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Resurrection

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This book bills itself as a history of the past 10 years after the fall of the Soviet Empire, and it does just that. There is no denying that the author, David Remnick is the king of current Russian society structure. The book not only focuses on who has power and what hey are doing with it, but it digs deeper down to the Joe everybody and what it is like to live in a country that continues to fall into lower and lower standards of living. As far as who has the power now, that is a mix of old political cronies and new upstart organized crime figures with a few brave capitalists thrown into the mix.

This is a well thought out and constructed book and keeps you interested. Just when you have had a good dose of heavy economic issues we go to the war in Chechnya, which keeps the pace up. He has peppered the book with interesting interviews and massive dose of good old fashion reporting. You can tell he worked very hard on this book, there is nothing left in the air. Each conclusion or statement is backed up in the writing. You also get the true love he has for the country and the people, the emotion comes through the writing and makes the book more then just a historical report. The writing is very good and challenging, this is not a book you can read and watch TV at the same time, you really need to and want to sink your teeth into it. If you are looking to learn something and enjoy it at the same time then this would be a very good buy.

With the release of Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia, David Remnick further strengthens his reputation as one of America's premier journalists. The book is the sequel to Lenin's Tomb, Remnick's superbly written Pulitzer Prize winning account of the fall of the Soviet Union. Resurrection continues where Lenin's Tomb left off, brilliantly chronicling Russia's painful effort to emerge from under the rubble of a collapsed system and recreate itself.

Remnick lived and worked in Moscow between 1988 and 1991 as a Washington Post correspondent, witnessing and writing about the last days of the Soviet Empire. During his tenure at the Post and in more recent years, Remnick has traveled extensively throughout Russia and the former Soviet Republics, conducting countless interviews with key Russian political figures, businessmen, cultural icons, and ordinary citizens. Fluent in Russian, he possesses an impressive depth and breadth of knowledge of Russian and Soviet history, politics, and culture--tools he effectively employs to enhance the reader's understanding of events and personalities in modern-day Russia. In Resurrection, history, politics, and biography are skillfully woven together to create a beautiful, tightly knit journalistic tapestry.

Not merely content with recounting events, Remnick probes the deeper currents that underlie these events and give them their meaning. His writing is vivid and passionate, and his sharp journalistic instincts and keen understanding of human nature enable him to perceive and analyze crucial details.

Penetrating, insightful, and tragic, his account of the war in Chechnya is Remnick at his best. He traces the Chechen struggle with Russia from the nineteenth century to the present, a legacy of Czarist and Soviet brutality and domination culminating in Stalin's 1944 mass expulsion of the Chechen population to the wastelands of Kazakstan. He further describes the influence the Chechens have had on the Russian psyche, as depicted in the literature of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and others. "In verse and prose, the Chechen becomes more of a trope than a man; he is nature itself--untamable, wild, raw" (267). Or, as Remnick also writes, "In the Russian imagination... Chechnya is an obsession, an image of Islamic defiance, an embodiment of the primitive, the devious, the elusive" (266).

It is this defiant, mafia-ridden tiny republic that Russian President Boris Yeltsin sought to tame in November 1994, an enterprise that was to take no more than two hours, according to then Defense Minister Pavel Grachev. In the weeks before the conflict, conservatives in the Kremlin elite--including Grachev, Yeltsin's bodyguard Alexander Korzakhov, and Deputy Prime-Minister Oleg Soskovets--convinced Yeltsin to go ahead with plans to bomb the republic into submission. Yeltsin decided that he needed a short, victorious war to boost popular morale, and regain the support of a constituency that expressed disappointment with his policies at the ballot box in November 1993, when Vladimir Zhironovsky's virulently nationalistic Liberal Democratic party won more seats in the Duma than any other. But as has been the case before in Russian history, short, victorious wars are usually neither short nor victorious.

Yeltsin's complex character is explored at length in Resurrection. His drinking problem, bouts with depression, boorish behavior, and failing health are common knowledge to most Russians. On a deeper level, Remnick analyzes the dual nature of Yeltsin's personality. His authoritarian impulses--instilled in him by decades of serving the Soviet state and most evident by his actions in Chechnya--are at constant war with the more recently developed reformist, market-oriented Yeltsin who helped topple the Soviet regime in 1991.

Indeed, the book abounds with colorful, substantive portraits of many of Russia's well-known contemporary figures: the blunt but honest General Lebed, who brokered the peace in Chechnya but was fired from Yeltsin's staff for insubordination; the theater choreographer turned wealthy businessman Vladimir Gusinsky; the great Slavophile author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who condemned the cruelty and hypocrisy of the Soviet government in his books but now is nothing more than an anachronism to most Russians; and the vociferously anti-Semitic, nationalistic buffoon Vladimir Zhironovsky.

Through brief biographies of these and other contemporary figures, Remnick paints a vivid picture of current political, social, and economic conditions in Russia.

His diagnosis of Russia's present state is understandably cynical. The transition to a parliamentary democracy with a market economy has been painfully uneven and slow. Corrupt oligarchies rule the nation's economy; social and economic inequalities abound; the rule of law--or what exists of it--is openly flouted; and the war in Chechnya has claimed 80,000 lives. Russia is in crisis, adrift in a sea of uncertainty and despair.

Can Russia change? Remnick is cautiously optimistic. He points to Russia's potential and the progress that has already been made since the deep historical rupture of 1991. The Russian population is 99% literate, and although the economy is still in shambles, inflation has steadily decreased, while privatization continues. Only a few years after the fall of Communism, political parties vie with one another for constituents, and a relatively free press is thriving.

Only time and the further suffering of the Russian people will verify Mr. Remnick's prognosis.

