MARCH thread on the Grand European Tour : THE WARSAW PACT COUNTRIES

The Warsaw Pact was meant to act as a counter security treaty to NATO. It was signed on 14 May 1955 by eight nations:
USSR, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania.

East Germany withdrew following reunification in 1990 and the following year Hungary followed suit. The Pact was dissolved in July of 1991.

Obviously some of those nations don't exist as they were then. For the purposes of this challenge all the European components of the USSR (Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova) qualify, Czechia and Slovakia, plus of course Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania.
For Germany those who were East German at the time would qualify (Christa Wolf for example). Yugoslavia and its modern fragments does not qualified as they never signed the Warsaw Pact.

What I intend to read:

Devils by Dostoevsky (Russia)
A Dictator Calls by Kadare (Albania)
Silver Bone by Kurkov (Ukraine)
Selected Poems by Herbert (POland)
Auschwitz : A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Nyiszli (Hungary)
Siblings by Reimann (East Germany)
Gerta by Tuckova (Czechia)

I needed a paperback to take on public transit so I jumped the gun with Journey by Moonlight and am almost finished. I am trying to find books which fit the nationality/authorship etc requirements but which also involve European travel. (Boyhood Island was an exception, but I already owned it). This novel, by a Hungarian author who died in a forced labour camp in 1945, begins on the narrator’s honeymoon in Venice, continues to Paris and back to Rome. It is quite brilliant.

>4 booksaplenty1949: I have that on the shelves too and may try to bump it up if I get the time.

>2 PaulCranswick: What about the transcontinental former Soviet countries? Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia straddle Europe and Asia.

>6 amanda4242: You are able to twist my arm, Amanda. I'll allow them for the challenge.

>5 PaulCranswick: I’ve been quite blown away by it. PS Now finished. Can’t recommend highly enough.

>7 PaulCranswick: Well, since they are in Europe, too... :)

>8 booksaplenty1949: Then I will fit it in somehow.

>9 amanda4242: Well possibly partially but most lists of European nations do not include the three of them.

Georgia is definitely straddling the two continents.
Armenia is not really and is more Asian geographically though it aligns with Europe geopolitically.
Azerbajian is more in Asia than Europe but part of the South Caucasian highlands are clearly in Europe.

>10 PaulCranswick: Not that it's authoritative, but Wikipedia lists them all as both Asian and European.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia#States_of_Asia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe#List_of_states_and_territories

>11 amanda4242: As I said I'm allowing all three, Amanda, but this is what wikipedia actually says about Armenia:

"Armenia,c officially the Republic of Armenia,d is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. " and

"While Armenia is geographically located in the South Caucasus, it is generally considered geopolitically European."

Pretty much what I said in >10 PaulCranswick: above.

>12 PaulCranswick: You were editing >10 PaulCranswick: while I was posting.

I'm not arguing about how European or Asian the countries are; they're just kind of geographically ambiguous and didn't get included in the Asian challenge a couple of years ago, so I wanted to see them somewhere.

>13 amanda4242: You know that I am sucker for your powers of persuasion and I folded like a cheap suit at your first request. xx

I am reading The Successor by Ismail Kadare. That an Spring Flowers, Spring Frost have been free on Audible Play. Kadare is
Albania author.

>14 PaulCranswick: Now if I could just persuade you to immediately read Middlemarch...

Following the WIKI description of the Warsaw Pact, I took a different approach,
wanting to learn what could possibly have preceded Poland to sign any pact with the Soviet Union.

Thrift came through with Norman Davies' RISING'44 which turned out to be a 700 page defense
of The Warsaw Uprising. It encompasses everything from the ghastly horrors of German occupation,
The Warsaw Ghetto, and Stalin and The Soviet Union's refusal to help and to equally repress the embattled Polish people.

The Polish signer of The Warsaw Pact was a 1944 Officer who fought against The Warsaw Uprising.
He later became the Soviet communist dictator of Poland.

>16 amanda4242: LOL! It is a great one, Paul....I've made it through several readings.

>17 m.belljackson: Good pick Marianne as he qualifies for the challenge actually as he also has Polish nationality and his wife is Polish. Norman Davies was born in Bolton, Lancashire and maintains homes in both the UK and in Cracow.

>16 amanda4242: I promise I will read it this year.

>19 PaulCranswick: Surprisingly, both the UK and the USA were major wishy-washies on The Warsaw Uprising.

>21 m.belljackson: Well in fairness they were waging war against the same enemy, Marianne, but I often think that more could have been done.

>20 PaulCranswick: I will hold you to that.

