A nightmare yet Russian reality.
354521
This is one of the finest Russian films that I have seen.
The set-up:  Rita, 18 years old, pregnant, and a new arrival in Moscow. Her belongings, papers, and money are stolen. She has no way of contacting her Moscow friend. A desperate phone call to mother ends in abandonment. Mute, a 14 year old street kid does what he can to survive. Their meeting seems inevitable. He shares with her his shelter, a greenhouse.
The storyline: Rita adjusts to being a street person while Mute adjusts to an adult in his life who soon turns to be his charge. Mute loses his best friend, another street kid, for lack of an operation. No one of 14 years should have to undergo holding the ashes of his friend. Rita supports him through the ordeal and their relationship is further solidified.
The denouement: Mute takes a radical and violent step to save Rita, and perhaps himself. As he is spirited away by the police he leaves with Rita a chance to save herself. She takes it. Now, in Greece, expecting her child, she finds a warm refuge and tells Mute, in her thoughts, that all is well and she awaits him.
This film just drips Russian soul. I was so happy to understand the dialogue that did not make it to the subtitles. Also, as mentioned by another reviewer, Western film makers would not make a film like this. Or perhaps the truth is that they cannot make a film like this because they have never experienced such a universe of hardship and absence of sexual overtones. I dunno, just a thought.
Again, please buy a 'region free' DVD player so you can experience a world of film.
250771
It is a very disturbing picture of the world that is painted in this book. The author juxtaposes facts with emotive and dramatic anecdotes. It is hard to say which is more chilling: the presented facts or the narratives that accompany them.  Most disturbing of all, however, is the argument. I had heard the slogan 'socialism or barbarism' before; but in this book the case is made that it really is the fundamental choice to be made by the human species, that there are no other possibilities. Potter admits that there is little political inclination for socialism in the world right now and says this situation is unlikely to change in the near future, in spite of escalating crises. On one level, this is very depressing, but altogether, that was not the effect the book had on me.  I came away after reading it more worried about the future than before but also more determined to try and do something about it. So, in a strange way, this is an inspirational book, but with a non mainstream twist.
4100798
Bizarrely, imaginatively, and articulately written. Sorokhin captures the brutal and corrupt exceptionalism that is always adopted by a ruling class with absolute power, whether in the Stalinist USSR or current day Moscow or Washington. These regimes always look back to what they view as better days in the past and try to recreate them in the present, whether they be the days of Ivan the Terrible or the ante bellum US South. This was a difficult book to translate. My command of Russian is not sophisticated, so the translation seemed OK to me. My Russian sources tell me that Sorokhins use of and reference to antiquated language make it impossible to deliver the full flavor in English. It would help an Anglphone to have knowledge of or do some some reading in Russian history to appreciate this novel fully.
2010876
Dreadfully depressing story on the state of investing in "modern" Russia and the ultimate price one good man paid for remaining true to honesty, decency, and the law.  A MUST READ for ANYONE, EVER contemplating doing business in Putin's Russia.  My thoughts and prayers are with Sergei Magnintsky's family & friends.  My thoughts and prayers are with the good people of Russia trying to survive in Putin's regime.
295573
As noted above most of this story is misery in the 1930's easily overlooked because of the war that followed. The slaughter of so many in Eastern Europe and USSR is hard to believe.
2049236
It amazes me how the author could imagine scenarios that actually come to pass in a fashion.  The situation in the Ukraine with the citizens split between alignment with the EU and others Russia is exactly what is happening today.  He foresaw the riots and the struggles going on in today's news.  Wish our government was as knowledgable.
3665891
Amazing story, and it is supposed to be  true,  How in the world does Putin get away with stuff like this,?
4961733
An inside look at an extremely productive country plundered to the bottom rung of existence in less than twenty years. In our day and time political tyranny is alive and well fanned by savage fear.
Xenophobic hate mongering is justified and twisted to keep the oligarch in power at any cost.
The author was there from the beginning to witness heroic acts of survival. Read It! I found the book in many ways depressing and yet an inspiration for survival.
Excerpts from A Memoir of Zimbabwe:
Commercial activity had moved from the shops into the streets and parking lots, where young men, crafty urban hustlers, whispered like drug dealers as you walked by: Bread, Oil, Sugar, Soap. They had to keep their eyes peeled for the police, who regularly beat and arrested them, but then the police and the ruling party ran much of this illicit trade anyway, and took bribes from those they didn't control. An entirely informal economy had sprung up; the black market ran the show.

