Customer Reviews

Wave of Terror

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A few months ago I wrote a review on a biography about Joseph Stalin in which I expressed a bit of sympathy towards the man. I knew he was a murderous tyrant and the despotism of the Soviet Union destroyed lives, but I still felt Stalin deserved some sympathy because of his crippling insecurities. After reading this novel I take it all back as it brings down the effects of the Communist regime to a personal level and it really wasn't pretty. I loved the book and it's shocking that only in the last few years we are given the opportunity to read this book thanks to the fantastic efforts of Theodore Odrach's daughter, Erma with the translations of his work. Theodore Odrach's novel is one that clearly draws a lot of inspiration from his own personal experiences growing up near Pinsk, Belarus then being sent to a reform school in Lithuania at the age of 9 and becoming a headmaster of a grammar school. Denounced by the Soviets, Odrach was forced to go on the run for years until finally settling in Toronto, Canada.

Set in 1939 during the Red Army invasion of Belarus, it tells the story of Ivan Kulik the headmaster of School Number Seven in Hlaby, a small rural village in the Pinsk marshes. Through Kulik's eyes we see exactly how the soviet regime could cast its gloomy shadow over such a small village as the villagers are terrorised and crippled with fear at the very presence of the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) who may show up at any time and take away those they label as subversives to the Zovty Prison to be interrogated which in that time meant a severe beating and even execution. The presence of the new regime in Hlaby has an unwelcome effect on the school as Kulik is ordered to have his teachers teach the children in Russian even though none of the children speak the language. Kulik's relationships are also affected as he's not sure who he can trust anymore to speak his mind as everyone is a possible informer crippling Kulik with un-imaginable paranoia.

It is really a stunning book. Odrach spends a fair amount of time developing and describing each character which I have no doubt are resemblances of real life people Odrach encountered during his time as a grammar school headmaster. He exposes the true hypocrisies of the new regime, devours and destroys each and every lesson the new regime sought to teach the world. His characters each have their flaws but I did certainly recognise a separation between the characters on the side of the regime and the characters against the regime. Kulik & Sergei for example were both honest and respectable characters who opposed the regime and didn't seem to have any pronounced flaws that would make this pair seem more real. Granted, they are the two main heroes of the book but a character without flaw is a character you can't relate to as easily. The Bohdanovich family are especially loveable as they are a typical man and wife who have been together for decades. They really love each other but find themselves fighting every two minutes. The parents are indifferent towards the new Soviet regime but their daughter, Marusia, is a snob looking to cast away her Ukranian identity and embrace the language of mother Russia.

Odrach has a real eye for the cultural differences of the time and how they changed when the new regime came into power. The communist party sought to create a fairer and more egalitarian society but actually created a system that was less fair and crueller than the previous regime. This could only have been written by someone who has experienced these events first hand as Odrach expresses an erudite knowledge of the torment the small villages suffered in the name of equality and fairness. Theodore Odrach's daughter, Erma has done a superb service in bringing this writers work to the English speaking world and I will certainly be looking at more of his writings in the coming months. For those who have an interest in the history of the Soviet Union or those who just enjoy a good book then I would highly recommend it as it is truly superb.

Wave of Terror is a novel about the effects of the Soviet invasion of Belarus in 1939 on a small Ukrainian village in the Pinsk marshes as seen through the eyes of a young school teacher named Ivan Kulik. Liberated from their uncaring Polish landlords, the village is first happy, but later finds they are faced with an even worse threat from Stalinist oppression.

Originally written in Ukrainian and published as Voshchad' (Incipient dawn) in Toronto in 1972, this edition was translated into English by Erma Odrach, the author's daughter. The story is based on Odrach's personal experiences and was written to expose the horrors of Stalinist Russia, but now reads as historical fiction.

The novel is best at portraying the people and their behavior as they struggle to adapt and survive under changing and unjust conditions. Particularly well done is Ivan's infatuation with the lovely Marusia, and her uncaring response as she tries hard to adjust to the new Russian social environment that Ivan disdains.

