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Vasiliĭ Pavlovich Aksenov

Vasiliĭ Aksenov

The Island of Crimea Hardcover – October 12, 1983

by Vassily Aksyonov (Author)

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Text: English, Russian (translation)

Print length

369 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

October 12, 1983
ISBN-10

0394524314
ISBN-13

978-0394524313
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V.P. Aksenov
Paperback
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Aksenov V.
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; 1st edition (October 12, 1983)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 369 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0394524314
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0394524313
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #1,895,359 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
14 ratings

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2 star		7%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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C. Katsogiannos

Very interesting and quite unique story

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2014

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It is a quite accurate depicting of the failings of the soviet state and capitalist state alike. But the fact that it had such a clarity about Soviet situation in 1984 rather than post 1990 it is uncany compared to what we in the west knew then.

3 people found this helpful

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gerald Robinson

Unique book.

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2016

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Read it in Russian. Fantastic book.

One person found this helpful

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Sirena

You do love Vasiliy Aksenov or I don't love him

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2015

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You do love Vasiliy Aksenov or I don't love him. I grew up with that book. It gave as a hope and a dream how would be our lovely Crimea

3 people found this helpful

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J C E Hitchcock

Alternate Geography

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2017

Like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov (1932 –2009) was a leading dissident writer during the latter years of the Soviet Union, but the two men were very different. Whereas Solzhenitsyn was a conservative Russian nationalist who did not have a very high view of the West, even after he was sent into exile in the United States, Aksyonov was a liberal who admired all things Western, including Western fashions and music as well as the Western political system.

“The Island of Crimea” is а piece of alternate history rooted in alternate geography. The central premise is that the Crimea is not a peninsula but a fully-fledged island in the Black Sea, separated from the Soviet mainland by a narrow strait. We are also asked to accept that as a result of its separation from the mainland, the White Army was able to defend the island successfully against the Reds during the Russian Civil War. As a result the Crimea has become a sort of Russian Taiwan, a de facto independent state, pro-Western, democratic and with a successful capitalist economy.

As a piece of counter-factual history, this scenario is not a particularly plausible one. There is an obvious difference between Taiwan and Aksyonov’s hypothetical Crimea; Taiwan is much further from the mainland and has been protected ever since 1949 from invasion by the presence of American warships. (An attempt by the Kuomintang to hold on to the island of Hainan, much closer to China, proved unsuccessful). It seems unlikely that the Soviet government would meekly have accepted their initial failure to capture the island; far more likely that they would have redoubled their efforts in an attempt to crush the White movement once and for all and that, given their advantages in manpower and materiel, they would eventually have succeeded.

Alternate history novels, however, often make use of historically implausible scenarios for satirical purposes. (Keith Roberts’s “Pavane” and Michael Moorcock’s “The Warlord of the Air” are other examples which come to mind). Aksyonov is not seriously arguing that, were it not for the narrow isthmus connecting it to the mainland, the Crimea might have survived as an independent state. He is using his fictional Island of Crimea in order to make the serious political point that there is a long tradition of democratic political thought in Russia and that, under other historical circumstances, a genuine Russian democracy could have evolved. He is perhaps making this point as a rebuke to those Westerners (on both the left and right of the political spectrum) who persist in seeing Russia as a fundamentally illiberal country, fated to be forever ruled by some form of autocracy, whether Tsarist or Communist.

The action of the novel takes place in the late seventies. The main character is Andrei Luchnikov, the editor of a liberal Crimean newspaper. Despite his liberalism, Luchnikov has come out in support of a political movement known as the Idea of a Common Fate which seeks to reunify the Crimea with the Soviet Union. (Is “Idea of a Common Fate” really the best translation? “Idea of a Common Destiny” would sound better in English).

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union two years later, Cold War era satire can look very dated. There are, of course, exceptions; Orwell’s “1984” may, in part, have been aimed at Stalinism and Kubrick’s film “Dr Strangelove” undoubtedly grew out of the preoccupations of the Cold War, yet both retain their relevance today. The reason is that both those works possess a universality transcending the immediate political circumstances which inspired them. “1984” is not just a satirical portrait of Stalin’s Russia transposed to a futuristic England; it is also (among other things) a psychological analysis of authoritarian forms of government and of the will to power which gives rise to them. “Dr Strangelove” is not just about the political concerns of the USA and USSR in the early sixties; it is also a devastating satire on militarism in all its forms.

