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| The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia By Orlando Figes Metropolitan Books 784 pp.,$35 Courtesy of Henry Holt & Co. |
Stalin: the man and the era
Two new books dig deeper to offer new insights on both Stalin and the vast empire he controlled.
from the October 30, 2007 edition
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Figes thus tells two stories: that of the lives of his interview subjects, at best distorted and at worst destroyed, and that of the Russian dream of a socialist society, manipulated and betrayed by Stalin's pragmatics of power.
Figes provides broad context for each period, from the economic calculations that created the Gulag to the retreat from communist internationalism during Hitler's rise. Woven throughout with notable compassion and detachment are the comments of hundreds of inteviewees. (There are 450 names listed in an appendix.)
Certain individuals' fates thread throughout the book, illustrating chillingly how good fortune could turn to bad as political winds changed. Arrests and fear in one generation often created model Soviet citizens in the next, as parents taught children to avoid persecution.
One main character is the writer Konstantin Simonov, whom Figes follows from his aristocratic childhood through transformation into a war journalist and well-known poet, and then to remorse in the years after Stalin's death as Simonov learned the truth behind mass arrests.
Figes also introduces Antonina Golovina, from her childhood in a prosperous peasant family through the family's exile as "kulaks" on to years of silence about her past. (Until the early 1990s she hid her parents' arrest and her own exile from two husbands and her children.)
Although 600 pages of such stories could be overwhelming, Figes redeems the gloom by demonstrating compassion for flawed human beings and revealing compelling examples of moral courage and kindness – such as teachers and principals taking in the orphaned children of "enemies of the people."
The two books work well in conjunction. A reader of Montefiore's book will feel like an eerily privileged insider with a special understanding of Stalin's whims while reading Figes's. In return, Figes illuminates the widespread "utopian fanaticism of ... quasi-religious ideology" that Montefiore names as a crucial factor allowing Stalin's rise. As examples of fine writing and of dedication to greater historical clarity, both books deserve acclaim.
• Megan Dixon taught Russian literature and culture at Principia College and is currently getting a PhD in cultural geography with a regional focus in Russia.
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