"...then bands of agitators follow... calling themselves long-awaited liberators. Like swarms of locusts, they seep through the smallest cracks and infest villages and settlements."

With this description young Ivan Kulik, newly appointed village school headmaster, introduces the events of 1939 in Hlaby, his village in the Pinsk Marshes - a region straddling the border between Ukraine in the south and Belorussia in the north. What follows is an extraordinary story, a social portrait of a community struggling to survive in the face of constantly mounting and increasingly violent Soviet interference in the lives of the villagers. By focusing on one village and a limited group of primary characters, Theodore Odrach takes the historical facts onto a very personal and intricate level, building empathy and understanding in the reader who is captivated early on and will remain engaged until the end of the novel and beyond.

Odrach's characters are lively and personable, realistically captured in their daily lives and their new, at times conflicting, emotions. Many are torn between willingness to collaborate with the occupiers, anticipating personal advantage within a Soviet system, or maintaining a more or less neutral attitude, risking being labelled nationalist or even traitor, thereby endangering their livelihood and even survival. As the harassment and brutal attacks multiply, and random arrests, disappearances and arbitrary killings are witnessed more frequently, ignoring reality is almost impossible. Propaganda and reality could not be further apart. Even those, like Ivan Kulik, who are trying to maintain some level of normalcy in the school and the village, have to fear being called for "an interview" at the notorious Zovty prison of the NKVD [the Soviet Secret Police], in Pinsk. Ivan, who is as much chronicler of the events as active participant, has to confront his own suspicions: can he trust even his few friends like Sergei? Is the chatty neighbour or colleague an agent provocateur waiting to report him? Will his faultless "proletarian credentials" protect him from disappearing in Zovty prison or being sent to a concentration camp in Siberia?

For the young women in particular, embracing the "modern" Russian way can lead to unforeseen consequences. Clearly exploiting the benefits of the new system is Dounia Avdeevna. While her machinations read like light relief, the author's message is serious. The primary female character, however, is Marusia, the girl that raises romantic feelings in Ivan. She is rejecting any advances by him, this 'moujik' (peasant) who prefers to speak Ukrainian rather than Russian (which he speaks more fluently than she does). He is also better educated than she is... Odrach conveys the conflicts in the girl's mind admirably, and, mostly, with a lovely ironic touch. Nonetheless, for me one of the most chilling scenes is Marusia's reaction to receiving a beautiful winter coat as a gift - and discovering the label in its collar...

The brutal occupation of the Pinsk Marshes, so empathically evoked by Odrach, has to be understood against the historical context and its unique geographic characteristics. A strategically important region for the Soviet Union, it had been under Polish control until its annexation by the Red Army in September 1939. Its deep forests, broken up by farmland and pastures with isolated villages scattered in the landscape and, most importantly, the river with its large flood plains had provided natural barriers from unwanted intruders. Culturally, the population's identity was rooted in their Ukrainian language. As Odrach expertly illustrates, the region's "integration" into Byelorussia meant much more for the villagers than the compulsory introduction of the Byelorussian and Russian languages: it represented the denigration of their own language and culture and a rejection of their important role in the wider Russian and Slavic historical context. I found it fascinating how Odrach uses the language conflict also as an illustration of social tensions within the community. Some characters, such as the Russian-speaking apparatchiks, when irritated or angry, slip back into their native Ukrainian without noticing ' or they do, losing more than their argument.

I found it especially fascinating how Odrach illustrates the social tensions in the community through the language issue. Some characters, such as the Russian-speaking apparatchiks, when irritated or angry, slip back into their native Ukrainian without noticing - or they do, losing more than their argument.

WAVE OF TERROR is without doubt closely based on the author's personal experiences. Odrach has beautifully fictionalized what he knew and lived through and presented it in a way that readers from everywhere can relate to the individuals, their lives, hopes and struggles. He has done even more than that. With his nuanced approach he has brought to light a mostly unknown tragedy of a community of a specific region that stand representative for the many, many victims of Stalin's Sovietization campaign with the reign of terror suffered by communities with different cultural and linguistic identities.