Inflation had spun out of control as a direct result of the land invasions. In breaking its own laws and dispossessing its own citizens, the state not only destroyed the sector of the economy that provided 50 percent of its foreign revenue, but it also frightened away foreign investors. Without foreign currency to pay its bills, the government simply started printing money. Then more money. And still more. Once they started, they couldn't stop; it became an addiction.

They had held power for more than twenty-six years, they controlled every aspect of the state to the extent that you couldn't openly say what you thought, and yet someone else was always to blame. Belligerent victim-hood is a mark of tyranny, an ugly and dangerous thing to behold.
2334829
This book draws you in and offers a perspective impossible to see from the news coverage. At the time it was an awful scary thing in a far away place but hard to relate to here in the USA. It's definitely worth reading. I feel like I have a glimpse into the experience the Russian people actually lived through, sad but compelling.
2932281
Read the heartbreaking accounts of young Poles whose families had been deported into the Soviet Union during 1939-1941. The children experienced overwork, starvation, disease, etc., and often saw their parents and siblings die, as from freezing to death. Eminent Jewish psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote a moving Foreward, in which he commented: "It is a tale of nightmarish quality that reminds one of the worst fantasies in fairy tales. Only these are not fantasies, but real events witnessed by children who will have to carry the memories of such outrage with them all their lives." (p. xv).

The Gulag Polish children faced not only physical torments, but also psychological and spiritual ones. A common memory is that of Communist ridicule, hateful "re-education", and physical beatings for their religious beliefs. (e. g., p. 87, 88, 99, 110. 141). One atheist stunt was this one: A building with two holes drilled in the ceiling, one ostensibly owned by God and the other owned by Stalin. The children first went up to "God" and asked favors. Not getting any, they were directed to the other hole, where they asked Stalin for favors. A torrent of candy fell from that hole. (p. 88, 110).

While Poland was being attacked by Nazi Germany and the USSR, there were sporadic attacks on Poles by Ukrainian separatists (p. 104, 131-132, 149, 169, 193, 194, 207-208). There were also frequent acts of Jewish-Soviet collaboration against Poles (e. g., p. 9, 155, 178, 184, 224, 229). In their Introduction, Gross and Gross write: "These first militias were a strange lot. In some areas, particularly in the larger towns where a majority of the 1.7 million Jews living in this territory dwelt, they were predominantly Jewish, often organized by communist sympathizers." (p. 9). In the Krzemieniec area of Wolyn (Volhynia): "When I went out on the streets that day, numerous patrol units, militiamen composed of Jews, were circling the streets." (p. 184). At Izbica, "A fraction of Jewish youth joined the militia and wore red arm bands. The militiamen helped in searching for weapons." (p. 224). In the Brzesc County of Polesie: "At the very beginning when the Soviets were entering one Jew Banszczyk became the militia commander. He was very sadistic and cruel towards the Poles." (p. 99). In Dzisna County near Wilno (Vilnius): "The Bolsheviks established `selsovety' [village soviets], `raikomy' [regional village committees] and other committees which the Jews, local communists, and those who arrived from Russia joined. The first founder of militia was a Jew, Srol Zelikman, a local citizen." (p. 155).

Later, some Poles had direct experiences with the Zydokomuna in the USSR itself: "There was a lumber mill in Sasva...There were many Jews among NKVD agents. Some spoke Yiddish. We traded with them, and we sold them watches and bought foodstuffs. Russian agents of the NKVD had nothing to do with this." (p. 229).

Another 2 years of captivity, and virtually no Poles would have been left alive. (p. 101). However, the 1941 "amnesty" of the Gulag Poles did not end their suffering, and far too many of them died after release. One of the assembly points of the released Poles was Yangi-Yul. (p. 189). [My parents and grandmother also found themselves in Yangi-Yul.]

