Three Books Reviewed

MOSCOW REDISCOVERED

By Helen Semler

Liberty Publishing House

550 pages, softcover, $29.95

It is not often you see a book’s cover carry quotes by a First Lady, a Moscow Mayor, an ambassador or a Rockefeller. Semler’s book has all four.

Originally published as Discovering Moscow in 1987 and out of print for several years, this invaluable walking guide to the Russian capital is finally back in print in a newly-updated form.

Semler (who, we should indicate, is on Russian Life’s Advistory Board) began work on the first edition of this book in 1964, when she lived in Moscow with her husband, an American diplomat. The book is full of useful points of history not readily available in other guides. In fact, some travel writers we know have even cribbed from Semler’s original work to help create travel books of their own.

The book is divided into 31 well-researched and newly updated excursions, on everything from the Nobility to Catherine’s Eagles, to the Merchant Barons to Moscow on the Blood (focusing on the purge era). There are also hundreds of black and white and color photos, maps and excellent indexes.

Not only is the book invaluable for travel to the capital, it makes for great armchair reading. Read of the palace believed to be the site Tolstoy was remembering when he wrote of Natasha Rostova’s coming out party. Follow the trail of blood and tears around Lubyanka square and learn which buildings housed prisoners, where trumped-up trials were held. Retrace the steps of the Children of the Arbat.

If you love Moscow or plan visiting there, this book, as former Ambassador to Russia Arthur Hartman wrote, “is a must for any traveler and student of Russian heritage.”

PUSHKIN: A BIOGRAPHY

By Elaine Feinstein

Ecco Press

310 pages, hardcover, $29.95

“The character of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was formed in a childhood of such neglect and disorder that in later life he described the experience as ‘intolerable.’ It was an upbringing that shaped his reckless temperment, his conflicts with authority, his vision of women and his precocity as a poet.”

Thus begins Elaine Feinstein’s new biography of Russia’s greatest poet. Feinstein’s story of Pushkin’s life draws on the latest archival research, but is never dry. It is an easy-reading, objective (no Russian can so easily distance himself from Pushkin) and yet loving biography.

Most notable of Feinstein’s conclusions is her assertion that the data clearly indicate that d’Anthes, Pushkin’s murderer in an uneven duel, was a closet bisexual. She shows how this fact helped precipitate the duel in which Pushkin died. This duel was set in motion by defamatory letters sent to Pushkin and his friends. Feinstein argues that new historical information points the finger at Baron Van Heeckeren – d’Anthes’ male partner and his adoptive father – as the source of these letters; they were seemingly sent to precipitate Pushkin’s (and his wife’s) departure from the capital.

But this is just one minor detail, albeit with significant implications. There is, after all, Pushkin’s character to contend with, and the larger history of his life. The child of poor nobility, Pushkin thankfully received one of the best educations in his day. His difficult nature, his Byronic rakishness and his liberal politics led to a life of exile and unrequited loves. But it made good material for poetry and for his fiction, which is richer for his having traveled through much of Central Russia.

Capturing Pushkin in a single volume that challenges the informed reader and does not bore the beginner is a challenge indeed. But Feinstein’s work holds up and is a long-overdue popular reprisal of the most amazing life of this most important of writers.

PUSHKIN’S BUTTON

By Serena Vitale

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

354 pages, hardcover, $30

If Feinstein’s book is a work of vivid realism, a biography following a predictable chronological path, Serena Vitale’s new book on Pushkin is an impressionistic painting.

Vitale focuses in on the last four month’s of Pushkin’s life, weighing the competing theories and facts about the duel that lead to his death. Full of quotes from contemporaries and literary digressions on character and plot, this reads more like fiction than the sordid true tale of society life it is. What emerges is a colorful view of Pushkin’s St. Petersburg of the 1830s, a riveting interpretation of the poet’s work and some surprising discoveries.

Thanks to Vitale, we come away with an unusually intimate understanding of all the major characters in this story, of Heeckeren’s depravity and loneliness, of Pushkin’s fury, of Natalya’s vapidness. There is exciting, enthralling detail of the last days of Pushkin’s life, continued speculation on the source of the infamous letters, tales of life at court and of a poet valued more there for his wife’s beauty than for his beautiful verses.

Through all this, Vitale keeps our attention with the tantalizing details, the little historical oddities discovered from dusty archives: e.g. how a pawnbroker’s slip and a button from Pushkin’s dreaded kammerjunker uniform became significant parts of this strange history. It is a tale artfully told.

CHRONICLE OF THE RUSSIAN TSARS

By David Warnes

Thames and Hudson

256 pages, hardcover, $29.95

It is hard to feel sorry for the tsars, what with their lives of “feast amid the plague.” But it is also impossible not to be fascinated by them, by their endless court intrigues, by their narrowmindedness in the face of seemingly obvious events (thanks to hindsight). David Warnes’ new illustrated history of the lives of the tsars adds fuel to the fire.

One cannot be exhaustive when it comes to the 500 years of Rurikid and Romanov tsarism, and this book does not strive for that. But it does offer a colorful compilation of lots of information, images, timelines and tables we have not seen anywhere else. Its encycolpedia-style presentation (“tsar-by-tsar”) makes it perfect for skipping back and forth across the centuries to learn abit about this or that era, to jump from a table listing Catherine II’s lovers to see woodcuts from False Dmitry’s wedding, to read accounts of travelers to Russia in the 1600s. (We particularly liked the short article on Tsars in Film.)

And there is seemingly no end to the fascinating tidbits. As Warnes starts off his introduction: “Which tsar asked for political asylum in England? Which tsar married a girl of peasant origin and made her an empress? Which empress forced a nobleman to spend his wedding night in an ice palace?” 500 years can create a lot of mysteries.

— The Editors

All books reviewed this issue are available through Access Russia (800-639-4301), and at bookstores nationwide.