Customer Reviews

Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is about author Andrew Meier's experiences in Russia, where he lived for most of the 1990s. He details much of what he saw of the rise and fall of Yeltsin and the advent of Putin and the events of their rule, including the privatization of many Soviet industries ("an industrial fire sale" of epic proportions), the conflict in Chechnya (the worst fighting in Russia since Stalingrad), and the decline in social and economic well-being of many Russians.

Meier spends a good-sized portion of the book on the subject of Moscow, with its "wretched masses and gluttonous elite," a city that remains the heart of Russia, home of over ten million people, one that grew famous after the collapse of the Soviet Union for its boisterous night clubs and its nearly uncontrolled free market. At least some of the city's character derives from Mayor Yuri Luzkhov, who perhaps has influenced the city in its post-Soviet decade more than any other. Adored by Muscovites - who reelected him in 1996 with 90% of the vote - he has become noted for restoring many of the city's pre-Soviet symbols, such as rebuilding the Resurrection Gate to Red Square.

Much of Moscow and indeed Russian politics has been dominated by the self-styled oligarchs, the new millionaires and billionaires such as Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Vladimir Potanin who arose during the "Great Gab" of the Yeltsin years, grabbing a share of the division of post-Soviet spoils and often growing preposterously rich. Their story is not all rosy however, as many have links to organized crime, and they and Russians everywhere were hit hard by the August 1998 stock market crash and a number of scandals which came to public attention such as the Mabetex scandal and the Bank of New York affair, some involving the highest levels of government.

In contrast to the oligarchs, Meier showed that many Russians were not as well off. Some longed for the days of the Soviet Union, when they felt things were better. A third of households lie below the poverty line, and HIV and drug addiction are a growing epidemic in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and elsewhere. Crime he writes is particularly rampant in St. Petersburg, where assassinations of rival politicians and industrialists are not unknown.

The most interesting section was the one on Chechnya. Located a thousand miles south of Moscow between the Black and Caspian Seas, this Connecticut-sized area of 6,000 square miles is one of the so-called small nations that lie within Russia's borders, once romanticized by Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Mikhail Lermontov in military epics starring "swarthy mountaineers with bejeweled daggers and mysterious black-eyed" women. He chronicled the war in Chechnya - really two wars - the first war began on New Year's Eve 1994 and ended on August 6, 1996, launched to quell a nationalist uprising and in which as many as 100,000 died. The peace that followed brought little more than poverty, banditry, a kidnapping trade, and some local attempts to impose Shari'a law. War with Moscow became inevitable again though when in 1999 two of the most famous fighters of the war - Shamil Basayev and the Saudi mercenary Khattab a.k.a The Black Arab - launched raids into the mostly Muslim neighboring republic of Dagestan (firmly within Russian borders) and a series of massive bombings in August and September of that year killed nearly 300 people in Moscow and elsewhere. Though there were some doubts about a Chechen link to the bombings, the nation united behind what is sometimes called Putin's War, as over a hundred thousand Russian soldiers descended upon Chechnya in September of 1999.

At great risk to himself - unescorted and unapproved journalists in Chechnya were forbidden and kidnapping is a common local occupation - Meier toured Chechnya. Meier wrote of the zachistka, Russian for a "little cleanup" or a mopping up operation, a routine of the operations during Putin's War, which generally meant a house-to-house search for members of the Chechen opposition, though some have compared them to Stalin's purges, the chiski. Sometimes these operations resulted in civilian deaths, such as occurred in the village of Aldy on February 5, 2000, recognized (eventually) by even the Russian government as a war crime, when civilians were slaughtered and people were summarily executed.

The author saw some of Siberia, flying to the city of Krasnoyarsk and boarding a steamer, sailing 1300 miles up the Yenisei, Russia's second largest river, to the mining town of Norilsk, north of the Arctic Circle. Built of the Gulag he writes, it was the stereotypical Soviet industrial city built over the bones of prisoners used as slave labor, a city ordered by Stalin to exist in one of the world's harshest climates, founded to exploit a vast mineral wealth. Though still producing most of Russia's nickel, platinum, copper, and palladium, the need for workers had decreased in the city. Sadly though many of those who live there - descendents of the original zeks or prisoners (if not former zeks themselves) - have become institutionalized, having no where else in Russia to go to.

