Customer Reviews

A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"I think of my mother, the one in the portrait her brother painted before he died (in the Great Patriotic War) ... But what is it that wiped the smile off her face and dimmed the luster in her eyes? Was it the war, the wayward husbands, the two dead brothers? Or did it happen later, when my father got sick and needed a hospital and they refused to admit him? My mother knocked on the door of every party boss in Leningrad, until finally one issued an order to let him in for one week. A special ukaz ..." - Elena Gorokhova

"I think of the dream I had about (my father) when I was eight, in which he sat in his rowboat and spoke about theater, about the audience holding their breath and growing silent the moment before the curtain is about to go up. The anticipation of magic, he called it, the expectation of illusion. The moment when the noise stops. The moment when you're no longer ordinary." - Elena Gorokhova

Elena Gorokhova was born in 1955 in Leningrad (before and after the Soviet era, St. Petersburg) of a physician mother and her third husband, a Communist Party apparatchik. At twenty-four, Elena immigrated to the United States. In 2008, she wrote A MOUNTAIN OF CRUMBS, an account of her life from age five to her emigration from the Motherland.

Skipping through the years of her life in Leningrad a year or two at a time, Gorokhova's chronicle includes such experiences more or less unique to a Soviet (as opposed to an American) citizen: her induction into the Young Pioneers, hunting for mushrooms in the forest, lengthy store queues for basic foodstuffs, serving as a Leningrad tour guide, restrictions against unsanctioned contact with foreigners, vacationing with peers on the Crimean seashore, and teaching Russian to American exchange students at Leningrad University. But her narrative also includes activities that transcend borders, politics and cultures - activities familiar to those, such as myself, who grew up in the United States of the 50s, 60s and 70s: classroom drop and cover drills in anticipation of a Cold War nuclear blast, the dreaded childhood appointment with the dentist, a visit to the grandparents' rural homestead, the confused and frustrated curiosity about sex, the adolescent schoolyard crush, the first job, parental opposition to one's chosen career, the tyranny of low-level bureaucrats, and the petty spitefulness of co-workers.

For the Western reader, Elena's winning story provides a window on urban life in the European half of America's and Britain's most formidable Cold War adversary. Gorokhova's memoir should remind us of the basic commonality of the human experience regardless of ideological and political differences.

A MOUNTAIN OF CRUMBS has, however, two flaws that cause me to knock off a star. Elena became infatuated with the English language, and mastering it became her academic major. With such came a desire to at least visit, if not immigrate to, the West. Yet, nowhere in the book is the genesis of this relationship with English explained. One can only infer from the effect pending marriage to an American student had on her mental attitude and self-perceived place in Soviet society:

"I'm glad I'm marrying (Robert) because I like his foreignness. I like that he represents the forbidden and the unknown, that his nationality makes people gasp. I like that Robert has lifted me above the collective and now I can be the opposite of what we all are here, cynical and meek ... I like that I am no longer, as I was in (the) third grade, a yearning Pioneer vying for attention ... I think of my imminent marriage as a play with a punch-line ending that is going to stun the English Department of Leningrad University into near unconsciousness ... students will whisper in the hallways, voices tinged with respect and envy."

Disillusionment with life in the U.S.S.R, the rulers of which promised so much and delivered so little to nourish the inner spirit? Most certainly that.

Finally, Elena's subsequent life in the U.S. since 1979 rates only a three-page Epilogue. After so many years waiting for the curtain to rise, did she find magic and illusion in her new home? What was it like to wander an American supermarket and chain-bookstore with all their abundance for the first time? How did the reality of Western economic strata compare with strident Soviet claims? How did she react to the open and rambunctious U.S. political process? What was her first impression of American road traffic? She doesn't say. Perhaps the author is saving that part of the story for a sequel. I think she owes the reader an answer to those questions after such an engaging build-up.

Nyet huda bez dobra - There is no evil without good. Ms. Ghorokhova's memoir can be summed up in that single pithy line. But oh, what that summary would leave out! I loved reading A Mountain of Crumbs; though written by a non-native English speaker, she is so facile with the language, has such a perfect ear for the funny, or poetic, or heartbreaking turn of phrase - she had no trouble getting those words down. Her family, friends, and colleagues practically leap from the pages in startling clarity. Told with a true storyteller's sense of timing, the book was as engrossing and suspense-filled as any novel worth its salt, and all the more intriguing because it's a memoir of a time and place that is 360 degrees from the lives many (American) readers of the current generation live. Ms. Ghorokhova writes with somber precision and large compassion, capturing small details with which she paints the Big Picture. I would totally recommend this for high-schoolers as well as adult readers.

Of all personal accounts I've read recently, this is by far one of the best. In July 1979, the year the author emigrated, I visited the Soviet Union. That year, eight of my distant Leningrad cousins also emigrated, each allocated 200 kilos of possessions, 92 rubles and wedding rings, their only valuables. I can relate.

