The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia by Orlando Figes - 9780805074611 - Compare Prices on New & Used Textbooks, Cheap Textbooks

From the award-winning author of A People’s Tragedy and Natasha’s Dance, a landmark account of what private life was like for Russians in the worst years of Soviet repression

There have been many accounts of the public aspects of Stalin’s dictatorship: the arrests and trials, the enslavement and killing in the gulags. No previous book, however, has explored the regime’s effect on people’s personal lives, what one historian called “the Stalinism that entered into all of us.” Now, drawing on a huge collection of newly discovered documents, The Whisperers reveals for the first time the inner world of ordinary Soviet citizens as they struggled to survive amidst the mistrust, fear, compromises, and betrayals that pervaded their existence.

Moving from the Revolution of 1917 to the death of Stalin and beyond, Orlando Figes re-creates the moral maze in which Russians found themselves, where one wrong turn could destroy a family or, perversely, end up saving it. He brings us inside cramped communal apartments, where minor squabbles could lead to fatal denunciations; he examines the Communist faithful, who often rationalized even their own arrest as a case of mistaken identity; and he casts a humanizing light on informers, demonstrating how, in a repressive system, anyone could easily become a collaborator.

A vast panoramic portrait of a society in which everyone spoke in whispers—whether to protect their families and friends, or to inform upon them—The Whisperers is a gripping account of lives lived in impossible times.

		The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia by Orlando Figes ISBN-10: 9780805074611 ISBN-10: 0-8050-7461-9 ISBN-13: 9780805074611 ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7461-1 Hardcover 2007-11-13 Metropolitan Books Find Lowest Price
Editorials

Product Description *From the award-winning author of A People’s Tragedy* and Natasha’s Dance, a landmark account of what private life was like for Russians in the worst years of Soviet repression** There have been many accounts of the public aspects of Stalin’s dictatorship: the arrests and trials, the enslavement and killing in the gulags. No previous book, however, has explored the regime’s effect on people’s personal lives, what one historian called “the Stalinism that entered into all of us.” Now, drawing on a huge collection of newly discovered documents, The Whisperers reveals for the first time the inner world of ordinary Soviet citizens as they struggled to survive amidst the mistrust, fear, compromises, and betrayals that pervaded their existence. Moving from the Revolution of 1917 to the death of Stalin and beyond, Orlando Figes re-creates the moral maze in which Russians found themselves, where one wrong turn could destroy a family or, perversely, end up saving it. He brings us inside cramped communal apartments, where minor squabbles could lead to fatal denunciations; he examines the Communist faithful, who often rationalized even their own arrest as a case of mistaken identity; and he casts a humanizing light on informers, demonstrating how, in a repressive system, anyone could easily become a collaborator. A vast panoramic portrait of a society in which everyone spoke in whispers—whether to protect their families and friends, or to inform upon them—The Whisperers is a gripping account of lives lived in impossible times.
Reviews

