The Whisperers
Private Life in Stalin's Russia
Figes, Orlando
Hardcover
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BOOK SUMMARY
From the award-winning author of A Peoples Tragedy and Natashas Dance, a landmark account of what private life was like for Russians in the worst years of Soviet repression
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There have been many accounts of the public aspects of Stalins dictatorship:
Submit a book reviewBOOK SYNOPSIS
From the award-winning author of A Peoples Tragedy and Natashas Dance, a landmark account of what private life was like for Russians in the worst years of Soviet repression
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There have been many accounts of the public aspects of Stalins dictatorship: the arrests and trials, the enslavement and killing in the gulags. No previous book, however, has explored the regimes effect on peoples 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 whisperswhether to protect their families and friends, or to inform upon themThe Whisperers is a gripping account of lives lived in impossible times.
AUTHOR BIO
Orlando Figes is the author of Natashas Dance: A Cultural History of Russia and A Peoples Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 18911924, which received the Wolfson Prize for History and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A frequent contributor to The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, among other publications, Figes is a professor of history at Birbeck College, University of London.
BOOK REVIEWS
Orlando Figes is the author of Natashas Dance: A Cultural History of Russia and A Peoples Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 18911924, which received the Wolfson Prize for History and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A frequent contributor to The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, among other publications, Figes is a professor of history at Birbeck College, University of London.
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MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 0805074619
ISBN(13-digit): 9780805074611
Dewey Decimal: 306.850947/0904
Library of Congress: 2007024223
Book Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 739
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