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Charlotte Hobson spent her gap year as a student in Voronezh, in deepest provincial Russia. Her arrival coincided with the collapse of this society, as initial optimism about the fall of communism gave way to disillusionment and uncertainy. These feelings are mirrored in the doomed love affair she has with the vodka-swilling Mitya. They too started out in a mood of wild optimism, and felt that anything was possible. Until in the spring the snow thawed, and revealed the black earth beneath. more Charlotte Hobson spent her gap year as a student in Voronezh, in deepest provincial Russia. Her arrival coincided with the collapse of this society, as initial optimism about the fall of communism gave way to disillusionment and uncertainy. These feelings are mirrored in the doomed love affair she has with the vodka-swilling Mitya. They too started out in a mood of wild optimism, and felt that anything was possible. Until in the spring the snow thawed, and revealed the black earth beneath. less 
Robert ChandlerYes. Charlotte’s book is like a sort of mirror image of my experience of Voronezh. I spent a year there in 1973-4 when the Brezhnev regime was very stolid. Charlotte spent a year there in 1991, just after the failed coup against Gorbachev, so I recognise everything in her book but it’s presented as though in a distorting mirror. So, whereas students in the hostel when I was there were... (Source)
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2
This cultural study cum dictionary is a must for English-language people interested in Russia and for Russians learning English. more This cultural study cum dictionary is a must for English-language people interested in Russia and for Russians learning English. less Robert ChandlerI’ve been reading Michele Berdy’s columns in The Moscow Times about little translation problems and this book is a compilation of these columns. They’re very entertaining. People who don’t know Russian at all can read them with real interest and enjoyment. She’s someone who wonders if she’s the American who has lived longest in Moscow. She’s been there for 32 years and has done all kinds of... (Source)
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3
The Road brings together short stories, journalism, essays, and letters by Vasily Grossman, the author of Life and Fate, providing new insight into the life and work of this extraordinary writer. The stories range from Grossman’s first success, “In the Town of Berdichev,” a piercing reckoning with the cost of war, to such haunting later works as “Mama,” based on the life of a girl who was adopted at the height of the Great Terror by the head of the NKVD and packed off to an orphanage after her father’s downfall. The girl grows up struggling with the discovery that the parents... more The Road brings together short stories, journalism, essays, and letters by Vasily Grossman, the author of Life and Fate, providing new insight into the life and work of this extraordinary writer. The stories range from Grossman’s first success, “In the Town of Berdichev,” a piercing reckoning with the cost of war, to such haunting later works as “Mama,” based on the life of a girl who was adopted at the height of the Great Terror by the head of the NKVD and packed off to an orphanage after her father’s downfall. The girl grows up struggling with the discovery that the parents she cherishes in memory are part of a collective nightmare that everyone else wants to forget. The Road also includes the complete text of Grossman’s harrowing report from Treblinka, one of the first anatomies of the workings of a death camp; “The Sistine Madonna,” a reflection on art and atrocity; as well as two heartbreaking letters that Grossman wrote to his mother after her death at the hands of the Nazis and carried with him for the rest of his life.
Meticulously edited and presented by Robert Chandler, The Road allows us to see one of the great figures of twentieth-century literature discovering his calling both as a writer and as a man. less Robert ChandlerThe Road is a collection of ‘late stories’ written after the confiscation of Life and Fate and these are wonderful stories. (Source)
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4
Countess Edith Sollohub, born Edith Natalie de Martens, was well known in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg for accompanying her husband Alexander on shooting and riding trips and for being outstandingly accurate with her gun. She was the daughter of a high-ranking Russian diplomat, and the mother of three young sons, destined to join the social and intellectual elite of imperial Russia. The Revolution of 1917 changed the course of these lives. By December 1918 her husband was dead, her children separated from her by the closing of the frontiers, and her own life was in danger. This is her... more Countess Edith Sollohub, born Edith Natalie de Martens, was well known in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg for accompanying her husband Alexander on shooting and riding trips and for being outstandingly accurate with her gun. She was the daughter of a high-ranking Russian diplomat, and the mother of three young sons, destined to join the social and intellectual elite of imperial Russia. The Revolution of 1917 changed the course of these lives. By December 1918 her husband was dead, her children separated from her by the closing of the frontiers, and her own life was in danger. This is her account of how she faced these traumatic events, revealing the courage and determination she had shown in earlier times that helped her endure hunger, imprisonment, and loneliness. Her reunion with her sons in 1921 makes the months of danger and deprivation worthwhile. Illustrated with original family photographs this account will interest the serious academic and general reader alike. less Robert ChandlerThis is a book by the mother of my Russian teacher at Winchester, who was a very small boy indeed when he left Russia – I think about two years old. What struck me most of all is the last third or so of the book, which is the years from the 1917 revolution until she finally managed to escape the country. She becomes this extraordinarily resourceful woman with a remarkable gift for saying the... (Source)
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5
Andrey Platonov, Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Olga Meerson | 3.93
In Andrey Platonov’s The Foundation Pit, a team of workers has been given the job of digging the foundation of an immense edifice, a palatial home for the perfect future that, they are convinced, is at hand. But the harder the team works, the deeper they dig, the more things go wrong, and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation, but an immense grave.
The Foundation Pit is Platonov’s most overtly political book, written in direct response to the staggering brutalities of Stalin’s collectivization of Russian agriculture. It is also a literary... more In Andrey Platonov’s The Foundation Pit, a team of workers has been given the job of digging the foundation of an immense edifice, a palatial home for the perfect future that, they are convinced, is at hand. But the harder the team works, the deeper they dig, the more things go wrong, and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation, but an immense grave.
The Foundation Pit is Platonov’s most overtly political book, written in direct response to the staggering brutalities of Stalin’s collectivization of Russian agriculture. It is also a literary masterpiece. Seeking to evoke unspeakable realities, Platonov deforms and transforms language in pages that echo both with the alienating doublespeak of power and the stark simplicity of prayer.
This English translation is the first and only one to be based on the definitive edition published by Pushkin House in Moscow. It includes extensive notes and, in an appendix, several striking passages deleted by Platonov. Robert Chandler and Olga Meerson’s afterword discusses the historical context and style of Platonov’s most haunted and troubling work. less Robert ChandlerPlatonov I first encountered when I spent a year in Voronezh in the early 70s. I was on an exchange scholarship there and I had never heard of Platonov but it happens to be the city where he was born and somebody brought me a Soviet published collection of his work. About half his work was published in Soviet times. So, this made an immediate impression on me and I recognised it was something... (Source)
Joshua CohenPlatonov’s novel concerns the destruction of a Russian village or town and the digging of a foundation pit for a vast communist housing-block that the reader slowly realises will be the size of, or just will be, the world. (Source)
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