Theodore Odrach escaped from the Soviet Union and eventually immigrated to Canada in 1953. Since then, until his untimely death in 1964, he used every spare moment to write - not only this novel but a substantial body of works. For me, Odrach's writing stands on its own and does not need any suggestion for literary influences. However, I did find important parallels in terms of theme and approach between Odrach's novel and 2009 Nobel laureate Herta Müller. Both authors have fictionalized the personally experienced terror regimes seen from the perspective of a specific linguistic background. WAVE OF TERROR was published in Ukrainian in 1973 and has only recently become available in English thanks to the great efforts of his daughter Erma, who had to enter the depth of the Ukrainian language and culture to convey her father's words and meaning. She has done so beautifully and convincingly. [Friederike Knabe]

This memorable depiction of the establishment of Soviet Socialist Republics by Stalinist revolutionaries in 1939, with their bloodshed and violence, is filled with trenchant observations of real people behaving realistically during times of real crisis. In clear, unadorned prose, author Theodore Odrach depicts the lives of rural peasants with sensitivity and an awareness both of their independence and of their shared values, contrasting them with the mindless, bureaucratic officials who enjoy wielding power over human beings which have become mere ciphers to them. Dark humor and irony, which may be the only things that make survival possible, distinguish this novel from other novels of this period, and no reader will doubt that this book is written by a someone who has seen the atrocities unfold, experienced the injustices, empathized with his fellow citizens, and felt compelled to tell the world about the abuses.

Odrach sets his story in Hlaby, in the Pinsk Marshes, an enormous marshland which extends into Poland, Belarus, and the Ukraine. Its people are subsistence farmers who have grown up speaking, first, Polish, and later Ukrainian. When the Stalinists arrive in 1939, however, they announce that henceforth this village will be part of the Belarus Soviet Socialist Republic. All their schools will be taught in Belarussian, and all their business dealings will be in Belarussian, despite the fact that no one in the area speaks that language, knows it, or can teach it. The penalties for non-compliance are extreme, an absurdity which is continued forward throughout the novel. The largest farm in the area is collectivized, its owner beaten to death. The innocent people employed on that farm are under suspicion of subversion. All churches and temples are outlawed.

Government officials here are characterized by their stupidity and their mindless adherence to regulations and quotas, which make no sense for this village, and Odrach must walk a fine line as he creates dark humor at their expense while never underestimating their very real power. His sense of what makes these sadistic officials "tick" makes them as frighteningly real for the reader as they must have been for the peasants. Still everyone tries to lead a "normal" life, and this small village becomes the world "writ small." Odrach's instinctive recognition of key details allows him to tell stories within stories with a straightforward simplicity which makes the novel come alive.

As the winter turns into spring, the well developed characters search for love, go to a New Year's Eve dance, travel to conferences, attend a general meeting (where they show their displeasure by electing a drunkard, a madwoman, and a murderer to the Praesidium), and deal with rebellious second-graders, always, however, on the lookout for informers and always unable to share their feelings about the revolution. Several are arrested, interrogated, and released, raising suspicions that dossiers are being prepared for their expulsion from the community, if not their deaths. As the novel comes to a close, the reader is reminded again of Theodore Odrach's own life (described in the Introduction by T. F. Rigelhof), and one can only wonder if this moving conclusion is truth, not fiction. Mary Whipple

