Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer [Paperback]

Andrei Makine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2001

Confessions Of A Fallen Standard-Bearer by Makine, Andrei

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"It was all so simple. Crystal clear... " begins this chronicle of the ebb in the fortunes of Marxist true believers. However, life in post-WWII Russia, where Makine's slim, impressionistic novel is set, is anything but simple or crystal clear. The story revolves around the families of two soldiers, Yakov Zinger and Pyotr Yevdokimov. Both are disabled and aging now, the butt of jokes with their endless recounting of the horrors and triumphs of the war as seen through Russian eyes. The narrator, Yevdokimov's unnamed son and a future writer, tells of his childhood in a town near Leningrad where a Young Pioneer spirit flares up out of the ashes of WWII. Loitering near the mysteriously dark water-filled "Pit," and the "Gap," an apex of the triangular courtyard where the locals reminisce and play dominoes, the narrator listens to his elders' war stories, about Byelorussia, American GIs, the German-Polish border. At first, he and his friends are bursting with enthusiasm to launch "the age of radiant years" globally, bringing Britain and "the Soviet Socialist Republic of America" into the Communist fold. But obsessed by the threat of atomic war and disturbed by murmurings about Stalin's rampages, community rage prompts first a vicious assault on the bones of German soldiers and then the definitive break-up of the domino game. The narrator says good-bye to his best friend (who he will never see again) and heads off to the Suronov military academy. This is an early work of Makine's, written before Dreams of My Russian Summers and published in France in 1992. In the genre of confessional novel, it is at once a reconstruction of a certain postwar Russian milieu and a bittersweet paean to the Communist past; above all, it's a passionate ode to political dreaming even as the perceived oppressor changes. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Growing up in the post-Stalin era of the Soviet Union would seem a grim existence, but if that's the only life one knows, one is ready to fight for it. The youth of this period are thought by their country to be the "pioneers," ready to forge onward to the promise of a joyous future, one worth fighting for, one earned by the toil of workers. The pioneers, however, do not see the workers they know to be the same as the notion of "workers" that the state embraces. Meanwhile, the fathers of the two pioneers featured in this story served together in World War II; one of them has lost his legs and relies on the other for everything. After the war, these families support each other through Stalin, and through the resulting bureaucracy, fear, bitter poverty, and wantonness. Makine has won prestigious literary prizes in Europe, and the translation of this work is most welcome. This moving novel tells of the longing and devastation that happen when both dreams and realities come crashing down. Michael Spinella
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (August 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142000019
• ISBN-13: 978-0142000014
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,656,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful book., September 6, 2000

By 

Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer (Hardcover)

Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer is a beautiful book. The story involves two families, that of Yakov Zinger and Pyotr Yevdokimov. The story is told in the form of a memoir of their youth written by Pyotr's son Alyosha to Yakov's son Arkady. The story unfolds slowly.

On the surface the memoirs invoke memories of the children's summers in their village. They were young pioneers filled (apparently) with a belief in the inevitable victory of socialism. As the name of this novel implies they were the standard-bearers of socialist youth marching towards the `radiant horizon'. However, flowing beneath the beautiful words evoking their idyllic summers is the undertone of tragedy that envelops each of the families' pasts. Those tragedies are slowly and inexorably revealed. Pyotr, a sniper operating behind German lines during the Second World War lost both limbs at the hands of an "unfortunate artillery mistake' by his own troops. Yakov survived a German prison camp in Poland by surrounding himself with a mountain of dead and frozen bodies. Their wives tragic pasts are also slowly revealed. One survived the siege of Leningrad and witnessed unspeakable horrors in the process. The other lost her parents to Stalin's purges and spent her youth in an orphanage for children of those purges.

As these stories are revealed the boys' otherwise inexplicable actions leading up to their confrontation with their Pioneer group leaders becomes slightly more understandable. I cannot convey the beauty of this book in adequate terms. Its power lies in the contrast between the beauty and power of Makine's writing about village life through the eyes of innocent children and the stark but unexpressed horror that percolates through the lives of these two families. This unstated horror serves as the thematic counterpoint to the rather unremarkable events that form the core of the narrative. This was a book worth reading.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book worth reading, August 11, 2001

By 

J.F.L.-Fairfax VA "j_f_ligaya" (Annandale, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer (Hardcover)

Andre Makine, who fled the Soviet Union in 1987 when he was thirty has been compared to Nabokov, Pasternak, and Proust. The author is a gifted story-teller with "Confessions" filled with skillfully-woven vignettes that provide a bitter-sweet view of Russian life. The book revolves around two friends and virtual brothers, Arkady and Alyosha, young pioneers in Stalin's postwar world. "Confessions" tells of the lives of their two families, those of Yakov Zinger - Arkady's father, and Pyotr Yevdokimov, father to Alyosha. There is adventure in Pyotr's skill as a sniper behind German lines in World War II, horror in the story of Svetlana, the "merry spinster" amidst survival during the Siege. There are magical scenes of Russian life and a most enjoyable vignette that revolved around the arrival of propaganda cinema presenting "The Threat of Atomic War", tirades against the "filthy American swine" and the bombing of Hiroshima and the exhortation from Russian authorities to build shelters. There is humor with Arkady on the drums and Alyosha on the trumpet bleating their protest against the apparitchik visitors from the Party but more singing out in the name of their Courtyard of families and friends, singing "in the name of the silence of our mothers". Alyosha is a fallen standard-bearer. Makine structures the book with Alyosha as narrator addressing his remembrances of their families' lives to his friend. In the end, Makine imparts a heaviness of heart with disillusionment with the Soviet dreams of Great Victory and a feeling of emptiness that the West (neither of Paris, nor of the States) has not been able to fill.