The Scared Generation (Glas New Russian Writing) - Softcover

Boris Yampolsky ; Vasil Bykov

9785717200905: The Scared Generation (Glas New Russian Writing)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 5717200900 ISBN 13: 9785717200905

Publisher: Glas, 2011

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Two short novels by major 20th-century Russian authors.

The Old Arbat by Boris Yampolsky examines the inner state of a hunted man, his fears and his loneliness as he wanders around Moscow trying to escape the shadowing KGB. Unlike Dostoevsky s Raskolnikov, however, Yampolsky s hero is innocent. Like Yampolsky himself, the hero saw action in World War II, but now, in this late Stalinist atmosphere of witchhunting and political intolerance, he is paralysed by uncontrollable terror. Yet at some point his hopelessness produces an inner freedom which gives the hunted man strength to resist, and a remedy for overcoming fear.

In The Manhunt by Vasil Bykov, a dispossessed peasant returns in secret from his Siberian exile to his home village in Belarus. The local Cheka, headed by his own son, is hunting him. As he walks towards his old house he looks back on his whole life. Bykov has always been preoccupied with the problem of retaining humanity in inhuman conditions, and the problem of moral choice versus personal safety. Considering the current situation in Russia and in Belarus, together these novels are more relevant today than ever before.

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About the Author

Boris Yampolsky (1912-1972) was a noted novelist and journalist in the late 1950s. His major novel, The Regime Street, was banned by the censor and only published in the 1990s under the title The Old Arbat.

Vasil Bykov (1924-2003), a major Belarussian author and winner of many top literary prizes, is best known for his war novels: Vasil Bykov is a very courageous and uncompromising writer, rather of the Solzhenitsyn stamp, wrote Michael Glenny in Partisan Review.

From the Back Cover

"These novels, in their different ways, explore the inner powerlessness of the victims. Crushed and tormented by the totalitarian system they begin to feel that they must be responsible for their own ill fate... Written in an intense, suffocating style they make powerful reading."
The Moscow Times

"The texts and voices out of Russia come through with formidable insistence. More now than ever before, precisely because hopes on their native ground are again precarious." GEORGE STEINER

Saturated with an emotional intensity and inescapable terror, these two novels chart the traumatic decades of Stalinism which today's "scared generation" of middle-aged Russians had to experience. They are vivid reminders of those inhuman times.

Set in Moscow in the 1950s, Boris Yampolsky's classic, The Old Arbat, focuses on one day in the life of an innocent person persecuted by the KGB. Wandering about the city at night he looks back at his life. A fearless soldier during WWII he is now paralyzed by uncontrollable terror. Yet at some point his hopelessness produces an inner freedom that gives the hunted man the strength to resist.

In Vasil Bykov's powerful short novel The Manhunt, a dispossessed farmer is betrayed by his son in the collectivized countryside of the 1930s. He is exiled to Siberia but runs away to his native land where he is hunted by the Soviet police, and finally prefers death to infamy.

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