Sashenka by Simon Montefiore

[SueK]

This has to be one of the best books I have ever read. Simon Montefiore previously has written non-fiction. He is of Russian stock so he has great knowledge of it's history. This book spans 3 eras of Russian History - pre Revolution 1916 -17; The Stalin era - particularly in 1939 on the eve of World War II and finally the era after Glasnost when archives were opened up and people started to read of the atrocities of the Stalin era. This may all sound a bit dry but the saga follows a young girl born to very well off parents and immense privileges, who is being schooled in Boleshevism and starts to hate her heritage for the "blood suckers" they seem to be. She eventually becomes Lenin's secretary. Fast forward to 1939 and she is married with two children, she is well in the inner circle of Stalin's government and her husband is with the secret police. They are given a lot of rewards and lead a very comfortable life - until she makes a mistake that sends her life and that of her family into terrible turmoil. Fast forward again to 1994 when a historian is asked to try to track down a family whose records seem lost. The answers are, as you would expect, terrible.

 

This book haunted me for days after reading it, so much so that I couldn't start another book for a while. The characters are very well depicted, Sashenka herself has many faults and at times you could scream at her and her beliefs, but the worst part is the tension that I felt when Stalin himself gatecrashed a party that she was giving. I virtually held my breath during the whole chapter.

 

Believe me - if you read no other book that so well reflects the events leading to the Revolution followed by the Stalin Terrors, then do read this one.

Edited June 25, 2009 by SueK

[Readwine]

Sue, this book sounds fascinating. Thank you for your review - very good I am off to Amazon I think. Do svidaniya!

[Readwine]

Sashenka by Simon Montefiore

 

Blurb from Amazon:

 

Starred Review. Lauded historian Montefiore (Young Stalin) ventures successfully into fiction with the epic story of Sashenka Zeitlin, a privileged Russian Jew caught up in the romance of the Russian revolution and then destroyed by the Stalinist secret police. The novel's first section, set in 1916, describes how, under the tutelage of her Bolshevik uncle, Sashenka becomes a naive, idealistic revolutionary charmed by her role as a courier for the underground and rejecting her own bourgeois background. Skip forward to 1939, when Sashenka and her party apparatchik husband are at the zenith of success until Sashenka's [personal decision regarding] a disgraced writer leads to arrests and accusations; in vivid scenes of psychological and physical torture, Sashenka is forced to choose between her family, her lover and her cause. But as this section ends, many questions remain, and it is up to historian Katinka Vinsky in 1994 to find the answers to what really happened to Sashenka and her family. Montefiore's prose is unexciting, but the tale is thick and complex, and the characters' lives take on a palpable urgency against a wonderfully realized backdrop.

 

I finally came to this book as my TBR pile dwindled slowly. I was really looking forward to indulging in a large tome of historical fiction, but unfortunately I came away a little disappointed.

 

Montefiore undertook a massive span of history. From 1916 to 1994, Russia saw tremendous changes. To be able to encapsulate all of it in a novel is very hard. I think he tried to do it through his main character, Sashenka, by focusing on her development as a pristine Bolshevik and Comrade, and her experiences as she fell in the clutches of the secret police. Factually, I think he succeeded. Emotionally, however, he paints Sashenka (and most of the other characters) as totally self-centered and uncaring. This really disturbed me. There seemed to be no empathy in that world at all, and I just could not believe it.

 

I felt that the terror and despair of the Stalin era was treated in the novel as a newspaper clipping, to be read and forgotten. It seemed that none of Montefiore’s characters acted or reacted with outrage, despair, unbelief, terror. They just kept going on in their little lives. It is not until we meet, Katinka, the modern historian, that I felt the author gave the Stalin horror’s a voice – at least someone commenting on the injustices, the sadness. She demanded answers.

 

I give it a 6/10

[SueK]

Sashenka by Simon Montefiore

 

Emotionally, however, he paints Sashenka (and most of the other characters) as totally self-centered and uncaring. This really disturbed me. There seemed to be no empathy in that world at all, and I just could not believe it.

 

I felt that the terror and despair of the Stalin era was treated in the novel as a newspaper clipping, to be read and forgotten. It seemed that none of Montefiore’s characters acted or reacted with outrage, despair, unbelief, terror. They just kept going on in their little lives. It is not until we meet, Katinka, the modern historian, that I felt the author gave the Stalin horror’s a voice – at least someone commenting on the injustices, the sadness. She demanded answers.

 

I give it a 6/10

 

Hi Readwine

 

sorry you were a little disappointed in this book. I hear (read;)) what you say but do you not think that perhaps being outraged, or reacting with despair, unbelief etc would have been possible in Stalin's era, especially as you were not actually allowed to think for yourself without the police/henchmen coming for you in the middle of the night.

 

It was indeed an unbelievable time in history and if you read Orlando Figgis' The Whisperers (where Montefiori got his inspiration) then I think you would see this in perhaps a slightly different light.

 

I agree that Sashenka herself was a self centred, uncaring person, EXCEPT when it came to her children and the dangerous path she took in keeping them safe.

[Readwine]

Sue, sorry for the late response as I have not been on the site long enough to reply in these past weeks.

 

 

Montefiore took a substantial amount of time describing and developing Sashenka

[SueK]

Hi Readwine

 

Great to read your views:) Isn't it good to be able to have a discussion over a book - I so miss this in Real Life:lol:

 

I do agree with much of what you say and if you ever get the chance to get hold of a copy of the Whisperers (if indeed it is your sort of reading) then I do recommend it (it's a bit of tome though at 600 some pages).

 

Before reading the Whisperers I had no idea how bad (that is such a bland word to to describe it) life was under Stalin.

 

If you are interested in this sort of literature, maybe try Under a Blood Red Sky by Kate Furnivall which depicts life in the 30s in labour camps and poor villages (although I do believe this book has a different title in US). Child 44 is another such book although that is more in the style of Gorky Park and is soon to be a film I believe.

 

I wonder whether Sashenka was so caught up in the emotional tide, not to say the romance, of the revoluation - and when the reality of Stalin's regime hit home she had to live the lie like a lot of others. But I do see where you are coming from - perhaps Montefiore wanted to write through Sashenka as well as a disaffected third person looking on......

[Readwine]

Sue, thanks for the great references. Much appreciated.

 

I think you are right, S was caught in a fervent emotional tide, but a tide that demanded to extend outwards (towards the "people" against the "bourgeoisie") without individual conditions. But as the tide goes out, it must also come in. And this where I think S was in self-denial. She refuses to let any emotional tide affect her individually. For example, when she truly finds out what her husband is up to, there is absolutely no reaction. Like you said, she just living a lie and a life of denial.