Customer Reviews

Imperium

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I've read this book several time since I first chanced across it in the library several years ago. Kapuscinski's vision is unique since it is essentially unclouded by idealogical or political bias. His outlook is more cultural than political and he breaks apart the image (so prevalent in the U.S.) of the Russia is/was a monolithic and homogenous bastion of Marxism.The truth (not surprisingly) is much more complicated than that.

Imperium reads like a travelogue across the sweeping expanse of that was once collectively called the U.S.S.R. Kapuscinski shows that the "republic" was never more than a far-flung and disparate collection of principalities yoked by violence to form a unified front. Underneath this exterior he reveals the ethnic, cultural, and religious tensions that have always threatened to rend the region apart, and now seem destined to set the various factions against one-another.

All of this underscores the fact that Kapuscinski is one of the great writers of our time (although, regretably, his output is pretty limited). His writing transcends genre and is timeless and well crafted enough to draw the reader in no matter what the subject matter. Because he seems to have little to prove his vision is less self-conscious, less affected, and more mature than the most of the batch of current fiction writers.

Read this book. Read it for the history. Read it for the story-telling. Or read it for the power and grace of its language. Any way you read it, you'll be better for it...

I consider myself a lifelong student of Russia and the former Soviet Union, having read and studied a huge number of books and reports on the subject. But Ryszard Kapuscinski's Imperium is superior to everything else I have read and imagined. He is a keen observer and a superb writer; he has traveled to cities and regions where even the most hardened Russian reporters didn't go. His prose is gripping and the translation is excellent. Reading this book is a rare pleasure. I recommend it very highly to all those who want to understand what Russia is and why the Russians are the way they are. They are very different from the rest of the world and Kapuscinski unravels the mystery better than any body else. Having studied Eastern Europe for more than 50 years I can say this with a great deal of confidence.

Ryszard Kapuscinski is a guru to many people in Poland, and his books were always received with unending awe - because he traveled, when hardly anybody else could o anywhere apart from other countries of the Communist bloc, and moreover - he could write about what he saw... I still marvel how he managed to write so many things, which were in principle against the system, and still get published, but it is another question (Polish censorship was maybe not that tight or not that clever, or - most likely - clever enough to allow the chosen one his writing in the name of relative peace???).

"Imperium" is one of my favorites among Kapuscinski's books (NB. I have read the original, so have no idea about the translation, but after reading some earlier reviews I think it must be good too). I have been driven to the mystery of Russia and its acquisitions as well as to the phenomenon of Soviet Union for a long time, and here Kapuscinski gives a lot on these subjects in a concise form.

The book is divided into several parts, starting with the author's earliest memories of Soviet Union, when he was a schoolboy of what is now Belarus, and with his surprisingly acute observations (reminding me of my own, never put into words, forty years later, when everything was already much more relieved, but still the school was mysteriously insane). Then we go through Siberia on the Transsiberian train (still a cult trip for many students in Poland, albeit it must be very different now), and proceed to the other republics of the Soviet Union.

Kapuscinski traveled as a journalist, but always he managed to get something private out of each visit, which had to have an official program and probably nothing more was permitted. He talked to people in the forgotten corners of the Imperium and in the representative places, watched them, saw the ancient rituals and old habits under (and clashing with) the overwhelming, transplanted Russian culture, and wrote about it, preserving the memories and triggering in several generations the urge to see it with their own eyes, managing to capture the atmosphere of each place he got to... He evokes the image of "Homo Sovieticus", at the same time wondering about Russian soul.

The book is full of literary allusions and connections and contains a rich bibliography at the end, which is also recommended. "Imperium", as Kapuscinski warns at the beginning, is a collection of observations and his thoughts, as deep as they can be in this form, but because the subject is vast, everything is treated personally and rather as an encouragement to inflame greater interest, and then more monographic works come in handy (e. g. reading in "Imperium" about the North led me to excellent books by Mariusz Wilk, a longtime resident of Solovki).

I heartily recommend this book - it cannot disappoint!

My grandparents left the territory of what would become the Soviet Union long before the 1917 Revolution. They came to America and I thank God they did. Whenever I read about the USSR, I always realize that only a couple of small decisions saved me from being born there, or more probably, saved me from being wiped out there, since I was born during World War II. Fate has a way of creating circles, though, and I've wound up teaching English to people from my grandparents' homeland. It's curious. Many of them are ethnically exactly the same as I am, but it is always obvious that there is a huge cultural gap. OK, they didn't grow up in America. I have never set foot in any part of the former USSR. I have spent the last 14 years peering into their pasts, constantly wondering why they are predisposed to think this way, act that way. I have thought long and hard about the issue, discussed it with many of my students, read their stories, listened to many more. A book like IMPERIUM goes a long way towards helping me understand that difference between me, "the one that got away" and them, "the ones that didn't".