Recently, I decided to focus upon reading great but lesser known masters of repressed writers from the Soviet Union during the time of Lenin and Stalin. Since some of the finest writing was considered to be critical of Soviet leadership, many beautifully written masterpieces have only fairly recently come to see the light of day. Of course, Solzhenitzyn has been recognized for his trials on the gulag with the Nobel Prize but there are many other genuinely great and supremely gifted writers of the era. And Theodore Odrach has earned a worthy place of prominence among the most talented and courageous authors of an era in which writers truly suffered for their art. In Odrach's case he escaped from the Ukraine and came to North America to live and write in Toronto. He was published by a discerning publishing house in Chicago who recognized his talent, the importance of his message and the sublime talents of Erma Odrach as her father's translator. Like other Soviet era writer's Odrach is powerful because of his understatement and the highly polished, vivid almost journalistic style. His journalistic writing style at times reminded me of Hemingway in For Whom the Bell Tolls and in A Farewell to Arms. The characters are uniquely and sensitively drawn portraits with realistic traits which bring out their humanity. The women in this book are especially well sketched, and -- although the writer was a man and capturing the essence of women is more challenging than writing about one's own gender -- perhaps Erma's devoted commitment to find Moliere's "mots juste" helps to distinguish every character in this novel. The Odrachs make this incredibly difficult era, with its incessant danger and hardship, come alive luminously. There are profound and enduring lessons in this novel for freedom-loving peoples worldwide -- hope for those seeking democracy through perserverance and caution to those blessed to live in democratic societies whose freedoms are at risk from powerful megalomaniacs. I really can't say enough in praise of the courage and talents of the Odrachs whose important work is worthy of wide readership. The Odrachs have given us the benefit of a great, living legacy to treasure: I really loved this intelligent, humble and truly beautiful novel. It represents a high standard of novel which America should aspire both to write and widely read. I was moved deeply and inspired by this lyrical, gorgeously crafted novel -- my best advice is to buy and read this timeless masterpiece now: you'll never forget this book.

In his novel "Wave of Terror" Theodore Odrach offers us a chilling look at a world turned upside down by a ruthless, corrupt, and totalitarian regime. When the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland in 1939 it soon set about coordinating the population with the Soviet system. Ivan Kulik is a rural schoolmaster in an out of the way village near Pinsk. Like all others from the village, Kulik is ethnically Ukrainian and can't understand why the region is being incorporated into the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and not the Ukrainian Socialist Republic. Neither he nor the teachers under him speak Belorussian and are completely unable to teach in that language. Nevertheless the party insists upon Belorussian for the schools and intends to make sure Kulik follows this policy. Meanwhile the world is falling apart around him. Using the propaganda language of liberation and equality, the Soviet occupiers soon enslave and play favorites. Kulik finds himself increasingly drawn to Marusia, the beautiful urban relative of one of his teachers. Even as he seeks to win her affection, she mocks his rural ways and failure to embrace the new regime fully. Over time, she learns her own painful truths as the local NKVD man takes and unhealthy interest in her. Kulik and Marusia are soon faced with difficult and unpleasant choices, for in Stalin's Soviet Union there is no daylight, only perpetual darkness.

Simply put this is a brilliant novel from a powerful and emotionally intelligent writer. By turns the story is humorous and chilling, exciting and depressing, but throughout it is absolutely evocative of the times. Odrach also provides a wonderful metaphor in the form of an unruly child who is brutalized and then himself commits acts of brutality. Once the child is shown kindness and learns self-esteem, however, he becomes a model student. This is contrasted with the violence of the Soviet system and the ruthlessness of the NKVD. Truly a first rate work of fiction blended seamlessly with fact, "Wave of Terror" should be read by anyone curious about this time.

There is a certain pleasant aura which attaches to the common man, the driven, non-professional writer who, having a mission to accomplish and a statement to make, takes pen into hand (or puts fingers to keyboard) and creates a masterwork. Such a man is Theodore Odrach, a refugee from Soviet Ukraine or, more specifically, that region of it melded into the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belorussia. "Wave of Terror", written in Odrach's spare time is the fictional tale of the transition from old Ukraine to a Soviet Republic and it masterfully depicts the clash between an alien ideology and a doomed way of life.