I'll be reading some short stories from Anton Chekhov, born in Taganrog, Russia and Sholom Aleichem, born in Pereiaslav, Ukraine.

Back in thread 4 Mr Cranswick listed a dozen Big Books he hadn’t read. One, Life and Fate, I had never even heard of. Russian author. Challenge accepted! But turns out it is the second of a series, so I have acquired the first, Stalingrad. No European travel involved, but a Big Book. Won’t be accompanying me on public transit.

At the very least, I am planning on reading Embers by Sandor Marai (Hungary) for this month's challenge. The past couple of months I have read some door stoppers, but since I am going to be out of town for 1/3 of March decided to pull back a little. I am hoping to read beyond the Marai book, but it will just depend on how overwhelmed I am when I get back.

>22 PaulCranswick: When I looked for more books on Poland by Norman Davies, anti-semitism was noted.

What I remember from '44 RISING was that he did not go deep into the reasons why the Polish Underground of The Rising
did not deliver help to The Warsaw Ghetto, saying only something like they were otherwise occupied.

>24 kac522: I know you will!

>25 booksaplenty1949: I am going to start a Big Book Challenge thread. This month is Dostoevsky. I am reading Devils but he has a few more that qualify. I also give alternatives - which would include Stalingrad and Life and Fate by Grossman.

A big book by my definition (a chunkster in LT parlance) must exceed 500 pages.

>27 m.belljackson: I had heard of that too but I think the allegations against him are, in this instance totally unfair. Anne Appelbaum agrees with me:

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/55334/norman-davies-is-innocent#:~:te....

>28 PaulCranswick: For the past 10 years it would have been a challenge to get through a month without reading a least one book over 500 pages. Not a 19th or early 20th century classic, genre books are just so much longer since the 1990s.

>28 PaulCranswick: Have read all of Dostoevsky’s chunksters, so Stalingrad will keep me going for this month.

>30 quondame: That is certainly true Susan. Some fantasy novels in particular are real hefty tomes.

>31 booksaplenty1949: I want to read that soon too.

I will read Wikmans Zöglinge by the Estonian author Jaan Kross. Also a weighty book with 574 pages.

>33 Ameise1: I have something of his translated as The Ropewalker, Barbara.

Well Amanda et al. I have started a separate thread for BIG BOOK CHALLENGES:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/368910#n8777192

>35 PaulCranswick: People reading big books can also join John Simpson's 2025 Big Fat Book Challenge here:

https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/24633/2025-BIG-FAT-BOOK-CHALLENGE

The group keeps a running total for all participants in the Running Total thread, and we encourage each other to read those BFBs (500+ pages). Join both--the more the merrier!

>36 kac522: Why hadn't I realized John had a group not a thread dedicated to such books? I know he tends to read huge books.

I have joined his group but will keep the thread going as it is pretty specific.

>37 PaulCranswick: Yes, John has been hosting this group for quite a few years now.

And yes, your challenge is a bit different, but I was just adding it here so that those interested in such a challenge may want to help us with our group BFB totals!!

>38 kac522: Thank you for doing so, Kathy.

>34 PaulCranswick: That one sounds interesting too.

>39 PaulCranswick: If you are doing more name changes, I would prefer "Lieret" or "Maren" to "Kathy" -

hey, at least you are not naming us all "Karens!"

>41 m.belljackson: Hahaha sorry Marianne. Actually I didn't get your name wrong, I got the post number wrong as I was actually answering Kathy's post.

I have amended it, thank you. x

I pulled The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel off the shelves. It's a big read by a Czech writer about the Armenian genocide.
I also have Leo Vardiashvili's Hard by a Great Forest out from the library. Vardiashvili was born in Georgia and this book is mainly set in Tbilisi.

>43 avatiakh: I have that one too, Kerry, and it is a whopper.

I’m planning to read Siblings by Reiman, inspired by you, Paul . I got on my rarely used kindle as my library does not have it and it’s less expensive than a paperback.

>45 vancouverdeb: It is also mercifully short, Deb!

>44 PaulCranswick: One has to bite the bullet now and then. i have a couple of doorstoppers to get through this month.

I finished The Successor. I liked it. I do think his best is Broken April My least favorite would be Spring Flower, Spring Frost but all in all his books give you a feel for Albania culture as well as political atmosphere.

Paul - penguinrandomhouse.com has a list of Muslim novelists.

I finished Embers tonight and since it is relatively short am hoping to sneak in The Master and Margarita for this month's challenge as well. We will see how it goes!

>50 alcottacre: Which translation of The Master and Margarita? (Yes, it *really* matters)

>50 alcottacre: Oh, The Master and Margarita is so good! One of my all time favourites!