Back in 1988, in a single week, I read three of Kapuscinski's books in a mad dash of fascination. I'd already spent over six years living in various Third World countries and his writing on Iran, Ethiopia and Angola captured something that no one else came close to, especially because he never sneered, he never condescended. No racist platitudes, no grandstanding for a Western audience for Kapuscinski. IMPERIUM, the description of his travels around the Soviet Union in 1958, 1967, 1989-90 and in 1992-93, continues in his own tradition of inserting himself into the most desperate of situations, visiting places where the most extreme sorts of human behavior have taken or are taking place. I feel that at times he does exaggerate certain events, certain facts may be forgotten or left out. (Plus, if you can't read Polish transcriptions, the names will all look strange to you.) No matter. He arrives at a picture that rings with authenticity; he is able to persuade you that you understand what is happening. (Or that nobody can understand what is happening.) This author can somehow portray the stupidity, the bestiality, bravery, and unconquerable human spirit that suffuses every event in our unhappy human history. He does it with a sense of immediacy, crossing every cultural and racial boundary as if it didn't exist. (Do they really exist ? Much less than most people think, I would say.) He visits the frozen horrors of the gulag archipelago, now fallen silent, crumbling into the permafrost. He describes the petty nationalist hatreds that increasingly suffused Soviet life to the end, the economic disaster, the environmental destruction, the brutality of a government that deliberately let ten million people starve to death, the lack of organizational knowhow, a dispirited despair. It is all a dark picture of a country that devoured so many of its own, shot itself in the foot so many times. He did come up with numerous insights that helped me to understand my own past or, as it were, my own non-past. No delving into party history, statistics, or laws and decrees; he cuts straight to the heart of the matter. If you need a single book that will describe the atmosphere in the former USSR, that will help you understand what happened to people there, choose this one.

Think of Dante's ability to create entire worlds. Think of Dante's skill at capturing the largest of themes and extracting their essences. Kapuscinski's Imperium is indescribably more than memoir, travel stories, or USSR history. If you relish writing of the highest caliber, read this book. You will be rewarded on every page. Along the way you will also come to know the world that existed behind an Iron Curtain for most of the last century. This is the work of an accomplished master who has distilled 54 years of observations and 360,000 miles of travels into wisdom, insight, and poetry. I certainly wish that more than 5 stars could be awarded.

Obligatory lecture to anybody, not just Russia fans or haters. Facts, observations, descriptions and information - everything that is so vital in reporters' style presented with skill and fluency.

At first I have to say, that I really haven't read that book in english, so I don't know the english translation, only the original version of the book. I LOVED IT. I have always been intrested in history and I have always loved "fact literature", and this book is a comprehensive and colorful, tragic story of a tragic country. It turns us inside-out. We can hardly stop reading. And all the time we have a chance to admire Ryszard Kapuscinski's specific, beutiful and simple in it's structure - style. We see a picture of a country of misery.Country of pain and blood. But not only. Through the author's eyes, we watch the people,see their emotins, their life, their faith and power.Ryszard Kapuscinski,unequalled for many world's great journalist,master of reportage has written a beautiful book, which made me a huge fan of him. Imperium - especially recommended.

I can add little to earlier reviews other than to comment that Kapuscinski takes a refreshingly unique angle in trying to make sense of USSR/Russia. He was obviously touched by visits to the Caucausian region and these are the most emotional chapters of the book. Don't expect a travel book. Kapuscinski approaches the book from a human perspective rather than from a structural/physical geographic angle. In that respect its a book about people and their daily lives within a specific regime that so obviously turned sour from its early existence. A great book. The only way to do it justice is to read it.

As per usual, Kapusinski is insightful, witty, and incredibly well versed on his topic. I found Imperium to be one of his best, and was immediatly pulled in by the beginning chapters about his childhood in wartime Poland. Kapusinski's extensive travel in the region allows for insigtful commentary, ripe with interesting facts and blunt commentary. Overall I found Imperium extremely enjoyable, and after reading 2 of his books have already bought a third. Kapusinski is truly on of the great travel writers/commentators of our time.

IMPERIUM by Ryszard Kapuscinski This is one of the most important books of the century, ranking with ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE in its intensity and ability to leave an impression. It deals with the author's experiences in travelling throughout the vast stretches of the crumbling soviet empire "Imperium" during the last days of its existence. He notices the things that only a Pole in his perverse and observant way does. He has a dry and unique style and thanks to the brilliant translation into English, his nuances come through shining and memorable. He saw the sham of communism and saw it for what it was, he exposed the nonsense of the barbed wire, the stupid logic of keeping the borders fenced in, the enslavement and imprisonment of millions. Kapuscinski is someone who directly endured the rule of the system and in his chosen profession of journalist, which presented its own problems. This is not some outsider, but someone writing from the heart, but at the same time distancing himself from it and gleaning the essentials in order to preserve forever and for all the incredible. That it is thus so seemingly simply written is an illusion. Each page can be re-read many times because it is so concentrated and filled with wondrous tales of hazardous and eventful trips to Armenia, Siberia, the Aral Sea and the desperate outer fringes of this vast land. Many incredible people were encountered along the way, one feels, that many were like him, enduring the sternness of a system designed to enslave and persist with a lie. Most endured with a wryness and a pragmatic approach of existence, taking each day as it came. That this system has ended for ever, please God willing, is in large part thanks to people like the author, whose good sense has been to record the incredible truth. IMPERIUM is a continuation of telling the truth that started in other equally bizarre stories like his EMPEROR, about Hailie Salassie, and SHAH OF SHAHS, about the Shah of Iran. Slim volumes all, but so, so evocative and lingering in the mind for years. Who can forget the official door-opener, or the cushion-bearer who travelled the world carrying an assortment of cushions and pillows to raise his height-disadvantaged imperial employer to match the chairs he encountered everywhere, whether in the White House or Buckingham Palace ? Good triumphs over evil, it always will. But it takes a long, long time and much pain. How many more years must the poor Armenians endure their plight? Who speaks for them ? Who speaks for the countless millions murdered and broken by decades of communism ? Kapuscinski is one. There are not many others. IMPERIUM is one of those books you should read. It's an incredible book that stays in the mind. Once you read it you'll be glad you did and you'll want to recommend it to everyone you meet. George Wallner Jakarta Indonesia