The Arbat Trilogy, Vol. 2 : Fear

Sasha Pankratov, a young man exiled to Siberia for a flippant remark in a school newspaper, witnesses the terror of Stalin's purges

In this sequel to his international bestseller Children of the Arbat , Rybakov picks up the story of Sasha Pankratov and his friends from Moscow's fashionable Arbat district as Josef Stalin launches the reign of terror that saw millions of Soviet citizens arrested, exiled or shot for counterrevolutionary activities. Exiled to Siberia in the previous novel for writing satirical verse in a student newspaper and now forbidden to return to Moscow, Sasha migrates to a provincial town where he finds work as a driver. Back on Arbat Street, his friends Varya, Nina, Yuri, Yadim, Lena and Vika grapple with the moral dilemma posed by the purges: should they remain silent and tacitly acquiesce, or participate in hopes of personal gain? Rybakov brilliantly segues from this cross-section of the Moscow intelligentsia to a chilling interior monologue in which Stalin plots the destruction of high-ranking members of his inner circle. Rybakov's complex, fascinating, repellent and utterly convincing psychological portrait of a demagogue ranks among his finest achievements here, which also include the fruitful further development of the intriguing personalities established in Children of the Arbat . This dynamic, sweeping saga of "Stalin's children," the first truly Soviet generation, captures the fluidity and confusion of the purge years, serving as a powerful testament to their legacy of fear.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The years of the Yezhov terror, the Great Purge of the Thirties that began with the Zinoviev/Kamenev show trials, occupy the second volume of Rybakov's Arbat Trilogy (Children of the Arbat, 1988)--and the heavy hand of the book seems in keeping with the tenor of its story: a time in Stalin's Russia when betrayal was so disseminated that it became almost unconscious; when by merely breathing, or so it seemed, you could destroy yourself or someone else. Presiding over this mass terror is the chief paranoic himself, Stalin, whose thought processes Rybakov tries to follow (really successfully in only one section--where Stalin has an aide destroyed for the crime of watching Stalin clumsily handle a book: a crime that spirals exponentially in the mad leader's mind). As a novelist, Rybakov is pedestrian, and least convincing are the ongoing small-fish characters of the trilogy--Sasha the student, just released from Siberia when this story begins, trying to make his way back to Moscow; Sharok, the eager up-and-coming NKVD-er; Varya, Sasha's lover. History streams around these characters, but a reader's not quickened by them. Most lively here is the sense of Rybakov's effortfulness in telling post-Soviet readers their own baleful history. But the book has a drumming artlessness--think of Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris--that is meant to tell the facts, and then immediately tell them again, and again. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

How could the wholesale murder, torture, and forced starvation of the Stalin years have been allowed? Fear , the second novel in a trilogy that began with Children of the Arbat (Little, Brown, 1988), attempts to explain. Written over 20 years ago, the "Arbat Trilogy" only recently saw publication in Russian; this is the first English translation. Fear tells the story of life under Stalin's dictatorship from the viewpoint of Sasha Pankratov, an exiled former student. Here, Sasha returns from Siberia, affording the reader a rare look at life in exile and the traveling conditions in Stalin's Russia. Sasha's mother and friends, who live in the Arbat section of Moscow, form the second strand of the novel. The third major character is Stalin himself. Each layer of the novel helps to illustrate how deception, power, and terror can extirpate honor and replace it with madness. Highly recommended for all collections of historical fiction. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/91.
- Ruth M. Ross, Olympic Coll. Lib., Bremerton, Wash.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.