Reflections on the Russian soul : a memoir /

This memoir, which first appeared in Russian in 1995, is valuable for numerous reasons. Its author, a prominent and recently deceased Russian cultural historian, stresses his pre-Soviet childhood and youth, his years (1928-31) as a prisoner on Solovetski Island (the most significant of his life), and his family life in 1941-42 living in Leningrad while Germans were besieging the city. There are many fine descriptions in these pages, including the look and sounds of St. Petersburg and dacha life on the Finnish coast before WW I, a Volga Cruise in 1914, and the detailed descriptions of Solovetski and its prisoners. The fifty pages on besieged Leningrad are especially good, acknowledging the noble and heroic behavior of some and the shameful and villainous acts of others. His memoirs especially pay tribute to those who tried to live honest and creative lives among the many falsehoods and denunciations that surrounded them under Lenin and Stalin. The author says little about the post-Stalin period. Endnotes and photographs, but no index. Recommended for academic and large public libraries. W. G. Moss; Eastern Michigan University