Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: I guess you had to be there...

Not much of this book sticks in the mind, atypically for an Aksyonov novel. The titanically horrific events of the preceding volume, _Generations of Winter_, practically carried the story along without help. The comparatively (but only comparatively) milder post-war times in the Soviet Union don't leave much for historical fiction to hinge on. So Aksyonov chooses to emphasize the degradation that the long years of war, terror, and compulsory adulation of Stalin and the Party inflicted on the Soviet people. He doesn't pull it off; it's the story and the reader that get degraded. Stick with the first volume of this tale.