The Whisperers This book is a new look at the Soviet Union, emphasizing what life was like during the period from the NEP to Stalin's death and its immediate aftermath. Based on a large number of personal accounts and archival records of personal letters and testimony, many from ordinary citizens, many party members or associates, the book reveals a terrifying portrait of what life was like for most people in the nation. The title refers to a near complete lack of privacy so that conversations among adult family members often occurred in a whisper under a cloud of fear. It reveals how children could report parents' deviations, how neighbors might report families, how arbitrary condemnation to the Gulags could be, how being a relative of an enemy of the state reflected on even distant relatives, how rapid and total was the resocialization of citizens in many cases, and how prisoners could feel guilt during their imprisonment and afterward all in the words of the people themselves. It also portrays changes in experiences at the end of NEP, the 1930's purges, WWII, after Stalin's death, and after Khrushchev. The research is sound and the writing excellent. This is the only solid, book length account I know of that conveys information and emotional depictions of life under Stalin from a broad base of individuals who endured that life. It is must read to those who wish to gain understanding of life under communism in the USSR. It should also make one appreciate living in a liberal democracy to a much greater extent.
This book will haunt you. This book is captivating! I came into it with only the most basic knowledge of Russian history. A little more would have been helpful, but I managed to get what I needed from the internet. This book focuses on the impact of communism under Stalin on the lives of everyday people. It is full of fascinating details that give you an incredible picture of the fear and uncertainty that Soviets at the time would have felt. One of the striking points of the book is that no one was exempt from being spied upon or being reported to the Party. It was impossible to just keep your head down and go through life without being noticed, because if those in charge didn't notice, your neighbors surely would, and heaven help you if they were being pressured to inform, or if they wanted your space, your belongings, or were jealous in some other way. Normally I tend to zoom through books, but I found myself really slowing down to absorb every detail. If I found myself skimming because I was tired, I would put the book down and pick it up later when I was fresh, simply because I did not want to miss anything. Do not let the length and density scare you off- give it a try. I started reading "Natasha's Dance" by the same author, but I don't find it as captivating, so if you tried that one and didn't like it, your experience may not be representative of your attitude towards this book.
More Anecdotal Evidence of Communism's Crimes It amazes me that with all the information that has been released from the Russian archives with regards to the Stalinist period that there are still influential people in the west who minimize or excuse the crimes of Stalin's regime. Oh, there are people around who deny the crimes of Hitler as well. The difference is that those who deny the crimes of Hitler are ostracized and in some countries even subject to criminal sanctions. But those who deny or minimize the crimes of Stalin and his henchmen are generally given a pass in Western societies. I have often wondered why that is, maybe the best answer is that that left-leaning elites consider the Stalinist terror a minor error made in the service of a "just" cause. It is ironic that many of Stalin's biggest supporters in the US were Russian emigres and their offspring and many of those were embedded in opinion-shaping professions here such as education, journalism and film-making. So maybe its no wonder that we still have apologists for communism in prominent positions. The Whisperers is a fine history that should help put further to rest any idea that Stalin was any less of a monster than Hitler. It doesn't serve any purpose to argue about which man was responsible for more deaths. One is just as dead whether the bullet that kills you comes from the gun of an SS man or from the gun of an NKVD executioner. One is just as dead whether he was killed because of his ethnicity, religion, or because he was a "kulak". What you will learn in The Whisperers is how millions of people were cowed into accepting the necessity of the brutality of the Stalinist regime and in the end wound up looking only after their own interests. Though some decent people remained, friend turned on friend, neighbor on neighbor, and relatives on one another in a desperate bid to avoid that knock on the door in the middle of the night that meant exile or worse. I won't rehash the story, others have done so. But if you have any interest in gaining a broader knowledge of the machinations of the Communist police state, the human tragedy it spawned, and how it impacted ordinary Soviet citizens then The Whisperers is highly recommended. Orlando Figes has painstakingly woven together a complex web of anecdotal evidence of communism's crimes through the stories of a number of survivors of Stalin's terror whose trust he earned enough for them to be forthcoming enough to tell the tragic stories you read here. Once you finish the book, you may feel as though you actually know some of the people whose stories are told. It may be heavy reading, and its a thick book, but the understanding you'll gain will make it more than worth the effort expended.
Shocking..... I have read many books about Russia and the Soviet era. I am shocked by the details of life under Stalin. I always knew millions had died. However, I never realized how evil this period was. It is almost beyond belief how communism broke all standards of human decency. It is really beyond belief to read how the Russian people basically ate itself alive via their leadership. I seem to be on a roll. I recently read about abuses in North Korea and China. Also here there are also shocking stories of abuse.