Gorokhova's poetic descriptions of Russian oppression reverberates mightily for me. I witnessed and sensed it first hand. In three weeks of visits to Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa and Leningrad, we met some family so frightened they refused to speak English on city streets and received us silently until they'd shuttered apartment windows and barricaded their doors. The atmosphere in Odessa and Kharkov were particularly harsh. Apartments were one, two or three rooms, at most, for even the largest multi-generational families.

We knew the feasts served to us either cost several months' wages (on the black market) or endless hours in lines --- unknowingly waiting for "something worth buying" at the end. Black market dealers approached us in quiet spots near Red Square, the Odessa steps, Kiev's monument of heroes and Leningrad's Nevsky Prospect. Lines, often two abreast, wound around corners or into the next block in every city. We waited ourselves a few times to experience what ordinary Russians suffered to buy most everything. The result was usually a hand of bananas, bag of oranges or toilet paper --- provided the items weren't sold out upon reaching the line's end. Department store shelves were virtually naked but for odd-sized or grotesquely colored underwear no one wanted or bought.

Readers who have not experienced all this may be all the more overwhelmed by the tight, neat impact of Gorokhova's games of vranyo --- pretending, which everyone involved pretends seriously to believe, while everyone knows that it's all pretend.

This was a major factor in Soviet life, populated even for veteran Communist party officials by inadequate health care (often resulting in needless death), inadequate homes, inadequate food, inadequate clothing, inadequate income --- and the complete absence of privacy, a foreign concept that Russians literally could not comprehend, much less determine how to appropriately translate into Russian.

Every experience --- from Gorokhova's kindergarten and grade school through her high school and university matriculation --- involved vranyo. But even her dealings with family members were largely draped by her innate recognition that nothing was right with the Soviet world view or life. Her questions as to why, or potential differences elsewhere, collected in a complete vacuum, closed off to external sources of information and any open discussion.

Alas, far too many Americans seem now enamored with socialist thinking. Indeed, one recent interlocutor described another as "an enemy of the people" just for disagreeing about the best potential resolution for a societal ill all present recognized as major. To my horror, the verbal assailant spoke without irony --- apparently unaware that such a charge during the Soviet era most often resulted in death by a firing squad, with no semblance of a fair trial.

By itself, Gorokhova's poetic language is enough to strongly recommend her book.

More importantly, however, the volume is an extraordinary reminder of the horrible costs to individuals and families in societies that lack U.S. Constitutional rights to freedom of expression and religion, property, private businesses and free and open commerce. Indeed, all high school global history teachers should immediately add this title to their reading lists --- to inform both students and their sometimes unconscionably ill-advised parents.

--- Alyssa A. Lappen

Elena Gorokhova's memoir, A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir, recalls her youth in the Soviet Union. Born in the 1950's, she ultimately left the country at age twenty-four to marry an American physicist and writer about a decade before the collapse of communism and the subsequent reversion of her native Leningrad to its original name of St. Petersburg.

Gorokhova's title is taken from the story of one of her uncles who, as a three-year-old boy in the 1920's, was too young to bear the food shortages without bawling at mealtimes unless his ration of black bread and sugar was crumbled into a little mountain for him; this small act gave him the illusion of having more food, and kept him busy longer putting one crumb into his mouth at a time. In a book filled with such reminisces, Gorokhova's mother also remembered her own Uncle Volya being hauled away by the NKVD for telling a well-known joke about a comrade who already had one book, so there was no need to gift him with a second. The unfortunate Volya was never heard from again, and the family later learned he had been shot.

Although Gorokhova's mother was a practical woman who had studied medicine, operated on wounded soldiers during World War II, and even successfully petitioned Stalin for assistance in setting up a delivery room for expectant mothers, Elena and her older sister favored the arts. Marina desired the stage and her talent earned her a place in the Moscow theater school, and Elena had a spark for languages and writing. Learning English at a special school and being allowed to guide English-speaking tourists around Leningrad as well as later teaching Russian to English speakers, brought her into contact with foreigners with greater frequency than most of her countrymen were allowed. Although Elena loved her country and a few of its young men who romanced her, she longed for the greater freedom outside the Communist Bloc. She did not want to live in a country where a certain game is played by everyone. As Elena explained, "The game is called VRANYO. My parents play it at work, and my older sister Marina plays it at school. We all pretend to do something and those who watch us pretend that they are seriously watching us and don't know we are only pretending." Conformity, at least in action if not in intention, was the watchword for Soviet citizens during the rather colorless years during which Elena Gorokhova gained adulthood. Even the annual trip to the dentist was an impersonal mass production with lines of chairs and whiny, rusty drills. She was determined to live somewhere she could more fully express herself, and that meant leaving the stagnant fatherland.

