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January 01, 2012

Gulags, Ments, Chekhov and Pushkin

Gulags, Ments, Chekhov and Pushkin

GULAG Boss. A Soviet Memoir

Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky, translated and edited by Deborah Kaple (Oxford University Press, $29.95)

This book is the antidote to the chronicle of suffering that comprises most prison camp memoirs. The author was not a career NKVD man but a railway engineer by trade, and he went from college directly to building the railway to Vorkuta, using convict labor during the years 1940-44. A no-nonsense practical man, he got to know the prisoners, improved their conditions, made bargains with them (which he kept) and turned them into an effective work force. The railway was (roughly) completed, coal was provided for the Russian war effort, and Mochulsky was recommended for the Red Banner medal. Most impressive are his descriptions of personal bravery in fighting for common sense in the face of ritualized political behavior, and winning. And in the chapter “The Real Essence of the Gulag” the author poses a series of detailed questions we would all like to put, which we can summarize here as “What was it all for?”

As always in Russia, there are amazing sidelights: how Mochulsky fed the brigade with partridge all winter, persuaded the criminal prisoners to work hard, worked with German POWs, discovered a prosperous village of refugee kulaks, and tells tales about sex in the camps.

The book contains a number of useful appendices: a list of the reasons people were arrested following particular campaigns from 1917 to 1952; the text of article 58 of the RSFSR criminal code; and a glossary of political terms used at the time. It is a pity camp technical terms were not included, since these are so specific. Further editing would have been useful in the case of about twenty translation and editing mistakes and possibly some out-of-place modern colloquialisms could have been avoided, but these are not numerous.

– Andrew Jameson

Thirst

By Andrei Gelasimov. Translated by Marian Schwartz (Amazon Crossing, $14.95)

It is said that if you look at the world and don’t see its myriad problems, you are not aware. And if you look at the people around you struggling with those problems and don’t see hope, you are not alive.

Andrei Gelasimov’s vivid, concise, penetrating stories are like that. Full of the anguish, longing and pain of the world. Yet also pierced by hope and insight. And humanity.

Kostya, the narrator of this novella, has been hideously disfigured, burned in an attack in Chechnya in which he should have died. But his war buddy Genka believes you never leave anyone behind, so Kostya was saved and now must live the life of a tortured, self-pitying outcast.

In present-day Moscow, another war buddy, the homeless Seryoga, goes missing, so Genka drags Kostya from his self-imposed exile in Podolsk and they pick up Pashka (with whom Genka has had a falling out over business) and begin an extended search for Seryoga throughout the region, visiting their old war buddies, coming to grips with who they have become and what they are to each other. But in a detached, Russian male sort of way.

In Gelasimov’s skilled hands, Kostya is a sensitive soul, patient and observant, a gifted artist who thirsts to see and portray the world as it truly is. Someone we want to know better. This is a gritty, powerful, touching story.

– Paul E. Richardson

The Darkening Field

William Ryan (Minotaur, $24.99)

Detective Alexei Korolev is back in this, the second of William Ryan’s deeply researched historical mystery novels set in 1930s USSR. The time period is perfect for this genre, rife as it is with moral uncertainty, terror and double-dealing.

Korolev has the great misfortune of being a doggedly successful detective, and this has gotten him noticed by the Lubyanka. So he is sent to Odessa in 1937 to investigate the suspicious death of a young woman. Who, it turns out, happened to be Nikolai Yezhov’s lover. Yes, that Yezhov, the head of the NKVD and Stalin’s architect of the Purges.

The murder occurs during the filming of a movie (The Darkening Field, based on Eisenstein’s Bezhin Meadow of real life) written by Korolev’s friend, the writer Isaac Babel, who makes a cameo. It is a sensitive investigation, to say the least, the sort of thing that, once solved, people will want to eliminate all living memory of...

Of course, all manner of things go wrong, and the murder is but the tip of a very dangerous iceberg. Korolev, who just wants to do his job, to be a detective, must navigate very difficult terrain, constantly wondering if solving the case will get him a ticket to the Gulag.

Ryan gets the Russian stuff right (unlike many historical novels set in Russia), conveying the ominous, dark uncertainty of the 1930s, as well as the pervasive fear – the need to constantly hide your inner life, to tow the line and censor your thoughts. But for all that, the novel, like his first, is not heavy. It is well written, moves along at a brisk pace, has a compelling protagonist, and delivers an entertaining story that teaches us a few things along the way.

What more could one ask for, really?

– Paul E. Richardson

Memories of Chekhov

Peter Sekirin, ed. and trans. (McFarland Books, $45)

A brilliant, engrossing collection of memories from individuals across all strata of Russian life. Arranged in roughly chronological order, with many of the extracts unearthed and translated here for the first time, this compact (albeit expensive) volume offers a rich, multi-faceted portrait of one of the world’s greatest, and most under-appreciated, authors (indeed, we learn, only the works of Shakespeare have been more widely adapted for film).

Pushkin Threefold

Alexander Pushkin, translated by Walter Arndt (Ardis, $29.95)

This collection of Pushkin’s work, presented in the original Russian, then in linear and metric translations (i.e. literal and rhyming), is a classic. Contains not just a large chunk of Evgeny Onegin, but also some 74 shorter Pushkin classics, masterfully chosen and translated by one the poet’s most gifted translators.

Originally published in the 1970s, this book has been out of print for some time, but now is brought back in this reprint edition, which should be in any Russophile’s library.

Tags: pushkinfictionmysteries

See Also

Interview with Author William Ryan

Interview with Author William Ryan

William Ryan’s second book featuring MVD Detective Alexei Korolev, The Darkening Field, was released on January 3, 2012. Russian Life Publisher Paul E. Richardson interviewed Ryan about the genesis for his character and the challenges of situating a novel in Soviet Russia.

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