The protagonist of "Wave of Terror" is Ivan Kulik, the recently appointed headmaster of a small, impoverished, remote school located in the village of Hlaby, itself situated in the Pinsk Marsh region of Ukraine. He arrives there shortly after Stalin, seemingly conceptualized by the peasants as a "Red Czar", has decreed that the lingua Franca of the Marshes will be Belorussian, a language the natives don't speak or write, rather than Ukrainian. This, however, is only one of the obnoxious and contentious fiats the locals deal with. There are obtuse and officious village Communist cadres, some newly elevated to that status from the local population. NKVD soldiers are rude, belligerent, unsympathetic and predatory. Incompetent teachers are appointed thanks to political considerations. Land, crops and possessions are confiscated. Peasants are impressed into slave labor service on canal construction or exiled to the far northern GULAG. Political sloganeering becomes mandatory official discourse. Selfishness and greed are survival attributes and these tendencies are cynically pandered to by the Communists when convenient. Spying is rampant. In short, the residents of Hlaby faced the entire mechanism put into place by the Red Czar to create the "New Soviet Man" and woe be to he who resists.

In order to best appreciate this book, some knowledge of Russian and European history is helpful and acquaintance with classical Russian novels and early 20th Century Soviet and pre-Soviet era writers provides useful context. Odrach writes in the tradition of the best of these novelists: his style is simple and unadorned. His evocations of the halcyon days of the peasantry (serfs, in effect) are tender without being maudlin. His depictions of the blunt honesty of peasant discourse suggest Gogol ("Dead Souls") and many other Russian 19th Century authors who share Tolstoy's (and Rousseau's) respect and love for these noble denizens of the dark earth. The empty winter landscapes are harsh but suggestively embracing, contributing as they do to peasant communality. The vignettes (especially the winter night encounter between the peacock and the buffoonish, low-level functionary, Iofe Nicel Leyzarov) evoke the best of Turgenev and Boris Pilnyak. The earthy, dumb, obese and sexually robust, Dounia Avdeevna symbolizes Mother Earth (or Ukraine); "That Dounia sure knows how to reel them in...She has them begging for more...There's certainly enough of her to go around" are some of the accepting peasant's ribald comments. The dismal fate of the school custodian, Paraska, recalls the desperation of Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov (of "Crime and Punishment") as do the ongoing domestic wars between the husband and wife, Efrosinia and Valentyn. The NKVD goon, Simon Stepanovich Sobakin, in pursuit of the lovely Marusia (daughter of Efrosinia), has all the evil traits of the staple Russian villain: drunken, lecherous, crude, nasty, vindictive and powerful, just like Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigaïlov (another notable from, "Crime and Punishment"), depicted with skill equal to Dostoyevsky. Of course, the book can be appreciated without knowing any of that and it is good enough to serve as an introduction to a large number of important Russian books of the classic era.

As usual, its best to let the author speak for himself. Take, for instance, this scene which occurs immediately after Simon Stepanovich has senselessly shot the peasant Hrisko and, in typical Stalinist fashion, grabs relatives for deportation: "Inside the Black Crow (common name for a Soviet-era NKVD prison van) it was dark. Sobbing and praying it was not long before she realized she was not alone. Someone else was there, mumbling and whimpering. It was a woman in great distress and she sounded very much like Marsessa Kunsia, who, disoriented as she was, had grasped the horror of her situation. Seeking the warmth of each other's bodies, the women huddled together and wept." That event immediately precedes the burial of Paraska's husband, Philip from an unspecified disease: "Sobakin came forward and touched his heels. He said matter-of-factly, 'He's cold, stone dead.' The officers dragged the dead man across the floor and threw him outside into the snow. Sobakin called after him laughing, 'Well, Philip Semionovich, you've gone and outsmarted us. You son-of-a-bitch'". Because of that and the suffocating effects on the small town of the nascent totalitarian New Soviet Empire, "A shroud of doom had fallen over Hlaby. The village was silent, but tense and restless. Paraska, pale and emaciated, moved like a zombie and was no longer of any use to herself or anyone around her...For the next several days the villagers busied themselves washing the bodies of the dead, preparing them for eternity."

