Memoirs of 1984 [Paperback]

Yuri Tarnopolsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 1993

Tarnopolsky recounts his year in a Siberian labor camp, and offers his interpretation of the fall of the Soviet Empire and the future Russian crossroads.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Ukrainian-born Jewish chemist, Tarnopolsky became an activist after his request to emigrate was refused; he spent three years in a Soviet labor camp before being allowed to come to the U. S. in 1987. His meandering "collection of reminiscences," written in simple, direct English, tells a worthy story about dissidence and the sickness of Soviet society but doesn't offer much new to a growing literature. Born in 1936, the author traces his skepticism of the Soviet system to Khrushchev's de-Stalinization speech of 1956, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and his surveillance by the KGB beginning in 1976. Most interesting is Tarnopolosky's invocation of his scientific training: facing the insanities of interrogation, he sees his responses as a "little experiment"; he finally embraces Judaism through rationalism. He offers some intriguing intellectual history: 19th-century Russian dissident Alexander Herzen inspired his critical attitude toward society. Life in a labor camp, the author notes mordantly, is "a natural continuation of Soviet life." Nancy Rosenfeld, whose book Unfinished Journey (Paperback Forecasts, Sept. 20) also concerns Tarnopolsky's path to emigration, contributes an afterword.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Tarnopolsky, a research chemist and poet in Kharkov, Ukraine, first applied to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1979, at a time when permission was given fairly easily. But before his request was fully processed, the government policy changed and he was refused (as were many others). Thus began his eight years in limbo as a refuse nik. Rather than accept quietly, Tarnopolsky crusaded so actively for the right of free emigration that he was eventually convicted of defaming the Soviet system and spent three years (1983-86) in a Siberian labor camp. His memoir of that time is largely an interior monolog as he seeks to understand his situation, test his control of his environment, and play mind-games with his guards. Rosenfeld was a suburban Chicago housewife who became increasingly active in Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry (CASJ), seeking the emigration of all Soviet Jews and leading the U.S. campaign to win the release of Tarnopolsky. Here she describes in great detail the media campaign conducted by CASJ, to which she gives full credit for Tarnopolsky's eventual release. Her increasingly all-consuming obsession with the project caused her to ignore the rest of her life, and she fell into a serious depression when the project ended successfully and left her with nothing further to do. These two accounts are so totally different that it is jarring to realize that they describe essentially the same events. They add little to the profuse literature already available on the subject.
- Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: University Press Of America (August 24, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819191981
• ISBN-13: 978-0819191984
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,863,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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4.0 out of 5 stars Behind barbed wire, behind the iron curtain, August 31, 2000

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guitar_buyer "guitar_buyer" (Queens, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Memoirs of 1984 (Paperback)

Tarnopolsky delivers a haunting tale of human rights in the Soviet Union. The story focuses on the author's imprisonment and battle with the Soviet government to grant him emigration from the USSR. The first-person narrative focuses with chilling detail on describing the author's experience in the Soviet Labor Camps. However, Tarnopolsky constantly shifts from the first-person-narrative to philosophical drivel on the nature of man that sometimes seems like he's using up space.