Your question is probably "is this book worth buying?" In my opinion, Yes, and here's why; This guy has done his homework. He not only researched those he wrote about; he has actually interviewed many of them personally. He's not much for summarizing or handing everything to you in a package; he presents the facts, the rumors, etc. and the reader is left to draw many of the conclusions - although he certainly helps guide the reader along w/ some issues. The one downside is that he deals primarily with the big city (i.e. Moscow) economic and political side of things; if you are looking for a peek at the day-to-day lives of ordinary Russians, you may be disappointed. This book deals primarily with the movers and shakers, and their lifestyles get the majority of the attention. This book gave me a much clearer picture of the political dynamics of both old and new Russia's government and economy. If you only half-listened to the news reports of political developments in the former USSR during the period of 1989-1998, then you will most likely find some surprises here. There are a lot of things we don't hear about here in America....

Compared to "Lenin's Tomb", this book is decidedly less thrilling. For the most part, it is not the author's fault: in "Lenin's Tomb" he got to talk about Lenin, Stalin and Gorbachev, about Sacharov and early Solzhenitsyn, about the Bolshevik coup of 1917 and military/KGB revolt of 1991. Russian history of that period was as rich and colorful as it was bloody and tragic. "Resurrection" is concerned with a much shorter period between 1991 and 1996, and has to deal with Yeltsin, Zhirinovsky, Zyuganov, Russian new rich and new poor, the bleak cultural scene: most subjects in focus dreadfully pathetic. On the other hand, the book itself fails to step up to the base. The numerous portraits of politicians almost completely lack any mention of their program, a surprising choice for a Washington Times correspondent. The fact that the president-parliament confrontation of 1993 was ostensibly provoked by Yeltsin, who unconstitutionally declared the dissolution of parliament, does not merit more than a mention in the book. The common perception of Yeltsin-the-hero-of-'91 is never questioned, even though after his gridlock on Chechnya his ousting of Gorbachev and ascension to Russia's throne looks more like a land grab.

The book's longer chapters betray a slower pace of events. The novelty of the rising curtain was gone and everyone expected the play to begin. The action proved to be underwhelming. 1991: the country is fascinated by Yeltsin, a drinking boor; 1993: a quarter of the country votes for the dimwit Zhirinovsky; 1996: a quarter of the country votes for the dull communist Zyuganov, a xenophobe and anti-Semite who "forgot" about the millions murdered under Stalin, and saw much positive in Stalinism. Then the leader in popularity is general Lebed, an ignorant and renegade guerrilla, and also an anti-Semite. The country is corrupt and criminal beyond belief. It is waging a bloody war in Chechnya where its army is openly murdering civilians. Its leading religious figures, such as Alexander Men, are assassinated. Its renowned writers of the second half of the century, such as Gelman and Bitov, are as lost as their poor country, while the new generation is modeling itself on beacons such as Prigov, whose projects include preparing an edition of Eugene Onegin "replacing all the original adjectives with 'insane' and 'unearthly'". Considering all this, Remnick does not seem to make a case for his hope for Russia's resurrection.

Remnick's language is still as enjoyable as ever and the narrative flows. The book is very much readable and it leaves a lasting impression.

This is an excellent book about what took place in Russia during the 1990s. It is perhaps a bit too detailed and focused on personalities a bit too much. But overall, it is an informative read. I particularly enjoyed the chapter about Russian writers. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about the characters who shaped the post-Soviet Russia, and about the character of Russia itself.

Remnick's writing as a vehicle for depicting current life in Russia may engross you more than fiction.

But you're not being served entertainment. The book skillfully integrates fact, opinion and analysis from a multitude of personalities in contemporary Russia and the former Soviet republics.

Solzhenitsyn, Zhirinovsky, Gusinsky, Stalin's portraitist: the list of interviews goes on and on.

A Russian emigre friend and I spent a couple hours one evening discussing the seeds of thought planted by this book.

Written by a reporter, one cannot expect the detachment a historian would bring to this theme. In today's Russia, events move very fast indeed. Some of the people the author writes about are no longer near the seat of power while others, whom he does not mention, now make policy. I would have wished for a more intense study of modern Russian society, including emigrants to US, to Germany, etc. Unfortunately, as the months go by, the book will be outdated. This is a pity, after all the effort the author brought to it.

Remnick gives a detailed portrait of Russian society in the 1990's. He points out how the promised hope of a new era of freedom has been delayed. How instead there is a government of corruption, a new class of superwealthy oligarchs, a market economy which has gone haywire, a persistence of very great poverty for large masses of the people.
In the course of the work he speaks with Russians of all walks of life and presents a picture of a society confused and lost in its own contradictions. The new freedom has exhilarated but has not led to a productive and competent economy, or a fair political system.
Remnick sees the strong absolutist and obscurantist elements in Russian society. In talking to the literary giant Solzhenitzsyn, Remnick does not meet a liberal but rather a true believer who supports an absolutist Russian Orthodox vision of the world.
My friend Moshe Fushman a former citizen of the former Soviet Union says that this is one of the best books on Russia he has read, and compares it favorably to Hedrick Smith's 'The Russians'.
I found it however to be for long stretches quite predictable and prosaic.
Remnick ends up on a positive optimistic note about Russia's democratic future. But from the evidence he presents I would not bet on it.

A Great follow up on Lenin's Tomb. Remnick does an excellent job of showing us the entire picture of Russia's current situation. This would would be a great book for anyone who would like to understand what is going on in Russia today and why.

Both Remnick's on Russia provide deep and useful insights on the political life of this country. A must-read for people interested in Russia's recent history.