Anatoli Rybakov (1911–1998)

These are the first two volumes in a trilogy (the third is Dust and Ashes). Rybakov is an excellent storyteller. His many characters and intertwining plot(s) sweep you along in mid-1930s USSR, setting out the background to and beginning of Stalin’s Terror. His characters take part in a vividly portrayed Moscow social scene with interspersed scenes—based, I believe, on substantial research—involving Stalin himself and the highest members of the Soviet government. Rybakov is very good at depicting Stalin as a person; the scenes he puts together create an absolutely chilling—and completely believable—account of an extraordinarily, dangerously paranoid person. Virtually all of the people and places that Rybakov depicts (from socializing in Moscow to life in exile in Siberia to Stalin strolling near his dacha) are beautifully drawn and he is wonderful at inventing dozens of characters and a wide range of situations. Indeed, having lived through it himself, Rybakov is particularly convincing at showing how ordinary people tried to live their lives under the Terror.
Yet after 1,400 pages, as riveting as Rybakov’s portrayals are, as terrifying as his renderings of everyday life, as successful as his recreation of life and lives, I was disappointed at Rybakov’s failure to address the larger questions that his story so clearly raises. For instance, Rybakov creates an almost spellbinding account of a well-placed (socially) individual who runs afoul of the NKVD. From the tension of merely waiting for the next telephone call to the dread and panic of an interrogation, it’s almost inconceivable that the relationship could be portrayed better. But, as evocative as the writing is, it never seeks serious answers to the great questions.
Irving Howe, an American literary critic (active from about 1950-1990) wrote this in 1988: “At no point does he venture beyond prescribed Leninist orthodoxy…. Neither in his own right nor through his characters…does the novelist ask whether the Bolshevik exaltation of 'the party'…smoothed Stalin's rise to power. (In this respect, Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate, another recently translated Soviet novel about Stalinism, is much bolder.) … The criticism I'm making here, a literary criticism, is not that Anatoly Rybakov or his characters fail to provide congenial answers but that they fail to grapple deeply with inescapable questions. Or to put it another way… the subject he has chosen…requires [either the author or his characters or both to engage in] sustained and independent reflection.”
I think Howe is right. The story itself (the characters, the line-by-line writing) is great; it demands deeper thought which Rybakov fails to provide. And so as much as I liked the story, I was disappointed in the work as a whole.… (more)

Two stories: the saga of a part-Jewish family in Ukraine from 1909 to about 1950 and the detailed story of the Nazi destruction of the Jewish community in the family’s village in World War Two. The writing couldn’t be more accessible; Rybakov writes as if you’re sitting with him and he’s telling you a story; he tells it brilliantly. That said, although the story is engrossing, this book is not “high” literature and wouldn’t have likely earned great attention anywhere but the USSR when it was published in 1978. Why? Because Rybakov openly addressed so many different topics that were still not simply spoken about then. As one example, he gave a detailed description of Jewish life in the decade before the revolution. The first part of the book is a love story/family history set in a village where Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, and Byelorussians all lived amicably. The second part reminded me of Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar, a chilling documentary novel about the German’s massacre of 100,000 to 150,000 Jews in Kiev in 1941. While Heavy Sand doesn’t have quite the same effect as Kuznetsov, it is nevertheless a powerful work because the reader has come to identify with the family emotionally and Rybakov tells of the community’s destruction is horrifying detail. Rybakov’s later, vividly anti-Stalinist Children of the Arbat, would not appear for another decade and there is little hint here of his views. Recommended, if the subject is of interest; otherwise not. [For what it’s worth: three of my four grandparents were from Jewish communities in Belarus not terribly far from where this story takes place. Much of the story—both about the family and the village—seems very accurate to me.]… (more)

Children of the Arbat was a sensation when it first became available to Soviet readers in 1987. A landmark text of glasnost, it was written between 1966 and 1983 but had been suppressed as anti-Stalinist and was therefore distributed only via very risky underground means known in the USSR as samizdat. But during the Perestroika era the novel was released in serial form in newspapers and its sequels 1935 and Other Years (1989), Fear (1990) and Dust & Ashes (1994) became available too. Children of the Arbat, set in the 1930s, is partly autobiographical: like the central character Sasha Pankratov, Anatoli Rybakov (1911-1998) was himself exiled to Siberia for three years.

There are three strands to the story: Sasha’s arrest for spurious reasons and his exile to Siberia; life in Moscow as his girlfriend Varya Ivanova waits for his return; and the depiction of Stalin as he plots to cement his power by eliminating all opposition. The title is instructive: the Arbat today is a tourist precinct, a lively hub of commercial activity in the historic heart of Moscow. (It’s the only place I’ve ever been where you are offered a free vodka (neat!) as soon as you walk into a shop!) Before the Soviet era it was a place for artists, intellectuals and academics, and and today as it becomes gentrified it’s still a desirable place to live. But in the Soviet era it was where high-ranking officials lived, and the title of the book refers to the generation born at the time of the Russian Revolution, and by the 1930s were young adults who had grown up believing in its ideals. They were privileged by comparison with most people in the Soviet Union because they had better access to education and opportunity, they were in a position to see the economic progress being made under rapid industrialisation, and they were forgiving of the human cost because they saw it as an unavoidable aspect of the creation of the Soviet State which they wholeheartedly supported. The novel charts the slow disillusionment of this generation as they begin to see the consequences of rule by terror.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/02/19/children-of-the-arbat-by-anatoli-rybakov-tra...… (more)

A great story capturing the caprice of human nature, the indifference of the Soviet system to the individual in the name of the state, and in the name of Stalin. The depiction of Stalin's paranoia is compelling. I can't wait to read "Fear." I want to know how the story continues as the "Great Patriotic War" approaches. Thanks for the recommendations LibraryThing, this is opening up a new area of reading for me. This all happened on chance; I visited Moscow in June, walked on Arbat St., now a pleasant, if touristy, pedestrian mall near the Foreign Ministry. Even the architectural design of that building, if I understand the history of Moscow's "Seven Sisters" correctly, comes up in this novel (obliquely).… (more)