Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia - Hardcover

Brent, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0977743330 ISBN 13: 9780977743339

Publisher: Atlas, 2008

Synopsis

From the first publisher granted access to Stalin's personal archive, a provocative and insightful portrait of modern Russia—the most compelling since David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb.

To most Americans, Russia remains as enigmatic today as it was during the Iron Curtain era. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country had an opportunity to face its tortured past. In Inside the Stalin Archives, Jonathan Brent asks, why didn't this happen? Why are the anti-Semitic Protocols of Zion sold openly in the lobby of the State Duma? Why are archivists under surveillance and phones still tapped? Why does Stalin, a man responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people, remain popular enough to appear on boxes of chocolate sold in Moscow's airport?

Brent draws on fifteen years of unprecedented access to high-level Soviet Archives to answer these questions. He shows us a Russia where, in 1992, used toothbrushes were sold on the sidewalks, while now shops are filled with luxury goods and the streets are jammed with Mercedes. Stalin's specter hovers throughout, and in the book's crescendo Brent takes us deep into the dictator's personal papers to glimpse the dark heart of the new Russia. Both cultural history and personal memoir, Inside the Stalin Archives is a deeply felt and vivid portrait of Russia in the twenty-first century.

About this title

About the Author:

Jonathan Brent is the editorial director of Yale University Press, where he founded the Annals of Communism series in 1991. He is the coauthor of Stalin's Last Crime, and a frequent contributor to the New Criterion, the Observer, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He teaches Soviet literature and history at Bard College and lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Review:

“In a strongly-written, fascinating, and original book, Jonathan Brent interweaves portraits of Russians in their daily lives with an astute analysis of Joseph Stalin's legacy.” (Philip Roth)

“Inside the Stalin Archives is a necessary report from the Soviet netherworld of totalizing injustice that ought to have been universally known throughout the greater part of the twentieth century—when it could not have existed. Jonathan Brent’s discoveries will shake and shock and indispensably enlighten.” (Cynthia Ozick)

“The author is careful to make neither heroes nor villains of the ghosts he summons from the archives, incorporating flawed personalities into stories of unthinkable justice.” (Katya Tylevich - readrussia.com)

“Brent seized a unique opportunity that, if not for him, would doubtless have been missed....[H]is book shows us the conditions—moral, personal, and material—that Russians take for granted but which are utterly unlike anything Americans have ever experienced.” (Gary Saul Morson - The New Criterion)

“In the first part of his engaging and well-written memoir, Inside the Stalin Archives, Brent tells the story of the [Annals of Communism's] genesis. He conjures up the Moscow of the early 1990s, a time when the Russians were struggling to recover from the loss of the old certainties following the collapse of the Soviet system and adapt to a market-based economy.” (Orlando Figes - The New York Review)

“A fascinating, subtle, and finely written quest into the Russia of today through the dark labyrinth of history. Brent unveils not only the secrets of his journeys into Soviet Archives, but also a unique yet personal portrait of an enigmatic country and a blood-soaked century.” (Simon Sebag Montefiore)

“Brent's engaging memoir . . . reveals as much about the grim realities of post-Soviet life and bureaucracy as it does about the archives themselves. Equipped with little Russian and few contacts, but with an almost palpable sense of decency and honest intentions that illuminate his book, Brent explains for the general reader as well as for specialists how he went about his work in the new Russia.” (Martin Walker - New York Times Review of Books)

About this edition

• Publisher: Atlas
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0977743330
• ISBN 13: 9780977743339
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304