The Gates of November

In January, 1985, Chaim Potok and his wife traveled to Moscow specifically to visit Vladimir (Volodya) and Maria (Masha) Slepak, dissident (“refuseniks” Russian Jews who had achieved international fame for their nearly 20 year effort to emigrate to Israel. There were other well-known refuseniks, as well Russian dissidents protesting the brutality of life under various Soviet regimes, but Volodya and Masha represented a special case: Volodya’s father, Solomon Slepak, was on Old Bolshevik, one of the original revolutionaries who fount against the tsar and then on the side of the Communists in the Russian Civil War. Solomon, a fanatic Bolshevik who refused to see anything wrong with the Soviet system and who was an enthusiastic show more supporter of Stalin, had achieved fairly high rank under the Communist system. But when Stalin began consolidating power, he turned on everyone, including his most loyal supporters; almost all were either executed or disappeared. The central mystery, as Potok says, is why Solomon was never included in Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. Thus Volodya and Masha occupied a special place within the dissident community. The Potoks spent a great deal of time with the Slepak family, recording and transcribing a massive amount of information about the Slepak family in general and Volodya and Masha’s lives in particular.

Potok starts the book’s history with what is known, from family chronicles, about Solomon’s life. Born at the turn of the 20th century to a poor teacher of Jewish children in Dubrovno, on the Dnieper, Solomon experienced from early on the violent Russian anti-Semitism. At age 13, he ran away from home; in the next two decades, he managed to work his way across Europe to live in America; when the Russian Revolution unfolded, Solomon made his way back to Russian where he commanded troops in the Civil War.

Potok follows Solomon’s career as an unofficial Soviet diplomat who spent a great deal of time abroad, mainly in China. Volodya spent a good part of his childhood in China, recalling that as a happy time. Up through his young adulthood, Volodya’s life was a fairly contented one as the child of a member of the Russian elite, attending the best schools and living a life of privilege.

So why did this son of a dedicated Bolshevik turn against his own country losing nearly everything--losing comfortable and important jobs, freedom (he and Masha spent 5 years in exile in Siberia), and risking their lives in a terrible effort to emigrate to Israel?

The answer to that in Potok’s books is a brief history of the Russian Revolution as well as the Russian attitude towards the Jews. There is a great deal about Stalin and his policies, of the attitudes of the dictators who came afterwards, and of the craziness of Soviet policies and procedures. The book contains a wealth of information about Russian dissidents, the Jewish dissident movement, and the reaction of foreign powers to the condition of Russian Jewry at that time.

The book is extremely well written, flowing easily as a narrative, thanks to Potok’s skill in writing fiction. It is quietly factual, never shrill, always focusing on the lives of the people who worked so hard for their own independence. It is never ideological; it keeps true to Volodya and Masha themselves, and that is its greatest strength.

Potok ends the book with the questions: from where does one get the courage to risk annihilation, as he puts it, in order to resist a despotic regime? Would I have the ability to do the same? These, of course, are unanswerable, but perfectly valid anyway, given the story Potok has just narrated.

Highly recommended. show less

This was a non-fiction read, but read like a novel. It was the story of the Slepak family from the days of Bolshevism to the son's eventual emigration to Israel. Potok collected information from the family through taped interviews and photographs. This Jewish family suffered terribly under Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Tikhonov regimes. From Potok's epilogue, ""Can we learn something from these chronicles about iron righteousness and rigid doctrine, about the stony heart, the sealed mind, the capricious use of law, and the tragedies that often result when theories are not adjusted to realities?" 272 pages

A concise, highly readable history of Russia in the 20th century, told from the generational perspective of Solomon Slepak, an "Old Bolshevik" who somehow managed to avoid being purged in the Stalin years, while never giving up his dream of a perfect Communist society; and his son, Vladimir, a refusenik who suffered all the usual hardships inflicted on Jewish dissenters through the Soviet years while repeatedly being turned down for permission to emigrate to Israel. Fascinating, enlightening and highly recommended.

From Potok's epilogue: "Can we learn something from these chronicles about iron righteousness and rigid doctrine, about the stony heart, the sealed mind, the capricious use of law, and the tragedies that often result when show more theories are not adjusted to realities?" show less

This was a great book, no surprise coming from Chaim Potok. It's incredibly informative, covering nearly a century of Russian/Soviet (political) history, centered around three generations of one particular family - the Slepaks.

In some places the years jumped around a bit- presumably due to putting the book together from audio accounts made by the family, and trying to fit pieces together nicely. It wasn't a big problem or anything, but it was a smidge confusing when most of it is chronological, and then something would be mentioned that was a little into the future/past. An editor should have slipped those where they went, or worked with Potok to rearrange things somewhat so they fit in better. As is, there's a few little things where show more it could be just a wee bit hard to keep the time-line straight there. But since it was pretty much minor things, it's not a big issue, and doesn't change the fact that this was a fabulous account of a truly inspirational family.

The book painted a clear picture of Russia in times past, and of the struggle of the Slepak family, who are clearly intelligent, strong-willed people. I would highly recommended this to anyone. show less

Een gemakkelijk leesbare en verhelderende beschrijving van de problemen die de joden in de USSR de laatste decennia ondervonden. Ondanks het streven naar een nauwkeurige beschrijving van de lotgevallen van drie generaties is de hoeveelheid feiten nooit storend en het achterliggende verhaal steeds beklijvend. Het helpt wel als je al wat enige geschiedkundige achtergrond hebt, voor zeer jonge lezers is het misschien een wat hardere leesdobber.

Tot nu toe kende ik Potok alleen als schrijver van fictie. Vriendin T., fervent lezer van Potok, raadde mij – vanwege mijn interesse in Rusland – dit non-fictie werk aan. Om er zeker van te zijn dat ik het zou lezen, gaf ze mij haar oude exemplaar, toen ze zelf een mooiere uitgave op de kop had getikt. Bedankt T.!

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