Decline and Stalin

The Last Man in Russia

Oliver Bullough (Basic, $27.99, May 2013)

It takes a bit of effort not to be depressed by a book that announces, on page five, that “The Russian state is shriveling from within.”

This is Bullough’s cogent, seven-word diagnosis. The book is his quest to find out how this came to be, how Russia became a “stubbornly dishonest” society, plagued by alcoholism, tobacco, low birth rates and a general moral ambivalence.

Indeed, it is Bullough’s premise that 70 years of Soviet oppression sapped its people’s will to live by taking away from them the thing we humans need most: the ability to trust our friends and neighbors. “If you deny people hope and trust and friendship, then they sicken with despair,” he writes. “They drink themselves to death, and they stop having children.”

Despair, that about sums up how one feels after the first few chapters. But we trudge on, curious, hopeful. Where Bullough takes us is on a trip across much of the expanse of Russia. He is tracking the life of Father Dmitry Dudko, a dissident Orthodox priest who, Bullough argues, is a stand in for the Russian nation, for a people relentlessly crushed by the oppression of Communism. Dudko is Russia in microcosm: his rise as a singular voice, his arrest, his defiance, his surrender. All these are important mirrors of the age in which he lived – in particular of the under-analyzed 1960s and 1970s.

Dudko’s story is indeed a fascinating one and worthy of the space and time that Bullough gives it. And the manner of his telling – as much a modern travelogue far off beaten Russian paths as a biography – is both unusual and engaging. For in understanding Dudko, we better understand all that Russians have been through; it is hard to fall into generalizations and platitudes when focusing on the micro level. There is just this man and his life, and the nation he loved. Thankfully, the book ends on a high note (no spoiler alert here; you will need this knowledge to push through the harder parts), with the nascent hope that filled 2011’s winter demonstrations.

Stalin’s Barber

Paul Levitt (Taylor Trade, $26,95)

We begin in Albania on the eve of the Italian occupation, in 1931. Somewhere, thousands of miles away in the West, plans for a World War are being hatched; in the East, a horrific famine is being perpetrated.

And here we have Avraham Bahar, a Jewish barber (a rather gifted one) in the capital of Tirana – a soggy, dark, unpleasant sort of place; but it is home. Yet he is leaving, escaping before the Italians close Albania’s borders for good. “Thankfully,” (all things are relative) Avraham was born and raised in Kishinev, so he knows Russian and can “escape” east, where, word has it, a workers’ paradise is being built.

Soon enough, of course, Avraham, now Razeer Shtube, discovers that there is very little paradise in Russia in 1931, and to survive he must travel clear to the other side of Russia, to Birobidzhan. So begins an adventure that will take Avraham/Razeer back west again, where he lands a job fraught with all manner of complications and dangers: barber to Stalin. Or so it seems, because Stalin has several doubles, all of which need barbering.

To give any more away would lessen readers’ joy in peeling back the layers of this historical novel for themselves. Let’s just leave it that this is tale well told (no surprise the author is a playwright), full of philosophy and surreal humor, excellent characters and gripping action, to say nothing of some good history. That the protagonist is a barber offers an exceedingly intimate view of things we might previously have thought to be rather grand scale.

St. Petersburg City Pick

Heather Reyes, Marina Samsonova, James Rann, eds. (Oxygen Books, $10.75)

If you want a travel guide with neat little lists of places to see, things to do, restaurants to try, this is not for you. This is a different sort of travel guidebook altogether. In fact, it’s not really a guidebook at all, more a literary and cultural map of the Venice of the North – a collection of writings by over 60 western and Russian authors (mostly non-fiction, but there is a healthy dose of fiction as well), all related to this incredible city.

The well-selected readings are curated and bridged together with nice, short introductory texts, and the organization is somewhat chronological, though it is the sort of smorgasbord of offerings that one can dip into at any point, follow the thread for a while, and then hop to another section.

Soon enough, you’ll be making your own “must see” notes in the margin and, before you know it, you will have one of those travel guides filled with little lists...

NOTED IN BRIEF

Little more needs to be said: Out this winter are works by two of the finest Russian writers, translated by two of the ablest translators working in English. These are just superb works of fiction, but of course both very different, except that both take place in Moscow, and both were written by writers named Andrei.

The first is Andrei Platonov’s Happy Moscow (Robert Chandler, trans. NYRB Classics, $17.95) which takes place during High Stalinism and is a masterwork of linguistic precision and descriptive power. If you have never read Platonov, this is a great place to start; if you have experienced him before, you will revel in this new release.

The second is Andrei Gelasimov’s The Living Year (Marian Schwartz, trans. Amazon Crossing, $14.95) Part buddy tale, part coming of age tale, part thriller, part diary, The Living Year is, like all of Gelasimov’s fiction, fresh and immediate, almost visceral (you will be propelled on by pages upon pages of straight dialog). An exciting, fun and satisfying novel.