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Pushkin's Children: Writing on Russia and Russians, by Tatyana Tolstaya
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These twenty pieces address the politics, culture, and literature of Russia with both flair and erudition. Passionate and opinionated, often funny, and using ample material from daily life to underline their ideas and observations, Tatyana Tolstaya"s essays range across a variety of subjects. They move in one unique voice from Soviet women, classical Russian cooking, and the bliss of snow to the effect of Pushkin and freedom on Russia writers; from the death of the czar and the Great Terror to the changes brought by Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin in the last decade. Throughout this engaging volume, the Russian temperament comes into high relief. Whether addressing literature or reporting on politics, Tolstaya"s writing conveys a deep knowledge of her country and countrymen. Pushkin"s Children is a book for anyone interested in the Russian soul.
- Sales Rank: #817196 in Books
- Published on: 2003-01-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .62" w x 5.50" l, .73 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
- ISBN13: 9780618125005
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
From Publishers Weekly
Written between 1990 and 2000, the 20 essays in this collection offer a progressive, dynamic meditation on Russia's recent political and cultural climate. Many of the pieces are book reviews culled from such publications as the New York Review of Books and the New Republic, but Tolstaya, an internationally acclaimed journalist and fiction writer (The Golden Porch; Sleepwalker in a Fog), goes far beyond the task of reviewing. Her careful and succinct critiques offer original, highly informed takes on the books' subjects, ranging from political biography to cultural history. Tolstaya has little patience for writers who shore shoddy research with patronizing egotism, illustrated by such lines from this stinger of a review of Gail Sheehy's 1990 biography of Gorbachev: "You have to be quite fearless, an adventurer, extraordinarily self-assured, to offer American readers a book about a country that you yourself do not understand." In 1991, Tolstaya defends Yeltsin against criticisms that his decrees to wrest power from Communist Party leaders were undemocratic: "A man who watches a wolf devouring his child does not begin a discussion of animal rights." Tolstaya reserves particular contempt for Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In reviews of two of his works, she finds that the isolated writer and political activist idol was rendered obsolete long before his 1995 return to Russia. In the end, Tolstaya's essays in this compact, historically significant volume offer a fascinating, highly intelligent analysis of Russian society and politics.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This collection of book reviews and essays, many of which have previously appeared in the New York Review of Books, is the first book of nonfiction from this great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy. Tolstaya covers a broad range of topics: classical Russian cooking, the bliss of snow, Russian writers, and some of the changes that have taken place in Russia under the regimes of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin. Tolstaya, who lives in Russia, has the advantage of having seen and experienced firsthand both the literary and the political changes that have swept the country, and this perspective gives her essays and reviews a sharp edge; she can convey a humorous or a satirical tone depending on her topic. Of particular interest are her essay on Yeltsin's overthrow of Gorbachev, in which she recounts the bitter dislike of the one for the other; and her moving tribute to Joseph Brodsky, the Nobel prize-winning poet. Readers will find these essays and reviews engrossing and a treat to read. Recommended for academic libraries and large public libraries. [Tolstaya's first novel, The Slynx, will be published next month by Houghton.-Ed.]-Ron Ratliff, Kansas State Univ., Manhatta.
--Ron Ratliff, Kansas State Univ., Manhattan
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The 20 pieces in this collection were written between 1990 and 2000 and appeared in such journals as the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, Wilson Quarterly, the New Yorker, and the New York Times Magazine. The majority are book reviews the author deftly expands into essays. Also included is an elegy for the late poet, Joseph Brodsky, and a short, but poetic, piece on the indomitability and triumph of nature (in the form of snow) over technology (the snowplow) in St. Petersburg. Many of the reviews feature the iconoclastic Tolstaya at her best: taking aim and puncturing the oversize egos of those who purported to know what was best for Russia in its first post-Soviet decade. Furthermore, Tolstaya can spot a phony (whether Russian or Western) a kilometer away, and she delights in sounding the alarm. When the genuine article crosses her path, she is equally generous in singing its praises. Best of all, the reader does not have to agree with her to enjoy her essays. Frank Caso
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
In search of the Russian soul
By James Ferguson
Tolstaya demonstrates just how hard it is to size Russians up in a collection of book reviews and essays on the Russian character. These stories sparkle with many telling anecdotes, drifting back and forth over time. Pushkin has long held a dear place in the Russian heart because of his "inner freedom," Tolstaya noted. The unconquerable spirit that managed to survive one regime after another over the centuries.
Book reviews dominate this collection, from her appreciation of Robert Conquest's The Great Terror to her witty dismissal of Gail Sheehy's book on Gorbachev. She also takes aim at Russian authors, in particular the cult that formed around Solzhenitsyn. The Russian soul is something that continually eludes authors. Exceedingly hard to pin down as is the Russian language.
Jamey Gambrell worked with Tolstaya on this translation, giving it the character of her voice. Although most of the pieces were written during the death throes of the Soviet Union, her observations are still timely and present a compelling portrait of Russia in transition. She takes a stab at the enigmatic Vladimir Putin and the events that led up to his ascension to power. She packs into these essays more meat than many scholars do in their massive tomes on Russia. It is a voice that is both fresh and enlightening.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
wonderful
By A Customer
This is a wonderful collection of essays. Tolstaya is sharp, opinionated, and savvy. Full of insight into contemporary Russia -- its leaders and its people.