This work contrasts with Gross' subsequent move into post-modernism and overt Polonophobia. For instance, the accounts of children suffering, quoted throughout this book, were taken from the archives of the Hoover Institution--ironic because Gross later summarily dismissed this source as "anti-Semitic".
1348114
even if you pay attention to all the madness that we have to live in, this book will provide insights in a world you would rather not know about. it all starts in 1984 with Kruschevs call to action to KGB to recruit more aggressively Americans of a certain profile (that is uncannily similar to someone you know well..and who well, becomes the easiest target for kompromat that they could have ever wished for...) .....to today. you can only laugh about the mass amnesia of the cabinet as the accounts are so many that they had to forget everything about their lives to forget all the Russian connections... You will get an exclusive insight of the Putin's way, the dark worlds of the criminal Russian oligarchy, and enough information to understand that collusion is not only undeniable but reaches levels beyond treason. Thank you, Luke Harding, for the thorough research and balls to write this unique, exclusive account. Shame that T cant read. and.. the snapshot from th ebook is yes, something we all know, but seeing it on one page, its brutal...
1403576
The winner of the Nobel prize for literature for 2015 has written this terrific account of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. It's essentialy a collection of memories from officers, infantrymen, paratroopers, tankers, engineers, mortar men, combat medics, soldiers' mothers and wives, doctors, nurses, and other civilians who experienced that brutal war for a whole decade and still bear the physical and emotional scars. The human face of the Afghan war, as it's presented in the book, is really shocking. The Soviet troops had the impression that they will serve their country's strategic interests and found themselves amidst a cruelty and barbarity that exceeded even their worst nightmares. Svetlana Alexievich has produced a very powerful, heartbreaking book which puts the reader through successive shocks of powerful mental images. Blood, horror, fear, an enemy capable of unimagined brutality, mountainous terrain ideal for deadly ambushes, a land where superior weapons and technology was of little value. Nearly every story in the book has a tragic end - if not the loss of a soldier, then the loss of limbs or of sanity. Soviet soldiers describe in every funny or gory detail the paranoia of training in the army and the complete madness of war against the mujahedin. The Soviets suffered in Afghanistan the worst case of "mission creep" starting as liberators and peacekeeepers who brought socialism to an Asian land, and ending as cold-blooded butchers of innocent civilians. While reading this book I couldn't avoid thinking that Putin's modern Russia should have thought more carefully before being immersed in a similar horrific civil war in Syria nowadays, where in fact no military solution is possible and where Russia should have played a positive and constructive diplomatic role instead of bombing and killing. Unfortunately history lessons are easily forgotten.
4156205
Masha Gesson has an amazing background to write about contemporary Russia.  Besides being native of St. Petersburg, she traveled extensively in the Caucasus.  The book is a furious indictment of Putin and the KGB.  She provides credible evidence that the KGB, not the Chechens, blew up some buildings to provide an excuse to invade Chechnya -- or to get Russian public opinion on his side.  She describes the hellish childhood of Vladimir Putin, his thuggish behavior, and amazing incidents of his kleptomania.
2319181
The Western perspective often glosses over the "Great Patriotic War"  fought on the Eastern Front by our Allies turned enemies, the Russians.  This great and horrifying book goes some way to remedy this, although still told from a western, albeit German viewpoint.  Russ Schneider depicts a microcosm of the great struggle waged between two megalomaniac dictators, through the eyes of the common soldiers involved.
Joseph Stalin probably wins the prize for "World's Worst Dictator" and some measure of this comes out in the first chapter of the book.  Other than this the Russians are just the enemy, to be hated, despised and mown down by machine gun fire.
I do not regard this as a book about courage:  It is more of a struggle for endurance and mere existence against the twin forces of an implacable and relentless enemy and a barren and brutal landscape.  The author does not have to deliberately espouse his personal philosophy in this book.  It is all too clear.  The sheer meaningless barbarism and suffering tell it all.  There is no higher cause to be found here.  There is existence and there is death, nothing else.
Those who think that war can be a solution for any of our problems should be made to read this book.  Better still, they should serve in the front lines at Velikhiye Luki.
3470578
As an MIT engineer (BSME MIT, 1978) and Author of When Technology Fails, I have read over a hundred books over the past two years, but Dimitri Orlov's "Reinventing Collapse" is the one that haunts me. Like many Americans, I felt quite smug when the Soviet Union collapsed. At the time, it appeared to be proof that the western world's way of running its businesses and governments was indeed superior to communism, and that the "free market" would soon deliver oppressed peoples all over the world from the clutches of the remaining totalitarian regimes.

