Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinksi

[Freewheeling Andy]

Kapuscinski was a fascinating man, born in what is now Belarus in the 1930s, he lived through the war and grew up in Communist Poland. He became Poland's only foreign correspondent, and with that job had access to places in the third world that welcomed Warsaw Pact journalists in a way they didn't welcome journalists from the west. Combine this with his obsession with being where the action was, and apparent lack of fear, and he saw something like 27 revolutions, coups and civil wars through the 60s and 70s.

 

This book was written later, but draws on his background and experience, and his ability to get into places others wouldn't even try to is part of the key to it.

 

It is his travels in the former "Imperium", the Soviet Empire. It starts off with his first experience of the Soviets, as they invaded in 1939 as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the Stalinist horrors that surrounded him.

 

The second and third parts are also brief chapters on his early experiences; on the Trans-Siberian in 1957, where nobody dares to talk to a foreigner; and as he gets into the Caucasus in 1967.

 

The main body of the book, though, is his travels around the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1992, as it opened up and also as it collapsed. The chapters all seem like individual vignettes. He talks to real people - something that most books on the Cold War completely ignore. He finds the tales of individuals, in Moscow or Armenia. He reveals the real horrors of the mining camps at Vorkuta in the north, and the horrendous Gulag Archipelago around Magadan in the far east of Siberia.

 

This is all covered with an incredibly light touch, there's humour everywhere, something that's vitally needed when dealing with such horrific subject matter. He can also write about anything - his trip to Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan that was at the heart of a war, involved him not leaving the apartment he finally got to. But because he's such an astonishing writer, it's one of the most thrilling things in the book.

 

The collection of individual tales, the collection of essays each from a different location around the former Soviet Union, when combined with the early reminiscences, gives as good a picture as I've read of the general condition of that empire, how the Stalin years remained the core ones that were still dictating life 40 years after his death, and how the lack of freedom and the brutality turned Russia, in particular, into the country it is today.

 

The final section is his overview and predictions of how Russia would pan out after the reforms played through. It is astonishing to read it now, 15 years after it was written, for the perceptiveness and insight - he could hardly have been more right, predicting Putin long before anyone knew Putin's name.

 

This is a fantastic book, and I could hardly recommend it highly enough to anyone interested in the Cold War and Russia, particularly if they want to read something of the personal, rather than merely to think of athropomorphised nations "Russia is a country that demands a strong leader, and felt shamed when..." etc.

 

It is hard to know how to classify it - it's part travelog, part history, part autobiography, part political analysis, part reportage.

 

But the whole feels is more than the sum of the parts.

Edited July 4, 2008 by Freewheeling Andy

[Kell]

This sounds rather interesting. I don't tend to read much non-fiction, but I may well be tempted on this occasion as I'm a bit intrigued here!

[Freewheeling Andy]

I'd normally nag people to read the books I love, but although this is fairly easy to read I won't actually nag here. If you find it in a bookshop it's probably worth reading a couple of pages to make sure it really is your thing.

 

It's hard for me to detach properly the fact that I'm pretty interested in the subject matter, so I'm not sure I can objectively say that the book will be interesting for everyone. I think it would be, but I'm not sure I'm completely reliable.

[shelbel]

I really enjoyed reading your review, FreeWheeling Andy. I think I will recommend this book to my husband, as he did Russian Studies at University, and is quite interested in the subject.

[Freewheeling Andy]

It's interesting thinking of the comparison with other travel booksin Russia. The most direct comparison is possibly Colin Thubron's In Siberia . Thubron, too, was travelling around the Siberian wastes in the 1990s. The difference, though, couldn't be more stark. Thubron seems to be completely unaware of the magnitude of the history surrounding him, seems totally uninterested in describing the experiences of his travel, and spends ages with turgid, unending descriptions of the landscape washed through with trite and annoying metaphors dribbling on about things like the spider web of silver threads of the estuary rippled like a million gossamer threads trapping the landscape in its grip, a low watery sun shimmering and reflecting like a ....

 

Although basically the same subject matter, they're so far apart stylistically and in terms of the core content it's hard to believe. Two travel books around Siberia - one feels like an opportunity for an author to show off his use of language; the other feels like a full blown overview of a critical point in history.

 

A third comparison might be Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean (which I've raved about elsewhere, long ago, on this board), which is the far other end of the spectrum. It's just the boys' own style adventures of a lunatic Brit thoroughly happy to ignore the NKVD and go to places he wasn't allowed to be in the 1930s in Russia. A wonderfully fun book, but really, it too offers very little insight into Russia despite being the other end of the spectrum - all about the author's adventures rather than all about the landscape.