Somewhere in the introduction, Odrach is represented as a Ukrainian nationalist of sorts. Certainly, he has such sympathies and these are evident throughout the book. He romanticizes the peasants as some form of noble savages (some of the worst and most revolting of the ingrained attitudes and nearly congenital prejudices of the Ukrainian peasantry blossomed during the early phases of the Nazi occupation). He attacks the incorporation of the Marshes into the Belorussian SSR instead of the Ukrainian SSR. He laments lack of an independent Ukrainian republic and submersion of Ukrainian culture and language. He lauds the incipient anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance movement. His protagonist's independence-minded attitudes land him in trouble with the authorities, resulting in a brief visit to the local NKVD prison and, rather than ultimately submit (which he sometimes did as a matter of opportunism and self-preservation), he flees the land. However, Ordrach is fair in noting that Ukraine had only a brief period of independence in the mid 1600s and was under various foreign masters (most recently the villified Poles) until the Russians moved in...again. It sometimes seems that the author's romanticized depiction of early 1930s Ukraine makes for a bucolic Wonderland, spoiled mostly by the appearance of Stalinism, but Odrach also suggests that the people, with their parochial, superstitious, insular and medieval views share responsibility for that sad state of affairs.

It would be remiss to fail to acknowledge the outstanding translation by Erma Odrach, the author's daughter, who also prepared a preface to the book. Evidently, this is Ms. Odrach's first translation effort and she is a skilled editor, as well, having compiled the book from a mass of typescript and marginal notes.

So, is this book of sufficiently narrow appeal as to warrant neglect? I don't think so and I hope not. While this book has a nationalist undertone and it conveys a message ("No one loves armed missionaries", to borrow an axiom from Maximilien Robespierre), it is a finely crafted novel, free of superfluous embellishment, devoid of pretension and cleverly plotted. It is, in short, a classic work of Russian literature (I use the "Russian" label generically) and is a "mirror walking down a now-forgotten road" (apologies to Stendhal).

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Herta Müller, Bohumil Hrabel, Imre Kertesz and a score of others, among the greatest novelists of the 20th C, have all given testimony: "utopia" in the USSR and its satellites had an 'inhuman face'. Or let's make that "an altogether too human face"? The consistency of what they portray -- constant surveillance, interrogation, repression, betrayal and paranoia, brutality, hypocrisy, corruption -- doesn't leave much room for wishful idealism. Just as vile as their Nazi enemies, Stalin and his heirs were not only monsters themselves but they brought out the monstrosity of the masses under their iron heels. Their ideological state made bastards, sadists, informers, grovelers, chiselers out of ordinary people. A 'wave of terror' aptly describes the emotions of the victimized dissidents who appear in tale after tale of the failure of communism to prove itself any more worthy than fascism.

Theodore Odrach's "Wave of Terror" is set in the newly-formed Belarus in the year 1940, and even more specifically in Hlaby, a Ukrainian-language village in the southern marshes near the city of Pinsk. But for all its specificity of time and place, "Wave of Terror" tells nearly the same story as Müller's "Land of Green Plums", set in Romania decades later. The central character is Ivan Kulik, the newly appointed headmaster of a government elementary school in Hlaby. Kulik is of peasant orgin himself, but well educated and fluent in Russian as well as Ukrainian. Unfortunately, the new nation of Belarus, taking its marching order from Moscow, intends to elevate the peasantry by offering education in a language none of the children can understand. As one would surely expect, a well-meaning, uncertain, timorous figure like Kulik, with the soft hands of an educated man, is liable to fears and distrust. He is almost immediately accused of `bourgeois' tendencies and, honestly, the accusation is accuarte nough. He's also accused of Ukrainian nationalist sympathies; once more, though Kulik denies any nationalism adamantly, the accusation isn't wholly wrong. And nationalism isn't always a sin; who wouldn't have been a nationalist in confrontation with the cynical "internationalism' of the Bolsheviks? One thing that's obvious: Kulik is NOT a born `survivor"! Eventually, he has to flee. The reader today can't help but suppose that Kulik is Odrach's weaker self, a kind of generic Odrach, not as forceful or as focused as his creator.

