Items related to The Scared Generation: The Manhunt / The Old Arbat
Synopsis
Westerners often ask why Russians put up with bureaucratic oppression, violations of human rights, etc. Why didn't they protest? The two works in this book partly provide the answer depicting as they do the atmosphere of invisible oppression and all-pervading fear in which the sixties generation grew up.
In Vasil Bykov's powerful short novel The Manhunt, a dispossessed farmer is betrayed by his son in the collectivized countryside of the 1930s. He is exiled to Siberia but runs away and finally prefers death to infamy.
Set in Moscow in the 1950s, Boris Yampolsky's classic, The Old Arbat, focuses on one day in the life of an innocent person persecuted by the KGB. He was fearless during WWII but in the Stalinist atmosphere of witch-hunting and political intolerance, he is paralyzed by uncontrollable terror. Yet at some point his hopelessness produces an inner freedom that gives the hunted man the strength to resist.
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From the Back Cover
"These novels, in their different ways, explore the inner powerlessness of the victims. Crushed and tormented by the totalitarian system they begin to feel that they must be responsible for their own ill fate... Written in an intense, suffocating style they make powerful reading."
— The Moscow Times
"The texts and voices out of Russia come through with formidable insistence. More now than ever before, precisely because hopes on their native ground are again precarious." GEORGE STEINER
Saturated with an emotional intensity and inescapable terror, these two novels chart the traumatic decades of Stalinism which today's "scared generation" of middle-aged Russians had to experience. They are vivid reminders of those inhuman times.
Set in Moscow in the 1950s, Boris Yampolsky's classic, The Old Arbat, focuses on one day in the life of an innocent person persecuted by the KGB. Wandering about the city at night he looks back at his life. A fearless soldier during WWII he is now paralyzed by uncontrollable terror. Yet at some point his hopelessness produces an inner freedom that gives the hunted man the strength to resist.
In Vasil Bykov's powerful short novel The Manhunt, a dispossessed farmer is betrayed by his son in the collectivized countryside of the 1930s. He is exiled to Siberia but runs away to his native land where he is hunted by the Soviet police, and finally prefers death to infamy.
About the Author
Vasil Bykov (1924-2003), was a major Belorussian author. He is best known for his war novels. Amidst the flow of bombastic paeans to war heroism he was the first to look at the unheroic aspects of the war and to investigate the problem of moral choice versus personal safety. He takes the same approach writing about Russia's post-revolutionary history, marked by the Cheka's ruthless repressions of innocent people.
Boris Yampolsky (1912-1972) was a noted novelist and journalist in the late 1950s and 1960s, but his major novel, The Regime Street, (later published under the title The Old Arbat) was banned by the censor and only published in the 1990s.
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