Intimacy and Terror: Soviet Diaries of the 1930s
by Veronique Garros
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The result of a unique international collaborative investigation by Russian, French, and Swiss scholars into hundreds of private, unpublished diaries found in remote libraries, archives, and family holdings, Intimacy and Terror paints a broad picture of Russian life during the harshest years of Stalin's reign. The ten diaries reveal the day-to-day thoughts of ordinary citizens, some far removed from political turmoil, some closely enmeshed. Together they paint an extraordinarily broad show more portrait of Russian life in the thirties; their insights into the daily life of that time have astonished even the Russian historians who read the original manuscripts. The diarists range from the ambitious literary bureaucrat who moves forward by denouncing his colleagues to the young unlettered careerist learning the ways of Soviet success; from the wife of a government bureaucrat, who writes in a pure Stalinist prose, to the candid thoughts and uncertainties of a dissident; from a provincial sailor on a distant Arctic vessel to Moscow intellectuals who meet and recount their conversations with Anna Akhmatova. Some of the diarists are wholly oblivious to the terrors of Stalin's purges; others see the failures of the regime as clearly as those writing today. To set the diaries in context, the book begins with a "Chronicle of the Year 1937"--an extraordinary montage comprised of excerpts from the daily newspaper Izvestiya juxtaposed with corresponding entries from am collective farmer's diary--and also includes a chronology of major events in the Soviet Union during the latter half of the decade. The diaries bring us the true-life counterparts of characters we remember from classic Russian literature. Intimacy and Terror provides an unprecedented, intimate view of daily life in Russia at the height of Stalinism. show lessTags
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meggyweg In its two English editions, the book is titled "I Want To Live: The Diary of a Young Girl in Stalin's Russia" or "The Diary of a Soviet Schoolgirl, 1932 - 1937." Had this diary been known about at the time Garros assembled "Intimacy and Terror," she might very well have included it.
Member Reviews
Although I was never able to finish this, it wasn't because it was a bad book; on the contrary, it's an excellent collection that would be a worthy textbook for a Russian history course. I like how the diarists were not all famous people or anything; one, for example, was just a poor middle-aged farmer. It was just that this is hardly pleasure reading and I found I couldn't commit to the whole thing, 400+ pages of small print.
I wrote about one of the diarists, Andrei Stepanovich Arzhilovsky, in a guest entry for the death penalty blog Executed Today. Arzhilovsky, a middle-aged farmer and father of four, was shot by firing squad in 1937 because of his alleged membership of a "counterrevolutionary kulak sabotage organization."
I wrote about one of the diarists, Andrei Stepanovich Arzhilovsky, in a guest entry for the death penalty blog Executed Today. Arzhilovsky, a middle-aged farmer and father of four, was shot by firing squad in 1937 because of his alleged membership of a "counterrevolutionary kulak sabotage organization."
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- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir
- DDC/MDS
- 920.047 — History & geography Biographies, Genealogy, Healdry Biographies General and collective by localities Of Europe
- LCC
- DK268 .A1 .S67 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics – Poland History of Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics History Soviet regime, 1918-1991
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