Theodore Odrach was not a "writer". That is he was not a self-conscious crafter of words for literature's sake. My impression is that he was an earnest, thoughtful man with a burden of historical memories and a compelling need to record those memories. "Art" was merely a vehicle for his unburdening. As a wordsmith, Odrach was no match for any of the writers mentioned above. His style is closer to Sholokov than to Solzhenitsyn, oddly close in fact to 'socialist realism' in its blunt explicitness. Stalin would probably have approved of such writing... except for its content, which would have earned Odrach a bullet in the back of the head. "Wave of Terror" is not a brilliant novel in style or structure. Descriptions are plain, characters are often cartoonish, events are predictable. Odrach fails to keep his narrative focused on its central character and its core theme of ever-contracting terror; halfway through, he gets sidetracked into a raunchy satire of petty officials and their sexcapades. The novel is painfully inconclusive. The translator, Odrach's daughter, suggests that it was still unfinished at the time of Odrach's death. On the other hand, perhaps it could only be inconclusive, just as the life of anyone who fled in exile would have left many threads of his life unfinished. What makes Wave of Terror well worth reading, despite its lack of literary excellence, is its authenticity, its revelation of the author's mentality, both intended and inadvertent.

Not all of Odrach's revelations redound to his credit. The hero of his novel, Headmaster Kulik, is strangely passive in this role, an indecisive, evasive bureaucrat who takes refuge by stalling behind his desk. If all went his way, he'd be a time-server at best. His most successful assertion of leadership is his conversion of Ohrimko, the class bully and a failing student. Kulik salvages Ohrimko by assigning him power over the other students, making him the class captain. Yes, it works, but think a moment: isn't it remarkably similar to the promotion of thugs and sociopaths that is terrorizing Kulik in the adult world? Make the toughest guy the boss and expect him to regenerate responsibility? What are the odds?

Kulik is accused, at one point, of anti-semitism. It's a trumped-up charge, first stated by the only major Jewish character in the novel, an incompetent and hysterical failure of a teacher. The `Party' offcials are portrayed as relentless hypocrites -- and no doubt their real historical prototypes were such, judging by the `glass ceilings' and quotas imposed on Jews of the USSR -- but Kulik's self-defense isn't terribly noble. He professes indifference to ethnic differences, thus couldn't have prejudice, declares that the overt anti-semitism of the villagers isn't `real' because they too have had no contact with Jews. Curiously, when Kulik visits Pinsk, the regional market and administration center, there are scarcely any references to Jews, yet Pinsk in 1940 was one of the most densely Jewish cities of Europe, with 80-90% of its population Jewish! Hateful as the Party functionaries are, one can't help recognizing that they are `onto something' with Kulik; he is a nationalist, though a timorous one. And Odrach, off there in Canada decades later, writing in Ukrainian? Might he have been a quixotic nationalist himself, striving to set history straight on the woes that beset the Ukrainian minority?

Don't get the impression that I'm denouncing Odrach's politics! It doesn't matter whether I, or you, or any reader agrees with his ideological positions. What matters is the vividness of his memories of Bolshevic brutalities and excesses. The strength of his writing is the palpable terror he communicates. That's the brave historical lesson of "Wave of Terror". The difference between an ideologue and a sociopath is merely a matter of timing.

Historical fiction has been enjoying growing readership in recent years, and I count myself among that readership. I became aware of Wave of Terror on Goodreads and quickly added it to my reading list.

Partially autobiographical, Wave of Terror tells the story of Ivan Kulik, headmaster of a grammar school near Pinsk, in Ukraine, during the years Stalin was coming to power in Russia. Like the author, Theodore Odrach, Kulik, too, was an unruly child who, after committing a petty offense, spent time in a reform school in Vilnius before enrolling in University.