A must-read for anyone interested in modern Russian history Over the years I've read many books about Russian and Soviet history, from Roy Medvedev's "Let History Judge"to Montefiore's "Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar," with significant stops along the way for Solzhenitsyn's magisterial polemic "The Gulag Archipelago." Orlando Fige's "The Whisperers" is one of the best single-volume studies of life in Soviet times I have read. It is a fairly long book, but very engaging: I found myself reading 30 to 50 pages at a stretch. There is a cast of characters as long as in one of Tolstoy's great novels, but these are all real people, describing or recollecting their experiences in Stalin's Russia. It is a tribute to Mr. Figes that he arranges the narratives in such a way that this reader was never confused following the threads of so many lives over the course of such turbulent decades. In addition, Figes provides short accounts of the ideological, political and economic shifts in the Kremlin which directly influenced the lives of the people in the chapters which follow. For conciseness, clarity and readability, his narrative is outstanding when he writes about the NEP, Stalin's anti-Kulak campaign and collectivization of the countryside, the rapid rise of the Gulag and slave labor as a mainstay of the Soviet economy, and the malign influence on family relations of the1930s propaganda cult surrounding Pavel Morozov. Figes includes information in this book which I've simply not seen in histories before. He shows floor plans of communal apartments which makes clear how little privacy many urban dwellers in Moscow and Leningrad had at home, and how Stalin's regime nurtured malicious watchers as well as whisperers. The diary and letter extracts in "The Whisperers" can be deeply moving. There is a photo in the book of Nikolai Kondratiev's letter to his daughter Elena, written from a labor camp. It shows a drawing he'd done illustrating a fairy-tale in verse he'd written for Elena entitled "The Unusual Adventures of Shammi." The drawing is simple, the verse is charming. It makes one think of how many millions of times in different times and places parents have entertained their children by spinning stories. But the circumstances here are grotesque: Kondratiev was one of millions of innocents imprisoned under Stalin. And the outcome is tragic: in 1938 he was shot by a firing squad. This is just one example of the dozens of different accounts of lives of ordinary people warped or crushed by this monstrous regime. The sum of such narratives creates a very rich mosaic of a society and its time which even those of us who have visited Russia in the recent past have difficulties understanding. In the long essay which follows the fictional story of War and Peace, Tolstoy first developed the concept that armies are not just regiments of men following the will of their commander, but individuals who have individual consciences. History isn't just the deeds of Napoleon and Alexander, but of each aristocrat, tradesman, artisan or peasant who fought in the Napoleonic wars, and of their families back home. Each of their lives is as worthy of examination as that of any Tsar or Generalissimo. Because of this, I think Tolstoy is properly the godfather of oral history. Orlando Figes has done a great job gathering and editing the accounts of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people living during the cruelest years of Stalinism. He also conveys the sense of freedom and comradeship experienced by many during the worst days of the second World War (which the Soviets hallowed as the "Great Patriotic War"), a mistaken sense of freedom which landed Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag. For all these reasons, I think old Tolstoy might be pleased in literary heaven could he only read these accounts of real lives and real consciences played out in the pages of "The Whisperers." One small caveat: Kirill Simonov was a very successful writer in the Stalin literary establishment who came of age during World War II. Because of his public life of letters and his colorful personal life he occupies many pages in "The Whisperers." As was the case with many successful people in the Arts world under Stalin, Simonov was morally compromised. (I'm paraphrasing Lev Kopelev, but that writer has a pithy quote that "Every society has bad people who do bad things. But under communism, good people were encouraged to do bad things." This describes Simonov.) For better or worse, and because he wrote so much and was so active for all the decades from the Thirties until the Seventies, Simonov emerges as the main "character" in this book. This has its merits, but it also throws into harsh relief the fact that many of the less-lettered accounts in this oral history don't always seem as real, or as present, as Simonov. Because this is a history and not a work of fiction I'm not sure this imbalance could ever have been effectively redressed, but the imbalance is there. A final word of praise: I've travelled to Russia several times since the overdue demise of the Soviet Union, and seen life change radically not only because of the introduction of Russian-style market capitalism, but because a generation has grown up without memory of life under communism. Figes points out that young people in Russia have no great interest in what to them has also become the story of an alien life lived by grandparents and great-grandparents during the 5-year plans. The people who do remember are old, dying out, with failing memories. "The Whisperers," and the archives on which it is based, is commendable because it helps to save so many of these survivors' accounts to historical memory.