Journey Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

Our library has a cart in the vestibule where people can leave books and take books whenever they want, and I've found some real treasures. Last summer I found a copy of Journey Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg, which I recognized as a recent Persephone reprint (though not a beautiful Persephone copy, sadly). It probably would have lingered on the shelves for years but it came back on my radar when I saw it listed on David Bowie's top 100 book list. I also realized it would fit the Russian classic category in my own challenge. 

I was a little apprehensive to read this book because a memoir about Stalin's reign of terror doesn't sound like the most cheerful of reads, especially during a dreary winter. However, I do love memoirs and survival stories, and this is both. Ginzburg was 30 years old in 1937, a teacher and active Communist Party member. After a co-worker at her university was arrested, Ginzburg was hauled in for questioning and ordered to denounce him. After she refused, she was arrested herself on trumped-up charges and accused of being a Trotskyist.  What follows is a Kafka-esque downward spiral that is so ridiculous and frightening it's almost hard for me to believe, having been raised in a democracy where anyone who's watched a TV police drama understands Miranda rights. 

After a seven-minute trial, Ginzburg was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The book covers the first three years of this nightmare, including two years in prison under terrible conditions, an excruciating journey across the continent to Vladivostok (jammed in a train car with more than 70 other women, with no bathroom and very little water); a boat journey that sounds reminiscent of a slave ship; and finally, a work camp where the already weak prisoners were forced to cut down trees and hack at the frozen ground while underfed and under dressed in the frigid weather. It was like the nine circles of hell, and it doesn't seem like things can get any worse for her -- until they do.

This book was just horrifying, yet fascinating. If I hadn't known it were non-fiction I probably would have returned the book to the donation cart, but I couldn't stop reading. Ginzburg was determine to stay alive just to spite her captors. And though there was cruelty, it was inspiring to read how the prisoners tried to help one another, often in tiny but meaningful ways like sharing a sip of water or a hoarded sugar cube. Even the prison staff sometimes showed humanity and kindness which led her to survive. Somehow, she managed to survive a total of 18 years in the Soviet gulags. 

We were still living in that bitter-sweet world of feeling which our prison life in Yaroslavl had created for us. I felt instinctively that as long as I could be stirred to emotion by the sea breeze, by the brilliance of the stars, and by poetry, I would still be alive, however much my legs might tremble and my back bend under the load of burning stones. It was by preserving all these treasures in our minds that we should resist the onslaught of the horrors around us.

This was a difficult read because of the subject matter -- I could only read a few chapters at a time before I had to put the book down and read something else. But it is well worth reading as a story of survival and hope. 

I'm counting this as my Russian Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge and also for the European Reading Challenge. 

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

I think 2013 is going to be The Year of the Great Nonfiction Reads for me.  I keep finding more and more nonfiction I want to read.  Seriously, I'll bet I could read nothing but nonfiction for the rest of the year and never finish all the books on my list.

I was looking for a great biography for my library book group and this kept popping up on the radar, and after narrowing the selection down to three or four books, I took them all out to lunch with me.  After a few pages of this one, I was hooked, and would have kept right on reading it except I try very hard to wait until the month before to start it.  Normally, I allow even less time, since I like to keep the book fresh in my mind for the discussion.  This time I let myself start it a month early because it's about 600 pages long.

I never really knew very much about European history during the 18th century -- I've read War and Peace (though I've forgotten most of it) and I remember some stuff I've read about the French kings and the Revolution, but that's pretty much it.  All the 18th century history I remember is mostly about the American Revolution.  For example, I had no idea that both Catherine AND her husband Peter were actually German -- Catherine (born Sophia) was a minor German princess whose mother's brother had originally been engaged to Empress Elizabeth, though he died while they were still betrothed.  Elizabeth never married and after she seized power years later, she decided to that her heir, her nephew Peter (grandson of Peter the Great) should marry Catherine, his cousin, so they could produce an heir and ensure that Peter's lineage would continue.  Catherine embraced the Russian language and culture though Peter always hated it and wanted to return to Germany.

Basically, Catherine was AWESOME.  This is in the 1700s, when doctors thought it was still an good idea to drain your blood when you were sick, America hadn't even signed the Declaration of Independence, and a huge percentage of the Russian population was poor or even serfs.  Meanwhile, Catherine was educated and enlightened -- she corresponded regularly with Voltaire and Diderot; spent two years trying to create an enlightened system of government, with a document called the Nakaz, (which ultimately failed) -- even before the Americans wrote the Constitution; she even had herself inoculated against smallpox in 1780, to show that it was safe.  By 1800, more than 2 million Russians had been inoculated as well.

If this sounds dry, and boring, well, it wasn't.  I probably should have waited until nearer the discussion because it was an absolute page-turner.  Intrigues, scandals, plotting -- seriously, parts of this book are like an 18th-century version of Game of Thrones, but without the dragons.  Catherine's husband definitely reminded me the vile Prince Joffrey, and Catherine the Great is just as clever as Margaery Tyrell.   Lord Vaerys and some the other King's Landing courtiers would have fit right in the palaces in Moscow and St. Petersburg, if they had warmer costumes.

