|
Loading... Stalin's Childrenby Owen Matthews
LibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendationsLoading...
won't like
will probably not like
will probably like
will like
will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I enjoyed Stalin's Children very much, the trauma and sadness of Owen's grandparents and parents lives was moving and sad. We in the US are so blessed that we often don't appreciate what life was like in the Soviet Union for everyday folks - the hunger, oppression, war and severe deprivations. We have had freedom and we often take it for granted - this story is one that should be read in schools, by all - so that we can see how very fortunate we are to have enjoyed so much while much of the world was suffering incredibly in WWII and after. I had the fascinating experience of visiting Russia for two weeks - two summers ago, and found the people to be very much as Owen describes in his experiences in contemporary Russia. Life is different there, and the character of the people is shaped by their rich and turbulent past. Without books like this, we lack understanding of modern political relationships between East and West - and Stalin's Children provides a revealing glimpse into the history that has shaped modern Russia. Great read! (  ) artisu | Nov 11, 2009 |  Enjoyed this book very much. I was never very interested in Russian History or culture, but that didn't keep me from being intrigued with this book. You get personal stories from 3 generations and their experiences with Russia. The author skips back and forth between persons quite often, but you get used to it. Overall a good read with lots of firsthand info. jennybek | Nov 3, 2009 | Reading this memoir, I was struck by the fact that, as a Soviet emigre, I would somehow connect with Owen's experiences. I just finished the book and realized that our experiences are not alike at all. I was four when we left (1979) via Austria, via Italy and finally to New York. I remember nothing. I was told nothing. If I had been a little older I would have been an indoctrinated "Pionerka," a child-Commie. But that never happened. Sure, my grandfather and my parents told me the stories of waiting in lines and fear of Soviet snitchery. But mostly, my family wanted to forget Stalin, Lenin, all of them. They remember only certain things fondly, such as family, school chums, fun times from their youth. My chance to see Kiev (where we were from) came in 2005. I hated every moment spent in that depressing place. I have been all over the world and had never been more afraid to be detained at Customs than when I entered (and thankfully left) Kiev. I was thinking that it must have been my in-born Soviet fear of imprisonment (similar to my instinct for waiting in lines). After performing the required Russian/Ukrainian duties of visiting every dead relative in the cemetaries, eating at the Pelmenyi, and hailing a personal taxi (this is a real thing that non-taxi licensed individuals do to earn money), I called my mom once on U.S. soil and thanked her for taking me out of that dark, dank country. My experiences aside, the author had this need to identify with all things Russian--lived there, became absolutely fluent (reading/writing), married a Russian girl. Those are all things with which I cannot identify. Maybe it would have been different if he had been born there. I don't know. Well, this book is definitely interesting and readable. I recommend. (  ) scunagorelik | Oct 23, 2009 | Stalin's children gives a good primer on the evolution of modern day Russia (of course not covering all possible aspects), beginning in the Stalin era, as portrayed by three generations of one family . It may not be the most beautifully written novel, though it is intriguingly enough to keep you reading. All in all, it is the story itself that makes the book worth reading. The fact that it is based on the real destinies of real people increases the impact on the reader. Especially for younger people I believe it can contribute to a wider understanding of the oppression that people lived under in former Soviet and similar states, some still existing. ( ) Phille | Oct 9, 2009 | I received this book as part of the Early Reviews program, and found it passed my basic test for a book; was it worth the time I spent reading it? Unlike some reviewers, I didn't find the "modern" sections jarring - for me, they fit in with the other sections on Russia's history. The author's experiences in the "new" Russia showed that in some respects it is very much like the old U.S.S.R. - meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Stalin's Children puts a human face on events - war, famine, persecution - that seem beyond human scale, as well as showing what happens "after the fairy tale" for the author's parents. Ann_Louise | Sep 29, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0802717144, Hardcover)A transcendent history/memoir of one family’s always passionate, sometimes tragic connection to Russia. On a midsummer day in 1937, a black car pulled up to a house in Chernigov, in the heart of the Ukraine. Boris Bibikov—Owen Matthews’s grandfather—kissed his wife and two young daughters good-bye and disappeared inside the car. His family never saw him again. His wife would soon vanish as well, leaving Lyudmila and Lenina alone to drift across the vast Russian landscape during World War II. Separated as the Germans advanced in 1941, they were miraculously reunited against all odds at the war’s end. Some twenty-five years later, in the early 1960s, Mervyn Matthews—Owen’s father—followed a lifelong passion for Russia and moved to Moscow to work for the British embassy. He fell in and out with the KGB, and despite having fallen in love with Lyudmila, he was summarily deported. For the next six years, Mervyn worked day and night to get Lyudmila out of Russia, and when he finally succeeded, they married. Decades on from these events, Owen Matthews—then a young journalist himself in Russia—came upon his grandfather’s KGB file recording his “progress from life to death at the hands of Stalin’s secret police.” Stimulated by its revelations, he has pieced together the tangled and dramatic threads of his family’s past and present, making sense of the magnetic pull that has drawn him back to his mother’s homeland. Stalin’s Children is an indelible portrait of Russia over seven decades and an unforgettable memoir about how we struggle to define ourselves in opposition to our ancestry only to find ourselves aligning with it. “I came to Russia to get away from my parents,” writes Matthews. “Instead I found them there, though for a long time I didn’t know it or refused to see it. This is a story about Russia and my family, about a place which made us and freed us and inspired us and very nearly broke us. And it’s ultimately a story about escape, about how we all escaped from Russia, even though all of us—even my father, a Welshman, who has no Russian blood, even me, who grew up in England—still carry something of Russia inside ourselves, infecting our blood like a fever.” (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:16 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
Abebooks |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