Found Stalingrad quite easy to get into. Grossman produced various editions of the novel under Soviet censorship pressure and this is a version edited by the translator and another Grossman scholar. I sense a bit of discontinuity. But think I will be able to combine 100 page segments with other reading projects on the go. This is definitely not a book to carry on public transit.

OK, so which translation or translations of The Master and Margarita are considered the best, and why?

>51 amanda4242: Amanda, I have an old paperback version of the book that was translated by Michael Glenny. Which translation do you recommend?

>52 PawsforThought: That is good to know, Paws!

>55 alcottacre: I really like the one by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor. I found Hugh Aplin's dry, and couldn't get through the first chapter of Richard Pevear's and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation.

There's some notes on a few translations at https://cr.middlebury.edu/public/russian/Bulgakov/public_html/Engeditions.html

>56 amanda4242: That is interesting about the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation as I loved the Tolstoy translations of theirs that I have read.

Thanks for the link!

>57 alcottacre: You're welcome!

I found a more robust comparison of translations at https://welovetranslations.com/2022/10/31/whats-the-best-translation-of-the-mast...

>58 amanda4242: Great! Thanks again!

I completed Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy which explores themes of loyalty and the consequences of violence in this novel which delves into the conflict between the Russian Empire and the Muslim Chechens. I might have enjoyed it more had I been better acquainted with the Caucasian War and the different perspectives involved. The story shifts between various viewpoints and time periods, which gives it a less cohesive feel compared to some of Tolstoy’s more famous works like War and Peace or Anna Karenina. The pacing is slow and drawn-out, with lengthy passages of philosophical musings or war descriptions that can feel repetitive. These extended sections seem to serve as a substitute for deeper emotional engagement with the characters. Additionally, the novella's relatively brief length—just 104 pages—likely contributed to the underdevelopment of its characters. This was Tolstoy’s final work, published posthumously. 3 stars

>57 alcottacre: I notice that P&V translated Dr Zhivago in 2010. I guess interest in that novel isn’t as dead as I want to believe. An interesting comparison here: https://fictionfanblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/doctor-zhivago-choosing-the-tran...

Have finished Pt 1 (of 3) of Stalingrad. I must admit that I find the characters’ regular testimonials to the virtues of Soviet Socialism somewhat unsettling. It was helpful to find this article http://isj.org.uk/grossmans-stalingrad/ discussing the changes in Grossman’s POV between this novel, published, albeit in somewhat different form, in the USSR in 1952, and Life and Fate, which had to be smuggled out of the country on microfilm. Jenkins does point out that Grossman remained convinced that Stalin’s wartime leadership was important in the fight against Nazi Germany.

I really liked Life and Fate and read it as a standalone and didn't feel like I was missing anything. I also liked Journey by Moonlight (and Embers and Broken April). Yesterday I started The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński.

>63 labfs39:. Count me in as liking Embers and Broken April

I have finished reading Jaan Kross's Wikmans Zöglinge and can warmly recommend this book.

I read Professor Martens' Departure by Jaan Kross a couple years ago and really liked it.

>63 labfs39: Passed on Journey by Moonlight to a discerning acquaintance who, like me, had never heard of the author but was hugely impressed by the book. I really enjoy these challenges for motivating me to read books I’ve had unread on my shelf for years, but also for encouraging me to broaden my horizons. Thank you Paul Cranswick!

I finished a book! It's a very short one (only 76 pages in my copy) but still. The Death of Ivan Ilyich was a fairly interesting read. Not one I think I'd read again, but it was nice to be able to read a story by Tolstoy without having to sign up for reading true door stoppers.

I finished the brutal novel, The Painted Bird, and am glad to have that one behind me.

>66 Kristelh: I picked up Professor Martens' Departure a couple of years ago, but haven't read it yet. Nice to know that it's a good one.

I finished another short story for the theme of the month. The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol, who was of course from Russia. Highly recommended if you haven’t read it, tragicomedy at its finest, and written with such a sharp tongue (or rather pen).

>70 PawsforThought: I love Gogol. I read several of his books as a young adult.

>71 Ameise1: Yeah, I like his writing. I should re-read The Nose, because it was a long time since I read it, and some of the other short stories likely deserve a read, too. I have a lot of other things lined up right now, though.

I am reading Everything is Wonderful, Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia by Sigrid Rausing. True story of when she spent time in Estonia in the 1990s. I am going to Estonia on a cruise and interested in the Baltic area. Those people had a rough time with the invasions.