Margaery and Joffrey aka Catherine the Great and Peter

This book has really spurred my interest in royal biographies -- I still have The Duchess by Amanda Foreman and Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser on the TBR shelf, so I'm ready to tackle those.  And Massie's other books about the Russian royalty are definitely going on my to-read list.  I haven't decided if I should go backward in time and read his biography of Peter the Great, or skip forward and read about the Romanovs.  I'm also thinking about reading some Russian lit this summer, probably Dead Souls by Gogol.

Has anyone else read Robert Massie's books?  Which did you like best?  And what about Russian lit?  I'm a little scared off since I read Anna Karenina, but if Gogol goes well I might even try Dostoevsky!

A Night in the Cemetery: And Other Stories of Crime and Suspense by Anton Chekhov

So many of the lists of "best" and "must read"books include Russians.  Sadly, my knowledge of Russian literature is pretty limited.  I'm generally pretty intimidated by Russian classics.  But I really did want to participate in this month's Classic Circuit.  Chekhov was the perfect solution -- an easy introduction to Russian lit for the intimidated.  Though he's best known for his plays, he was a master of the short story.  There are many different collections available, and I finally settled on A Night in the Cemetery: And Other Stories of Crime and Suspense, a collection of some of Chekhov's earliest stories.  As the title suggests, each of the 42 stories somehow relates to a mystery, crime, or death.

Though some of the stories are tragic, many of them are funny, or have ironic twists, a bit like Saki or Roald Dahl, but mostly less macabre.  Several of the tales had characters who were doctors or medical people, or the coroner, which makes sense if you remember that Chekhov began writing while in medical school.  He was so successful he paid for school with his earnings, and was able to support his family as well.  According to the introduction, many of these tales have rarely or never been translated into English.  These are some of his earliest stories, and some of them were published under pseudonyms.

A few of the stories are available in other collections.  Since I was waffling at first and couldn't decide which volume of stories to read, I also began reading Forty Stories, which was translated in 1963 by Robert Payne, who also wrote the volume's introduction.  (The introduction itself is great reading if you're interested in Russian writers, and now I have to finish that collection as well.)  Anyhow, both of the collections include "Death of a Government Clerk," so I was able to compare the translations.    Here's the first paragraph from the version in A Night at the Cemetery, which is translated in this volume as Death of an Office Worker:


One wonderful evening, an office gofer, Mr. Ivan Dmitrievich Worm, sat in the second row of a theater, watching the play Bells of Cornville.  He watched the play and felt himself at the height of bliss.  But suddenly. . . . Many stories have that phrase, "but suddenly."  Authors are right: life is filled with unexpected turns of events.  But suddenly, he scowled, rolled his eyes upward, stopped breathing for a while, averted his gaze from his binoculars, bent his body, and, and then, "Achoo!" he sneezed, as you see. 

Now, here's the other version, from the Payne translation:

On a beautiful night the no less beautiful government clerk Ivan Dmitrich Chervyakov [a footnote explains Chervyakov means "worm"] sat in the second row of the stalls watching Les Cloches de Corneville through opera glasses.  He was watching the stage and thinking himself the most blessed among mortals when suddenly. . . (Very often in stories you come upon this word "suddenly," and all this is very proper, since authors must always concern themselves with the unexpectedness of life.)  Suddenly, then, his face puckered up, he rolled his eyes, his breathing stopped, the opera glasses fell from his eyes, he collapsed into his seat, and . . . at-choo!  As the reader has observed, he sneezed.


I freely admit I am no expert on Russian literature, and the only words in the Russian language I know are "nyet" and "glasnost."  But I find the second translation much more beautiful and interesting -- to me it seems like something someone would have actually said back in the 19th century.  Also, I occasionally found the translation a little jarring.  Some of the stories in this collection include modern vernacular English such as "wow" and "guys," and so on, which I found incongruous to the stories, since they were all published in the 1880s or 1890s.  Chekhov sometimes gave his characters names which were comical or unflattering, such as Mr. Worm or Inspector Schmuck, and in this translator changed them to English.  I would have preferred the original Russian names with a footnote, since it seemed so anachronistic.  And I'm pretty sure that 19th century Russians were not nicknamed Mike or Tim, which also appeared in one of the stories.   I understand the translator may have been trying to make it more accessible, but I just found it distracting.

And I was very annoyed to realize that the final story, The Drama at the Hunt, is actually a very abridged version of The Shooting Party, which was one of my other choices for this posting! AFTER I'd finished it, so I know how it ends!!  And it's abridged from 180 pages TO FORTY.   Now, I am the first to admit that some of the Russians could use some editing (Anna Karenina springs to mind) but seriously,  to cut out two thirds of the book?  I found that irritating.

But I can't blame my irritation on Chekhov, just the editor and publisher.  My advice:  if you're interested in Russian lit, but you're intimidated by the sheer volume of some of the works, I do recommend Chekhov's stories.  This is a pretty good introduction, though it contains hardly any of his most famous works.  However, skip the last story if you have even the slightest interest in reading The Shooting Party, or it will completely be spoiled for you.