The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics) |
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Victor Serge
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Pages: 400 (Paperback)
ISBN: 1590170644
Pub: New York Review Books
Pub date: 2003-11-15
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 6917
Reader Reviews:
A glimpse into the Russian mind (0/0 people found this helpful)
An excellent read. If you want to read it as a novel it will satisy, but it also provokes much thought not only on the corrupting influence of power in general, but especially in a Russian context.
Dostoyevsky talks of the "passivity" of the Russian in the face of power, in his day invested in the Tsar and his agencies, but taken to new and horrible hights in Stalins hands.
To me it highlighted the weirdness of past societies which are still in living memory, the cheapness of human life, the bizarre conclusions of powerful figures and policy makers based on idealogies which held sway among millions, but which nowadays are looked upon in bewilderment.
Will our values survive the test of time?
Thank god it's back in print! (2/2 people found this helpful)
I read a copy of this book 30 years ago, then it went out of print and was impossible to locate. It expresses the Stalinist pogroms better than any other literature or cinematic experience, I have come across, manages to do.It is superbly written; so much so that I could even recall certain phrases from 3 decades ago.It is a much overlooked piece of masterly literature.Characters and descriptions beautifully observed and with a haunting quality which makes you glad you didn't live in Russia at the same time as The Chief!
An anti-Stalinist masterpiece (2/2 people found this helpful)
The tale of the 1930s purges in Stalin's USSR is told through several characters - a mix of innocents and committed Bolsheviks. More of an insider account than Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" but well worth reading them together. A boon in this edition is Susan Sontag's introduction, one of her last pieces.
A great, little known novel (7/8 people found this helpful)
This is a magnificent book. The opening shows us the random and spontaneous assassination of leading Party official, Comrade Tulayev, by an ordinary citizen. The paranoia prevalent in Stalin's Russia, though, could not accept such an explanation. As ripples spread out from a pond when a pebble is thrown in, so the web of supposed intrigue behind the act widens to envelop and subsequently destroy both friends and enemies of the regime.
Written by a man familiar with the regime (Victor Serge was not only condemned to the camps but was one of the very few people to be released and allowed to leave Russia after international protestations led by writers) this serves as history but, much more than this, as also a tragic, aching novel.
Read this then move on to Vasily Grossman's epic "Life and Fate".
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