5 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Not stupid, but really funny
By Bruce P. Barten
Intellectuals have problems fitting in with the big buddies in the world. This might be more true in Russia during the last few centuries than elsewhere, but PUSHKIN'S CHILDREN by Tatyana Tolstaya does not have an index, in which to look up Lenin, for his opinion on the intelligentsia, to illustrate the point. The intellectual freedoms which literary people in Russia had been seeking since the time of Herzen were finally granted by Gorbachev. But then the Partocracy, "accustomed to doing nothing concrete, to producing a lot of empty talk, they were shaken from their usual rut by the very mystery of what was happening. They were so baffled that it was easy to sweep them from their posts. When someone has fainted, you can quickly throw them out the door." (p. 44). People who live in democracies should recognize the ability of voters to do this to rulers on a regular basis, if the voters have enough reason and are given the opportunity.
In the case of Gorbachev, the larger question of how he managed to preside over the collapse of an empire and an economic system is of unusual interest for people in democracies whose outlooks for wealth are not stable. Tolstaya pictures the intelligentsia as being too moral to grasp the downside of what would happen when "Gorbachev made his first, and perhaps his most serious, mistake. He forbade the people to drink.
"The intelligentsia forgave him for this (they were `moved by their own perdition'). The Partocracy was happy. Here was a concrete task, and a familiar one: to fight, to root out, to fire people from their jobs. They set to tearing out grape vines, paving over rare vinyards in the Crimea, uprooting muscat so fine and expensive that `the people' couldn't get near it. They only counted the monstrous losses when the campaign was over. During the campaign, however, people cursed Gorbachev, bought up all the sugar, perfected their knowledge of moonshine manufacture, and most important of all, grasped that they could do everything their own way and not get caught or punished. An epidemic of hoarding began. Sugar, soap, matches, and lightbulbs disappeared, and then sheets and pillows, and then clothes, shoes, eggs, and finally bread." (p. 45).
Most of the people in the world live in countries where they do not need to depend on their government to supply them with such items, and even the United States, rich as it is in so many ways, might expect to be able to conquer anyplace it chooses without having to furnish such items to everybody. Even the current road map might appear to create a state for the Palestinians in an area in which Jewish settlements are the hoarders of anything they might really want. Long before, this book, PUSHKIN'S CHILDREN, starts with a book review of SOVIET WOMEN: WALKING THE TIGHTROPE, by Francine du Plessix Gray, in which reality conforms to the old maxim, "Women can do everything, and men do all the rest." (p. 3). War and prison camps kept men away from homes and jobs in the first half of the twentieth century. "An honest person tried his or her best not to participate in this `official' life. Those who did get involved in the hellish machine were broken: either it destroyed all traces of individuality and compromised them morally and ethically, or--if a person rebelled--it threw him out of society, sometimes sending him as far as Siberia." (p. 11).
Things change as the essays in this book were written. "In January 1994, no one talks about politics and no one explains anything, no matter how much I ask. No one understands anything. No one believes in anyone or anything." (pp. 127-128). With incredibly high prices, "But there are happy surprises, too: a medicine that I bought in America for $50 turned out to be so cheap in Russia that I bought fifteen jars and paid only five cents for it. (I should have bought thirty jars.)" (p. 128).
Another explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union was in the personality conflict between its primary leaders. "In February 1991, Yeltsin was dying to speak on television and Gorbachev wouldn't let him. . . . Many people understood that the conflict between these two strong personalities did in fact threaten the country with collapse--and with unforeseen consequences." (p. 147). Then, "Having rushed to `seize' Russia, he didn't know what to do with it." (p. 151). Yeltsin is pictured as dreaming that things would be better for him if he were in America. "(I wonder whether, somewhere in the depths of Yeltsin's subconscious, he is remembering the last house of the last Russian tsar, given to Nikolai II by the Bolsheviks, which Yeltsin himself had blown up on orders from Moscow.) In any event, I rather think that if an American president willfully decided to get rid of California, Nevada, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, the two Virginias, both Carolinas, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the grateful American people wouldn't build him anything more than a hut in Alaska, at best, and wouldn't give him any sled dogs either." (pp. 151-152).
This book is really too good. Even if you know a lot of what this book covers, the point of view is unusual and witty enough to make it entertaining. But in our times, even PUSHKIN'S CHILDREN has to admit, "Recently Americans have not shown much interest in what is going on in Russia." (pp. 185-186). The final paragraph, dated 2000, includes the kind of things that feed current fears. "Russians began to remove everything they possibly could from institutes and factories, and to sell everything they stole, including state secrets--actual, not imagined ones. They stole poisons, mercury, uranium, cesium, and vaccines. Even, in one instance, smallpox virus." (p. 242). Take it from an author who "used to buy meat patties at some tank factory. No one ever stopped me." (p. 242).
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