Aksyonov is unable to invest “The Island of Crimea” with any similar universal meaning. The best parts of his novel are probably those set in the Soviet Union itself, but even here he is doing no more than many others did in drawing attention to persistent shortages of consumer goods and the all-pervasive culture of suspicion which led the state to keep all its citizens under close observation. Some have tried to find parallels between Aksyonov’s story and the current dispute over the Crimea, but these really go no deeper than a coincidence of geographical location. The political situation of the 2010s is very different from that of the 1970s, when the idea that the Ukraine might one day be an independent nation-state rather than a Russian province or Soviet republic was no more than a pipe dream. It is notable that the words “Ukraine” and “Ukrainian” are hardly ever used in the book.

I think that the book’s most serious drawback is that Aksyonov is never able to make the “Idea of a Common Fate” seem plausible. Given that he portrays the Crimea as both much more prosperous and much more democratic than the Soviet mainland, I could not understand why so many Crimeans, including liberals like Luchnikov who had no ideological sympathy with Marxism, were so keen to promote reunification with Soviet Russia.

This matters, because it is this movement towards reunification which provides the novel with what little plot it has. In a book of some 350 pages surprisingly little happens except that Aksyonov occasionally kills off one or other of his characters, seemingly at random; these deaths do not seem to bear much relation to anything else in the book. For most of the time he just seems content to follow Luchnikov from one meeting with a friend or acquaintance to another, and as Luchnikov never came across as a character I could believe in this did not make for a very satisfactory story. The idea of a surviving White enclave could have made for a highly successful satire, but unfortunately “The Island of Crimea” is not it.

4 people found this helpful

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Peter LaPrade

Interesting concept, very flawed execution

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2004

Aksyonov's "Island of Crimea" has an interesting premise. What if Crimea were an island, instead of a peninsula. Further more, what if Crimea was the only area of Greater Russia to hold out against the Reds, and become a multiethnic "free" zone? Set in an alternate 1970s, The Island is a international hotbed of capitalism(like Hong Kong of old), but many want to rejoin Russia, under an idea of Common Fate. The people form a party called SOS. Also, there is a group of youngsters who want to have their onw identity, a Russian-Tatar mix called Yaki. In the background, various Russians plot, some for reunification, some against. Aksyonov almost had me spellbound, but the hero was too decandent, and some things made no sense what so ever.

3 people found this helpful

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Al B.

An excellent book on multiple levels

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2000

1. Fun to read 2. Amazingly prescient -- anticipates CNN, constant media coverage, etc. before these were ever invented in the West -- how someone in state-censored Russia could have anticipated and described it is a wonder. 3. An excellent satire, not just of Russian and communist mores and values, but also of Western mores and values as well. 4. It was haunting to read this book just as the turnover of Hong Kong to China was occurring -- many of the characters' comments in this book anticipated the same things being said 10-20 years later in Time and Newsweek.

6 people found this helpful

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o_cassidi@yahoo.com

Pain of the generation

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 1999

This book by Aksyonov is definately nowhere near "crap" like some reader wrote . Ironically , the same reader refferes to A.Rybakov ( !!! ) as a "good Russian modern author". Well , I guess the same reader preffers Pat Boone over Elvis too . Pity, pity, pity on that reader . The Island ( like most of Aksyonov's works ) has a great deal of pain and tortured social and civic selves of the people who are trapped between their love for Russia and grim Communist reality of the USSR . And again , like many other Aksyonov works , the Island might be a bit too difficult to fully understand and relate to for most of the Westerners . It is hard for the one who never experienced the gloom and doom of living in the country of the "proletariat's dictatorship" to fully believe that it was REALLY that bad . In this book the Island is a model of what modern Russia could have been if not for the violent Communist coup of 1917 that brought all the pain and misery in the world to Russia . The Island of Crimea is a great book ,well-written , with enough joy and enough pain to be read and liked by many .

25 people found this helpful

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max.t

A modern masterpiece

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2014

Any immigrant would enjoy this story. A Russian city left to develop as a Westernized society. Very colorful lifestyle; so very believable, Enjoyed it tremendously.

One person found this helpful

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GA

Great read!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 6, 2014

Verified Purchase

4 stars worth. Especially considering the current situation in and around Crimea, it's uncanny how Vassily Aksyonov "predicted" the outcome 35 years before. Even the vote held got 90% in favor.

One person found this helpful

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