The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin

Bruce Lincoln

As the Russians started to come to grips with the trauma that had numbed three generations, words poured forth in newspapers and magazine stories, public meetings, exhibitions, documentary films, plays and novels, each adding to the awakening of memories that many still found painful to confront. For the first time, it became possible to ask about the injury and the guilt, to inquire into the inner feelings of those who had lived on both sides of the barbed wire that had once encircled the hundreds of islands that made up the gulag archipelago. At the beginning of 1991, Adam Hochschild hurried to Moscow to bring this collective memory into focus. The result of his effort is this probing and sensitive book, which casts striking new light upon the Russian past and present. -- Washington Post Book World

Tina Rosenberg

I admire Hochschild greatly for his use of personal narra- tives to understand the human response to terror. The question of why many Russians continue to revere Stalin--even some who suffered greatly during his regime--is one whose importance permeates Russia's current political crisis and indeed will endure long beyond it. --Lingua Franca

Paul Goldberg

The characters and the dramatic situations Mr. Hochschild encounters are nothing short of magnificent. -- The New York Times Book Review

Olga Andreyev Carlisle

The author of The Unquiet Ghost combines the strengths of a practiced investigative reporter with those of a philosopher-historian with a sensitive moral compass and the spirit of an enlightened 18th-century gentleman.... The Unquiet Ghost makes an important contribution to our post-glasnost awareness of the former Soviet Union's harrowing past--and of its unsettled present. Belonging to a literary genre which has flour- ished for centuries, that of "The Voyage to Russia" by a Western observer, it is an illuminating excursion led by a highly qualified guide. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

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 . (Mar.)

Library Journal

Hochschild's search for survivors of Stalin's Terror results in a moving historical horror story. He spent half of 1991 in the disintegrating USSR, listening to former prisoners, guards, executioners, and families describe mass murder, imprisonments, interrupted lives, and hopes destroyed. Russian-speaking journalist Hochschild, a founder of Mother Jones , was among the first Americans to enter KGB archives, where he received records of executed Americans. He visited gulag sites and chapters of Memorial, an organization documenting the Terror. He traveled to Kolyma, the frozen final destination for many and a name that resonates among Russians with the power of Auschwitz. Hochschild's questions are disturbing and timeless: Why did the Revolution devour itself? What makes someone an executioner? Hochschild's people, as well as his honesty and passion, make this unforgettable book essential for everyone concerned about history and human rights. Strongly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/93.-- Donna L. Cole, Leeds P.L., Ala.

Booknews

Russian-speaking writer Hochschild moved his family to the former Soviet Union for the first half of 1991, in order to research the horror of Stalin's reign and to interview survivors. Among his motivations and themes--how societies, like individuals, must come to terms with a painful past, and how the impulses for good and evil lie closely together, e.g. the utopian wish and the wish for total power, and the impulses of the executioner and the victim. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

San Francisco Chronicle

An exceptionally perceptive and honest book that sensitively attempts to do justice to those who lived under Stalinist tyranny and the following 40 years of state-imposed silence.

London The New Statesman

Hochschild's skills as an interviewer and the honesty of his own questioning make for a thoroughly compelling and original book.