Orlov's analysis, gained through personally experiencing the Soviet collapse, shows us that this collapse was more a factor of economic problems caused by a crash in oil revenues than by the Regan/Breshnev arms race that was credited by so many westerners for fomenting this collapse. When the oil-glut of the 1980's caused the price of oil to fall radically, the Soviet income from their inefficient state run petroleum industries crashed (it basically cost them about as much to pump and refine their oil as the export price per barrel), and the result was a cash flow crunch that could not sustain the rest of their state-run economy.

Now that oil prices have shot past the $100 a barrel mark, the tables have turned. Russia has surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world's number one oil producer, and the same oil exports that caused the Soviet regime's cash flow problem when prices were extremely low, is now making the new Russian economy cash-rich. America is seeing the devaluation of our dollar, brought on primarily due to a negative cash flow of billions of dollars a day for petroleum product imports and military ventures to protect our access to the supply of oil in foreign countries (Iraq, etc.), contributing to a large portion of our skyrocketing national debt, bringing the threat of economic collapse ever closer to our shores. Orlov points out a few of the differences between the former Soviet situation and the current US situation that makes our predicament even scarier.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of its state run systems continued to function. For example, most Soviets lived in public housing, fueled by public utilities, and they got around using public transportation. When their economic system went down, even though few people had much or any usable cash, their homes were still heated and not boarded up, the lights stayed on, and they could still get around using buses and trains. Here in America, the free market and privatization makes ours a very different story. When we stop paying our bills, the lights go out and the banks take our homes. If you don't have money for gas, or happen to live where trains and buses don't go where you need to go, your only recourse is to walk or hitch hike. When cash stops flowing, paychecks halt immediately and services screech to a halt (remember Enron and MCI?). When the Soviet Union collapsed, their country still had vast untapped resources to help rebuild after the collapse.  America, on the other hand, has already used up most of our steel, natural gas, oil, timber, and so on. What untapped resources do we have to draw upon to pull ourselves out of this predicament? If the American dollar plunges, how will we continue to buy the resources and products from other countries that we no longer make ourselves?

So, if you are worried about the future and what you may do to prepare your friends, family, and country for what may lie ahead, I suggest you pick up a copy of "Reinventing Collapse", and learn from Orlov's experience. He gives us a clear vision of what to expect, including which strategies worked best for individuals, and what items proved most valuable to stock up for barter use when cash has no value because the economy crashed.  What you learn from the past can help you to navigate a course through the future. Highly recommended!
2609565
Though I hovered between 4-5 stars, I chose 5 for the sake of the story itself.  It is Terrifying that there really could be people in this world who prey on others with such depraved cruelty.  The government agencies in every country have at their disposal, people who do the secret dirty jobs to keep their countries (safe) from the predators out there. Though this story is a product of a writer's imagination, it could be possible that even our own government has more secret agencies than the public is aware of.
51707
A well-written documentary of the destruction of the German defenses in Prussia and political considerations as the Soviets took their revenge for the devastation of their homeland.  Savage fighting, atrocities and slaughter of civilian populations that shock and have no counterpart on the Western front.  Ethnic cleansing of the region by Stalin, and the end of 800 years or more of German habitation in the area, as the survivors--both military and civilian--are marched off to forced-labor camps in the Soviet Union, many never to return.

The book documents frantic efforts by the civilian population to flee westward, to escape by land or sea, in the most inhospitable conditions, thwarted by not only the Russians, but by their own Nazi overlords.

One can not help feeling sympathy for the German population of East and West Prussia as they are overrun and butchered, even knowing the Nazi armies and SS divisions perpetrated equally horrific cruelties in Russia.  But at the same time, while one can understand the Russian thirst for revenge, it's difficult to justify their state-sanctioned brutality against the innocent.