Finished Stalingrad. Despite censorship issues and the fact that the NYRB Classics edition I read was cobbled together from three different editions of the novel it was a powerful book I am very glad to have read. My copy of Life and Fate is still on order and in any event I think I need a break. Planning to give Oblomov a go.

I have a couple of Tolstoy on my shelves, but they would be rereads for me, and since I have already read two Big Fat Books this year, plus have not found time to get back to another (Stamped from the Beginning) yet, I did not want to tackle one more really long book. I had decided to read The Death of Ivan Ilyich which I have not yet read. It is also on the 1001 Books list, so that would help with my progress of reading books from that list. Unfortunately, all copies in my library system are checked out, and so far my hold has not yet come in, so I may be late in finishing something for this topic.

Oblomov does not meet my personal secondary criterion for the Grand European Tour as there is no European travel in the plot; indeed I gather the hero can barely get out of bed. But it is of course by a Russian author, and at 517 pages my copy also squeaks into the Big Book Challenge although after Stalingrad it seems like a slim vol. But it is starting off promisingly.

I’m continuing to read short novels by Russian authors. The latest one to be finished is One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I really liked this book—it’s prob my favourite of the ones I’ve read for this month’s theme. Surprisingly easy to read, considering the theme of the book is forced labour camps in Soviet and that the author is Russian, which is otherwise often a hint that the difficulty level goes up a notch or two.
Highly recommended.

Finished Everything is Wonderful, Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia by Sigrid Rausing
I read this because I will be going on a Baltic cruise and Estonia is one of the ports.
First, my opinion is the title of the book does not describe the contents; I was expecting more of a hands on experience. The author is doing fieldwork in Estonia in 1993 for a year. The book has a lot of history as well as her personal experiences.
The first Swedish farmers and fishermen first settled in Estonia in the 13th-14th centuries. In 1541 Northern Estonia became part of the Swedish Crown and the Southern forms the Duchy of Livonia. 1629 all of Estonia becomes part of the Swedish Crown. 1721 Sweden loses Estonia to Russia. 1940 USSR invades Estonia, 1941 Tallinn is occupied by Nazi forces, and 1944 under Soviet control. On August 20, 1991 Estonia becomes independent. Some of the timelines.
I did not know the history of this area. Besides the history, the author writes about her hardships and friendships. She returned 10 years later with her husband and found a lot of changes.
4 *

I finished Notes from Underground last night and have started on Eugene Onegin which I’m enjoying so far.

>79 PawsforThought: Which translation of Eugene Onegin?

>80 booksaplenty1949: I’m reading it in Swedish, a translation by Kjell Johansson.

Guess I won’t be giving that one a go. Is it a prose translation?

>82 booksaplenty1949: Yeah, might be tough for a non-speaker. It’s a poetic translation, and I’m really enjoying the verses (same scheme as Pushkin used).

Just realized I haven't posted my reading here.

Albania: Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare, translated by David Bellos

I'll concede much was probably lost in translation since the English translation is from the French translation rather than the original Albanian, but I firmly believe I wouldn't have liked it even if I'd read it in Albanian.

Belarus: King Stakh’s Wild Hunt by Uladzimir Karatkevich, translated by Mary Mintz

An ethnographer collecting folktales in Belarus stumbles across a mysterious castle and Gothic novel ensues. It's wonderfully entertaining with great atmosphere.

Bulgaria: Marko the Obstinate Donkey by Ivan Gantschev

A cute picture book about a little girl trying to make money and her donkey being uncooperative.

Czechia: Bald by Tereza Čechová, translated by Martha Kuhlman & the author

A comic memoir of the author learning to live with alopecia. I didn't dislike the writing, but I *really* hated the art.

Estonia: John the Skeleton by Triinu Laan, illustrated by Marja-Liisa Plats, translated by Adam Cullen

Despite its light weight, John the Skeleton explores some heavy topics! Retirement, aging, death, and funerals are all covered in a way that shows them to be a natural part of life that aren't to be feared, even if they do bring sadness.

To sum it up, John the Skeleton is sometimes funny and sometimes melancholy, but always loving.

Gerogia: The Knight in the Panther Skin by Shota Rustaveli, translated by Lyn Coffin

Apparently this is the national epic of Georgia. It's a highly readable adventure, although it occasionally left me giggling because the hero faints so much he could be a heroine in an Anne Radcliff novel.

Lyn Coffin's translation preserves the rhyme scheme of the original, but she *really* has to stretch sometimes and, sadly, the effect in English has an almost Dr. Seuss feel at times.

Hungary: The Good-Hearted Youngest Brother: An Hungarian Folktale translated by Emőke de Papp Severo, illustrated by Diane Goode

Typical fairy tale of the youngest sibling being the real hero. Nothing fancy, but it's entertaining.