Wave of Terror, lovingly translated by Odrach's daughter, Erma, ranks with Orwell's Animal Farm as a chronicle of how despots creep into a small village to hail the new regime, to assure the people of a prosperous future for one and all. Of course those who dissent disappear mysteriously, never to be heard from again. Soon, distrust of neighbors grows: is he or she an informer? The sound of a motorcar coming to a stop outside your home, two doors slamming--have they come at last for me?

In America, we cannot know such terror; yet our previous administration showed disdain and no fear of its people. A government should fear its people. In Wave of Terror, Odrach makes the fear of the new regime and the secret police palpably real as the backdrop for this fictional cat and mouse game between Kulik and the authorities, who will stop at nothing, including manufacturing truths, to remove him as a threat to Stalin's self-professed "greatest socialist regime in history," masked as a democracy.

Kulik is very human: he wants to trust (as is man's nature), fears to trust, even those closest to him, even for love. Yes, Kulik is a dissident. He wishes to teach the truth and to keep alive the rich heritage of Ukraine; while the new regime tells him he must teach only what they wish the populace to know.

In the end, the black motorcar comes for Kulik, he is kept in a prison for a day and a night, interrogated and released. But he knows this is the beginning of the end for him, that next time he will not be so lucky, and so he flees Ukraine.

However, where Kulik's story ends, Odrach's continues. Odrach escaped to Slovakia through the Carpathian Mountains, changing his name from Sholomitsky, eventually making his way to Germany and England where he wed, and ending up in Toronto where he wrote novels, short stories, memoirs and articles for local Ukrainian newspapers until his death from a stroke in 1964.

His books, all written from his Toronto home, were banned in the Soviet Union. Wave of Terror is his first novel to appear in English.

Highly recommended.

Backstop: A Baseball Love Story in Nine Innings

A little known Canadian who wrote in the Ukrainian language died in 1964, leaving a mixture of published and unpublished work. This work by Fedir (Theodore) Odrach was published posthumously in Ukrainian, in an edition he had not completed editing. Now his daughter Erma has prepared an English edition based on the published Ukrainian edition as well as manuscript notes of her father's. The result is both a lovely tribute to her father and a gift to readers.

Had this book appeared during the cold war it would likely have received far more attention. In those days we lived with the specter of the Soviet threat, and dissident and emigre literature was popular with publishers and many readers. In the post-Soviet era this literature has receded to be of historical (and literary, or course!) interest. But the history of that period will be kept alive in part by a body of remembered literature; this novel may deserve to be one that is remembered.

The Soviets have "liberated" a region of Ukrainian speaking people, and inexplicably decided to attach them to Belorussia (what we'd now call Belarus) rather than Ukraine. The central figure in the book is the new headmaster at a school where Ukrainian-speaking students are now supposed to be instructed in the Belorussian language by teachers who speak Ukrainian and Russian.

Around him we see the changes brought by Soviet rule. Aside from absurd directives--like the language issue in the schools--we observe the venal self-enrichment of the low-level officials who have latched onto the new regime for selfish reasons, the creeping imposition of terror as a means of keeping the masses in fear and under control, and the self-indulgence that some succumb to as the old social order is torn away. And we also see the mocking responses that simple people initially offer to the buffoonery of the new order.

The author achieves a blending of horror and humor that keeps the story readable and engrossing while communicating the message of human loss that the Soviet system imposed on millions. Indeed, one of the horrors was how many suffered for absurd reasons. (Many also suffered for arbitrary reasons, but that was part of the evil genius of the terror system.) Period works that lack humor can become so obsessed with suffering and terror that they are painful and numbing to read; the humor actually keeps the reader aware that the characters in the story are human. (How many people, beyond dedicated scholars, have actually read the whole Gulag Archipelago? After a few hundred pages you've been overwhelmed with the message, and all that is changing are the names and places.)

Just as a note, the writing style is rather flat and direct (even when humorous), as is common (but not universal) with both Soviet and anti-Soviet literature. I don't consider this a fault, but it may seem one if you are accustomed to or prefer more frenetic narration.

This is the most significant novel I have read in a long time, and not one I will forget.

The author's daughter and translator provided me a copy for review.