The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin - Softcover

Hochschild

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618257470 ISBN 13: 9780618257478

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade), 2003

Synopsis

Although some twenty million people died during Stalin's reign of terror, only with the advent of glasnost did Russians begin to confront their memories of that time. In 1991, Adam Hochschild spent nearly six months in Russia talking to gulag survivors, retired concentration camp guards, and countless others. The result is a riveting evocation of a country still haunted by the ghost of Stalin.

About this title

Review:

"An exceptionally perceptive and honest book that sensitively attempts to do justice to those who lived under Stalinist tyranny and the following 40 years of state-imposed silence." -- San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 1994

"As the Russians started to come to grips with the trauma that had numbed three generations, words poured forth in newspapers and magazine stories, public meetings, exhibitions, documentary films, plays and novels, each adding to the awakening of memories that many still found painful to confront. For the first time, it became possible to ask about the injury and the guilt, to inquire into the inner feelings of those who had lived on both sides of the barbed wire that had once encircled the hundreds of islands that made up the gulag archipelago. At the beginning of 1991, Adam Hochschild hurried to Moscow to bring this collective memory into focus. The result of his effort is this probing and sensitive book, which casts striking new light upon the Russian past and present." -- Washington Post Book World, W. Bruce Lincoln, April 10, 1994

"I admire Hochschild greatly for his use of personal narratives to understand the human response to terror. The question of why many Russians continue to revere Stalin--even some who suffered greatly during his regime--is one whose importance permeates Russia's current political crisis and indeed will endure long beyond it." -- Lingua Franca, Tina Rosenberg, August 1996

"The author of THE UNQUIET GHOST combines the strengths of a practiced investigative reporter with those of a philosopher-historian with a sensitive moral compass and the spirit of an enlightened 18th-century gentleman. . . . THE UNQUIET GHOST makes an important contribution to our post-glasnost awareness of the former Soviet Union's harrowing past--and of its unsettled present. Belonging to a literary genre which has flourished for centuries, that of "The Voyage to Russia" by a Western observer, it is an illuminating excursion led by a highly qualified guide." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 3, 1994

"The characters and the dramatic situations Mr. Hochschild encounters are nothing short of magnificent." -- New York Times Book Review, Paul Goldberg

From the Back Cover:

"I was in Moscow during the first shock of Khrushchev's 'secret speech' in 1956, and have followed the long, traumatic process of de-Stalinization. No other work has brought home the full horror of this monstrous dictator's rule than this close-up account by Adam Hochschild." --Daniel Schorr

"A book that adds greatly to our grasp of the dreadful phenomena of Stalinism--and even gives the interrogation records of American citizens caught in the terror machine." --Robert Conquest

"In the spirit of scholarship and empathy, Adam Hochschild has journeyed into the totalitarian past. The voices he has recorded, the relics he has seen, are haunting--and the raw material of a terrific book." --David Remnick

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade)
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0618257470
• ISBN 13: 9780618257478
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352