Latvia: The Horses of Atgazene Station by Inga Ābele, translated by Inara Cedrins

Reads like the teenage journal of someone destined for an MFA program.

I'm willing to believe that much was lost in translation, but all the two star Latvian reviews on Goodreads make me think that it's not very good in the original either.

Moldova: Set in Stone by Stela Brinzeanu

A historical novel set in medieval Moldova. It's kind of paint by numbers, but I don't regret reading it.

Poland: The Enchanted Book: A Tale from Krakow by Janina Porazińska, translated by Bożena Smith, illustrated by Jan Brett

Another fairy tale with a heroic youngest sibling. This one gets a bonus for having the heroine be able to defeat the evil wizard because she could read.

The Witcher Volume 9: Corvo Bianco by Bartosz Sztybor

The Witcher comics keep getting worse. The story in this one makes almost no sense and Yennefer, the incredibly powerful sorceress, is only in it to get hit on the head while wearing very little.

Romania: Sunny by Ennun Ana Iurov

A mildly entertaining webcomic. Really needs more characterization and a stronger story.

Russia: Wings by Mikhail Kuzmin, translated by Hugh Aplin

A queer Russian novel from 1906 that doesn't end in tragedy?! I feel as if I've stumbled across a unicorn!

The writing style is a bit...oblique, but overall I liked it. It will probably improve with a re-read.

Slovakia: Fleeting Snow by Pavel Vilikovský, translated by Julia Sherwood & Peter Sherwood

It's not awful, but it felt like Vilikovský wasn't writing a story so much as writing around one.

Ukraine: Who Will Make the Snow? by Taras Prokhasko & Marjana Prokhasko, translated by Boris Dralyuk & Jennifer Croft

A tale of a family of moles and their sylvan adventures. Animal loving kids will no doubt enjoy it, but adults will probably find it a little saccharine.

>84 amanda4242: Wow, Amanda, you’ve read so much I wonder how you even have time to breathe! Some of the books sound really interspersed - I’ll have to make a note of King Stakh’s Wild Hunt because that one sounds amazing and Wings because like you said - unicorn.

>85 PawsforThought: Most of the books were short so it sounds more impressive than it really is.

I got King Stakh as a free download on a now defunct website, but you can still snag it via the wayback machine. https://web.archive.org/web/20130818131637/http://kupala-library.iatp.by/bel_lit...

>84 amanda4242: & >85 PawsforThought: Completely agree, Paws. Wow!

This is the Ottoman April thread
https://www.librarything.com/topic/369649

I read 14 stories from a Chekhov collection (translated by Ann Dunnigan) and about half the stories in The Old Country by Sholom Aleichem. The Chekhov stories were from the 1880s and most were quite short. The stories by Sholom Aleichm (pen name for Solomon Rabinowitch) were longer, and sometimes tended to wander. Chekhov's stories often seemed bitter; his characters have a "why me?" attitude: life is unfair to them or that Fate intervenes in their happiness. Aleichem's stories, on the other hand, were often a bit philosophical and a little happier, or at least not unhappy. His characters tend to either blame someone else for their misfortunes, or more commonly, shrug their shoulders and accept life as it is. This is especially true of the several stories about Tevye, although none of these stories appear to be from the stories used in "Fiddler on the Roof."

I am saving the other half of the Aleichem stories for the non-national languages month, since these were translated from the Yiddish by Julius & Frances Butwin in 1946.

My library hold on The death of Ivan Ilyich and other stories by Leo Tolstoy showed up at the tail end of March, and I have finished reading the collection. This book contains four short stories and three novellas by Tolstoy, the last one published after his death. All but one of the stories deal with death. Tolstoy seems to have had an obsession with the topic, probably due to the many family members who died while he was a child. I would guess he never got over it.

As is usual with most collections, there were some stories I liked more than others. I wasn't particularly interested in the two short stories with military settings. The other tales were more interesting, and I can see why The Death of Ivan Ilyich is considered a classic. The last story, The Forged Coupon is a morality tale and delves quite a bit into religion. It appears to reflect a lot of what Tolstoy was thinking about at the end of his life.

It's an interesting collection, and I might have liked it more if I had read it at a different time, but most of the stories are rather dark. With the world the way it is right now, I need some reading that's lighter than that.

>77 PawsforThought: I love that book and it is required reading for my college class (Western Civ II)

A month late but have finally finished The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel, a brilliant read set in the Ottoman Empire.

>92 avatiakh: Better late than never, Kerry. I have that one on the shelves and must dust it down soon.