Meier also visited Vladivostok and the surrounding region and the island of Sakhalin, the subject of much of Chekhov's writings, which well before the Soviets and Stalin was a distant destination for prisoners, as well as. A rugged region often quite isolated from Moscow, long a haven from Tsarist rule and a last holdout for White partisans during the Civil War, here the locals have long been used to self-reliance. Although the region - particularly Sakhalin - is rich in timber, fur, salmon, and offshore petroleum, development (at least to the benefit of the locals) has been stymied by what some refer to as the three Russian diseases; greed, corruption, and bureaucracy. Attempts at foreign investment in the area have been complicated if not thwarted by organized crime and corrupt politicians.

This 450 page book is too massive to adequately summarize here; excellent coverage of Russia since the Fall, with copious end notes and an exhaustive bibliography.

The world had so much hope when the Soviet Union fell. We all waited for the emergence of a great new democracy. Instead, the ugly reality was the rise of the oligarchs and the Russian Mafia, the bitter, bloody wars along ethnic lines, the corruption and injustice. Meier describes all this at a human level: Stories of dispossessed Chechen villagers, gulag survivors, oil workers in Sakhalin, victims of Petrograd's gangsters. What's happening in Russia is far worse than we imagined.

He writes as an insider, a participant in the Russian way of life, able to move through cultural, political and administrative obstacles to reach the powerful, the formerly powerful, the disinherited, the downtrodden, the rebels, the survivors. He brings us their words, ringing of truth, because no one ever could invent their stories: The massacres of villagers in a pointless war no one wants, The environmental disasters of the extraction industries, The assassination of democratic leaders by gangsters protecting their turf, abetted by the government. These tales provoke outrage.

Offsetting the dreary facts, Meier's writing draws the reader on: Deft characterizations of the people he meets, evocative descriptions of places, insightful historical contexts. Russia's despair is disheartening; Meier's prose is beautiful.

Moreover, the people we meet have vitality and intelligence. They cope within their system, struggle to keep evil at bay and work to improve their lives. The system is rotten; the people are inspiring. They are the hope of Russia.

Black Earth is an informative look at a great country as it struggles to undo the damage of 80 years of Communism. Highly recommended.

I read this book while I was on vacation in Russia and the Ukraine. I thought it was quite good, although I thought the section on Chechnya rambled slightly.

As far as this book being an example of too much bad news, my response is this is Russia, for God's sake. There is no shortage of bad news there. How could you write an upbeat book about Chechnya, the history of the Gulag, Sakhalin Island (the section about that actually does have some "good" news), or the mafia state that has emerged in post-Soviet Russia?

Face it. You can't. As for this book's merits, all I can say is that reading it made me far more informed about current affairs in Russia (something my Russia tour guides remarked about frequently).

If you want "cheerful," don't read books about countries with these kinds of problems.

This book is a wonderful description of Russia's more remote areas. The author has an obvious talent for drawing people out and getting them to tell their stories. Unfortunately the book doesn't ring true as a complete survey of the modern Russian experience. The author is obviously a journalist, pushing himself toward the extremes, trying to find the story. He fails to mention that in the less remote areas of Russia there are much more pleasant places and happier people. Its incompleteness aside, this book really is a well written and fascinating book about places that most of us will never see.

Andrew Meier spent much of the past decade in Russia, and is as familiar as any Western writer with the goings on in that tragic land. In "Black Earth," Meier follows the tradition of the best travel writers, journeying beyond Moscow for a first hand account of the country itself. His travels take him to Chechnya, Norilsk, Sakahlin Island and St. Petersburg. In each place he documents what he sees and what has gone wrong as Russia attempts to awake from its Soviet nightmare.