A MOUNTAIN OF CRUMBS tells the sometimes dreamy, sometimes stark, story of Gorokhova and her family with a decidedly Russian voice (accented too by the author's now nearly three-decade Americanization). The facts of life under communism permeate the pages. But mainly this memoir explores the flowering spirit of young Elena Gorokhova herself. She knew how to play the VRANYO game as well as those around her, but she didn't want to pretend. She wanted a freedom that the Soviet Union would not bestow.

I loved this book! I have a very good friend who was born in the former Soviet Union & emigrated to the U.S. as a child, so I was drawn to the subject matter, wanting a better understanding of his early upbringing. This memoir did not disappoint - far from it. Beautifully written and a compelling read, I devoured it within one 24-hour period, only putting it down to get some sleep overnight.

The author does a very admirable job sharing her innermost thoughts, dreams & fears while revealing a world that was so very different from the one I experienced while growing up in the U.S. The shortages, the struggles, the cynical "mind games" played with authority figures are all portrayed skillfully and poignantly. She has a genuine gift for storytelling and is an artful wordsmith - all the more impressive given that English is not her first language. This memoir read as well as the best of novels. Highly recommended - I hope Ms. Gorokhova writes another book, and soon!

I really liked the book A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova. She has a gift for telling her story. I was hooked on reading it to the end. She has a remarkable talent for remembering her childhood and putting it into a story which you want to read. From her days in Russia as a small girl to coming to America, you will be taken inside her life and see how it was.

I hope that Elena will write another book about her life in America.

An excellent and superbly written memoir of growing up on Soviet Union. Reminiscent of my own privileged childhood growing up in the Soviet occupied Latvia. It is like opening a window in someone's most personal and secret memories. Educational and an absolute joy to read!

Elena Gorokhova, the author, grew up in 1960's and 1970's in St. Petersburg, Russia under throes of communism. She was inducted into the Young Pioneers and indoctrinated to believe in the superiority of Russia and communism. The West was deemed to be corrupt and destined to fail. In her later teens, as she matured, Elena questioned the rationale of communism and the illusion of superiority. "We hear about love for the motherland and love for the communist party, but never about love for one another." The atmosphere of that era echoes in Nina's (Elena's friend) comment: "This country is doomed, and we're doomed with it. I `d go anywhere, if I could, to get the hell out (p.248)." Eventually, Elena did get out by marrying an American and immigrated to the United States

A MOUNTAIN OF CRUMBS gives the reader a glimpse of the difference in the way of life in the U.S. and Russia; the virtues of democracy versus communism. "In Russia we played the vranyo game on a daily basis. Vranyo is Russian stands for a lie or half-truth. During the Soviet Union era vranyo became the de facto way of life. The government lied to us, we knew they were lying, they knew we knew they were lying, but they kept lying anyway and we pretended to believe them." There was a joke: "They pretend they pay us and we pretend we work."It was ingrained in the system." Corruption and scarcity shaped daily existence of the masses. "Tear up a piece of bread to make a mountain of crumbs and declare it an abundance of food." Describing somebody as "Kozha da kosti - skin and bones reminds me how I looked when the Russian Army liberated me from the Nazi yoke, as depicted in the autobiography From a Name to a Number. The Nazis deemed me, and many others, to be subhuman or undesirables. According to Elena's book under communism some people were classified as lishnie lyudi useless people. It is also very sad that Elena found only two lines, in a tenth-grade history book, how the Germans' mass-execution In Babi Yar; there was not one word mentioned that the thirty-three thousand victims were Jews.

The well written book is widening the scope of knowledge about the Soviet Union. It is a remarkable memoir. Elena describes eloquently the daily life routine; you feel the claustrophobia of people sharing a tiny apartment; you feel like walking in the street of Petersburg.

I found the description of her family life during the Stalinist era the most intriguing and her personal memoir in the day-to-day life in the Soviet Union revealing. In some respects her life during that time mirrored young Americans insofar as it was dull, she was self-conscious, and she wanted to enter adulthood and be free of the constraints all youths experience. Little things really make this a remarkable book. The fact that she (and her teacher) really did not understand the meaning of "privacy" is revealing about life in Leningrad both as a reflection of Russian culture and Soviet society.

Most of what I know of the Soviet Union (and knew about it during that period) was through Orwellian descriptions put out by dissidents who escaped the Gulags. However, the day to day life of a girl and young woman growing up in a totalitarian society coming out of the most horrendous war in Russian history (including Napoleon's invasion) is all new territory. Perhaps we'll be fortunate enough to have a similar memoir of someone born in Russia after 1990.

A Mountian of Crumbs: A Memoir is a wonderfully captivating, detailed memoir that is soon not to be forgotten. Written with such poetic, flowing wording, the memoir is every bit enthralling and captivating a story to read as any I've ever had the pleasure of investing my time in. Within the pages I found her story to be humbling and eye opening, pulling on the reader's emotions from the whole gamut from sorrow, to anger, to suspense, and joy. A Mountain of Crumbs is an amazing work of art, painting it's picture word by carefully written word.