Resurrection (Paperback)

~ (Author) "In the years after his fall, Mikhail Gorbachev would leave his dacha outside Moscow, fold himself into the backseat of a Volga sedan, and, on..." (more)
Key Phrases: orgasmic cries, perestroika years, White House, United States, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In his first account of Russia, Lenin's Tomb, David Remnick wrote a history paced like a thriller that recast the common understanding of the last days of the Soviet Empire. While most reporters mouthed the standard lines about the "fall of communism," Remnick delivered a gripping account of how the old order in which gangsters ruled through brutal state power lost its hold on the Russian people. Remnick's stunning reportage cut away the myths of the Soviet system to provide the first account of how Eastern Europeans and former citizens of the Soviet Union had long viewed the Soviet regime. The book won the young author his first Pulitzer Prize.

In his new and equally superb book Resurrection, Remnick offers clear-eyed commentary on how the old order of gangsters has given way to a new order. Russia's power elite, he tells us, has embraced the tools and techniques of markets and electioneering to maintain power, while organized crime is fast becoming a major force in the economy. Remnick also describes how the changes in Russia have effected the people themselves. Heart-wrenching chapters on the war in Chechnya, the health and welfare of children (only 15 percent of school children are classified as healthy, and 50 percent are unfit for military service), and the diminished state of Russian letters and literature chronicle the suffering of a once proud nation as it attempts to rebuild itself. Resurrection makes good on Remnick's name and reputation as the best American writer on Russia today. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this follow-up to Lenin's Tomb (LJ 6/15/93), which focused on the collapse of the USSR, Remnick concentrates on the post-Soviet scene and its prospects. We meet a rich variety of personalities, some familiar?like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and "retired czar" Mikhail Gorbachev? and some largely unknown?like Vladimir Gusinsky, the most powerful member of the new emerging Muscovite elite. Boris Yeltsin figures crucially in Remnick's narrative, which paints vignettes about the "new Russia." Chaotic uncertainty, massive corruption, and crime are notoriously present, yet the possibility of a different, better life also beckons. The past is not encouraging, but Remnick ends on a tentatively hopeful note. This is an interesting, highly informative portrait of a country struggling toward a fateful future. Strongly recommended.
-?Robert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition (May 26, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375750231
• ISBN-13: 978-0375750236
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #630,909 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Worth It, April 15, 2002

By	John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Resurrecting Russia, September 27, 1999

By	Paul Romita ([e-mail]) (Yonkers, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia (Hardcover)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Should You Buy This Book?, October 30, 2000

By	"jasonmorris7" (Indianapolis, IN United States) - See all my reviews

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....