"Black Earth" is, perhaps, best thought of as a follow up to writer David Remnick's twin classics "Lennin's Tomb" and Resurrection," which covered Russian life in the first half of the 1990s. Meier paints with broad rhetorical strokes, weaving in elements of history, literature and statistics with his observations. Though a bit long winded at times, "Black Earth" is vital reading for anyone interested in modern Russia.

BLACK EARTH is captivating. In no small way, this book opens your chest and reaches deep into your heart. With passages reminiscent of John McPhee and even Steinbeck where writers' passions nearly cause the subjects to jump off the page - Meier lyrically weaves stories of both journalist and witness. The result is a tribute to the people who walk the land which is Russia today.

Meier is on an extraordinary adventure which he shares unselfishly with the reader. Undaunted by the scale of the landscape, his book maps a living portrait of today's revolution of the Russian society with remarkable stories underscored by poignant photographs to bring it home.

Whether read cover to cover or story to story, BLACK EARTH reads true.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has famously descended into organized crime and anarchy. Here, Andrew Meier travels to both well-covered and forgotten locations around the vast country to find how bad things have gotten, for Russian officials and regular people. Meier's travels begin in Moscow with a good outsider's view of the capital's twisted politics and uncontrolled mafia capitalism. Next is a trip to Chechnya, where war still rages despite the West's disinterest. Here Meier includes coverage of a massacre of civilians by the Russian military in the village of Aldy, and the nearly hopeless efforts of residents to find justice. Meier then travels to the far northern Siberian city of Norilsk, which has no reason to exist except for the extraction of minerals, performed by prison camp labor in the Stalin years; then the island of Sakhalin in the far east, where Moscow's grip has always been weak, leading to unique types of individualism and anarchy. Finally Meier reaches melancholy St. Petersburg, where a hoped-for renaissance of enlightenment and culture has failed under mob lawlessness and government corruption.

These travels bring out some useful big-picture conclusions about the fate of Russia and its people. A history of prison camps and slave labor have resulted in a widespread disregard for personal rights, today's control of the economy by oligarchs and kingpins is merely a new form of feudalism, and Chechnya is just a microcosm of the ethnic separatism that could engulf vast regions of Russia. Best of all, Meier implies that Russia has gone through many revolutionary leaps in social order during its history - feudalism to monarchy to totalitarianism to capitalism - and all of these leaps failed to bring about the expected Russian golden age. Most of all, Russia continues to feel all the horrors of its past, regardless of efforts to glorify or suppress past atrocities and failures. The only problem with this book is a long, slow, and meandering writing style that could really use an editor. Meier veers off into many over-descriptions and unfocused coverage of human stories and political trends, while his sometimes lofty attempts at political philosophy don't always come to believable conclusions. [~doomsdayer520~]

Brave, well-informed, empathetic are words I use to describe this author and yet he himself is almost invisible. One can sense his empathy for all those he meets -- even those he doesn't like very much. He draws no conclusions; he draws only the picture of life in Russia as it is and as it reels from the impact of 80 years of over-regulation and under-governance. And the only hope he offers is the innate strong character of Russian people that has allowed them to survive these many centuries.

Don't read this book unless you are prepared to be moved to prayer for them.

Passionately written, this intricately woven tale of Russia --from the war zone of Chechnya to the gulags of Norilsk and beyond, to the Far East and to inside the psyche of political crime in Petersburg --Meier brought Russia together for me in a way never before imaginable. I couldn't recommend this book more -- whether you are taking a trip there or working there, (as I have often over the past decade), or simply just interested in Russia and her fate. I found Meier's unique technique of weaving the narrative a beautiful echo of the nuances of the country at large. I loved this book.. Enjoy!

Meier writes about the transition pains that Russians have and are experiencing as he travels there from 1995 to 2002. From Chechnya to Sakhalin to Norlisk, Petersburg and Moscow, Meier meets with ordinary and not so ordinary Russians to get a sense of their new post-soviet existence. His knowledge of Russian history and literature makes the book even more interesting as he commonly draws from the past and literature to explain the Russian character. This is by far one of the best accounts on contemporary Russia, a travelogue that gives the reader a real sense of not only what it means to live in Russia today but a good sense of where Russia is headed.