perhaps society has returned to that level?
