Child of a Turbulent Century (Jewish Lives) - Softcover

Erlich, Victor

9780810123519: Child of a Turbulent Century (Jewish Lives)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810123517 ISBN 13: 9780810123519

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2006

Victor Erlich was born in 1914, at the threshold of what the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova called "the real twentieth century," in Petrograd, a place indelibly marked by that century's violent dislocations and upheavals. His story, begun on the eve of the First World War and taking him through Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, and the U. S. Army, is in many ways a memoir of that "real twentieth century," reflecting its lethal nature and shaped by the "fearful symmetry" of the age of totalitarianism. Erlich's grandfather, the legendary Jewish historian Simon Dubnov, was felled in December 1941 by a Nazi bullet; his father, Henryk Erlich, a leader of the Jewish Bund and a prominent figure in Russian and Polish socialism, took his life in Stalin's prison in May 1942. To read about Erlich's life growing up at the intersection of the century's darkest currents is to experience history firsthand from the Russian Revolution to the end of the Second World War-and to know what it truly is to be a child of the century.
Erlich conjures up what it was like to be a Bundist, the intensity of Socialist life at the time, the thinking after the Nazi invasion of Poland-before the pact between Hitler and Stalin became apparent. Figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendel Wilkie, Marc and Bella Chagall make appearances, as well as the famous logician Tarski, flunking Erlich in math. Throughout, despite the darkness, even the horror, of much of what he describes, the author maintains the beguiling tone and the warm manner of one who has reached the new millennium with rare and hard-won insight into the human comedy of his time.

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About the Author:

Victor Erlich was a distinguished literary critic and the Bensinger Professor Emeritus of Russian Literature at Yale University. Erlich's grandfather, the legendary Jewish historian Simon Dubnov, was felled in December 1941 by a Nazi bullet; his father, Henryk Erlich, a leader of the Jewish Bund and a prominent figure in Russian and Polish socialism, took his life in Stalin's prison in May 1942. He is the author of several books including Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition (Harvard, 1994) and the much praised Russian Formalism: History and Doctrine (Yale, 1981).

From Booklist:

Erlich was born in 1914 in Petrograd, the son of Russian Jewish intelligentsia. He begins this absorbing memoir at the start of World War II and chronicles his years spent in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, and the U.S. There he taught at the University of Washington, was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship at Harvard, and eventually became a professor of Russian literature at Yale University. Erlich's grandfather, the Jewish historian Simon Dubnov, was murdered by the Nazis in 1941. His father, a Jewish socialist leader, killed himself in one of Stalin's prisons in 1942. Erlich and his wife visited the Soviet Union in 1973 and stopped off in Poland to see her aging aunt, a former prima donna of the Warsaw opera. Erlich writes that much of his story "reflects the lethal nature of the 'real 20th Century' and the fate of my family was shaped by the fearful symmetry of the age of totalitarianism." George Cohen
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