The Unquiet Ghost
Russians Remember Stalin
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4.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An in-depth exploration of the legacy of Joseph Stalin on the former Soviet Union, by the author of King Leopold's Ghost.
Although some twenty million people died during Stalin's reign of terror, only with the advent of glasnost did Russians begin to confront their memories of that time. In 1991, Adam Hochschild spent nearly six months in Russia talking to gulag survivors, retired concentration camp guards, and countless others. The result is a riveting evocation of a country still haunted by the ghost of Stalin.
A New York Times Notable Book
"An important contribution to our awareness of the former Soviet Union's harrowing past and unsettling present." —Los Angeles Times
"A perceptive, intelligent book demonstrating that the significance of the gulag transcends the confines of one country and one generation." —The New York Times Book Review
"This probing and sensitive book…casts striking new light upon the Russian past and present." —The Washington Post Book World
"The voices [Hochschild] has recorded, the relics he has seen, are haunting—and the raw material of a terrific book." —David Remnick, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lenin's Tomb
"No other work has brought home the full horror of this monstrous dictator's rule than this close-up account." —Daniel Schorr, former senior news analyst, National Public Radio
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hochschild spent the first half of 1991 in the former Soviet Union interviewing gulag survivors, former camp guards and members of the secret police, writers, artists, human rights activists, neo-Stalinists and ordinary citizens about their opinions of Stalin. This haunting and powerful report reveals that the dictator's legacy persists in widespread denial, amnesia, numbness and pervasive fear among people whose lives were scarred by mass arrests, killings and Stalin's spy network. Hochschild ( The Mirror at Midnight ) traveled to Kolyma, site of the deadliest camps; he interviewed Valentin Berezhkov, who was Stalin's English-language interpreter and privy to the regime's inner circle; he visited Moscow's KGB archives and was given files of American victims of the gulag. Comparing Stalin's purges to the witch craze of early medieval Europe, Hochschild attributes this ``self-inflicted genocide'' partly to Russians' age-old habits of scapegoating and passive obedience. Photos not seen by PW. First serial to New York Times Magazine .
