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Summary:
A New York Times Notable Book of 2007
"A tremendous achievement."--The Sunday Times (London)
The Whisperers is a triumphant act of recovery. In this powerful work of history, Orlando Figes chronicles the private history of family life during the violent and repressive reign of Josef Stalin. Drawing on a vast collection of interviews and archives, The Whisperers re-creates the anguish of family members turned against one another--of the paranoia, alienation, and treachery that poisoned private life in Russia for generations. A panoramic portrait of a society in which everyone spoke in whispers, The Whisperers is "rigorously compassionate. . . . A humbling monument to the evil and endurance of Russia's Soviet past and, implicitly, a guide to its present" (The Economist).
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
It cannot get more riveting that this
Customer Rating:
if you have read it all about Stalin times. If you don't understand how an entire population became schizophrenic this is a sure bet. Learning how to whisper your deepest thoughts became a survival skill in Stalin's USSR. There is no equivalent to this work as of today. It is unique and is not the type of book you read on a plane or at the beach. If you are doing research for a U paper this is an amazing document to jumpstart your work. Two thumbs up.
the inhuman power of the lie
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There are many history books that have tried to analyze the sheer madness of Stalin's Russia, but the immensity of that madness has overwhelmed many historians and their readers. Anyone with an interest in the topic will be rewarded upon tackling this massive treatment from Orlando Figes, who offers a unique and moving account of the desperation of millions of ordinary Russians as they tried to cope with the political terror and economic suffering handed down by their leaders. During Stalin's reign, everyone was an informer and there was immense pressure to denounce "enemies of the state" - a term that kept changing with each of Stalin's paranoiac bouts of madness. To gain favor with power hungry officials trying to kowtow to Stalin's paranoia, individuals were coerced into denouncing their friends and relatives, only to be denounced themselves later. Stalin's megalomaniac drive to rid his realm of poorly-defined enemies resulted in the murder, imprisonment, or relocation of literally millions of Russians, with untold misery for the population that continues to haunt the national character to this day.
Those with an interest in the ridiculous magnitude of political, economic, and social engineering during the Stalin years may marvel at the sheer enormity of it all. Existing history books merely hint at the logistical immensity of the Soviet project, while the human costs have received little coverage. Here Figes does a great service by allowing hundreds of ordinary Russians to tell their stories through late-period interviews or in-depth research of memoirs, thus representing the suffering of millions. We get heartbreaking tales of suspicion among loved ones, families torn apart by imprisonment or banishment into exile, depression caused by the coerced denunciation of friends, and even the bizarre methods used by loyal citizens to justify their own destruction by the regime in which they believed. All the accounts are joined by a monumental sadness and valiant attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible.
What Stalin did to political and social life during his unhinged reign was so immense that historians have probably only scratched the surface of all the misery and madness. Here Orlando Figes provides valuable insight into the suffering inflicted on regular folks by the not-so-great men of history. [~doomsdayer520~]
History as seen across the kitchen table
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The Whisperers is history as seen across the kitchen table through a standard, 50 mm lens. Whereas much of the history of the Stalin era is writ large, swimming in the Gulag's sea of death and destruction, defined by war, purges and diplomacy, here Figes writes about Russian life on a smaller, more human scale. Tracing the lives of seven or so families from the 1917 revolution forward, this is not unlike a Ken Burns documentary in prose. Mined from memoirs and personal interviews, The Whisperers is intimate and deeply textured, particularly in its biography of the main character, the writer Konstantin Simonov, whose life was Molotov-esque in its reflection of the warped Russian reality of the 20th century. (Reviewed in Russian Life)
Brilliant
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This is one the great history books of our times. Based on hundreds of family archives and interviews with the last survivors of the Stalinist regime, it opens up the hidden private lives of ordinary people, exploring family relationships and the interior lives of individuals. Brilliantly researched and written with compassion, it is full of heartbreaking human tragedies, stories of betrayal and lost relationships. It is a very draining read emotionally, but not depressing, for there are also stories of human kindness, love and sacrifice. There were many moments when I had to put the book down and take a breath, moments when I had stop and cry.
Figes and his team of researchers have done something amazing in getting all these people to speak so openly about their lives, and historians will remain in his debt for many years. The book is a monument to the suffering of millions under Stalin, and it will be read in a hundred years.
Superb and chilling
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Over the last decade or so, a flurry of excellent works about Stalin and his times have appeared on bookstore shelves. But even among this stellar company, The Whisperers stands out. It draws on oral histories, interviews and privately-written manuscripts -- the raw material that is the first draft of history -- of all kinds to describe the experience of everyday life in Stalin's Russia. What was it like for a "kulak", a party worker, a scientist or engineer, a journalist, a housewife, to try and survive this totalitarian regime and its vast network of spies and labor camps? Figes doesn't just tell us, he shows us. The reader ends up caring so much about each of the characters he portrays so deftly that it's almost impossible to resist the temptation to fast-forward, using the index to jump to the pages where the next installment of that individual's life is described, in order to find out what happened to them. It's chilling -- especially when you combine it with a recognition of the nostalgia that some Russians now feel for the Stalinist era. Scholarly in nature and extent, almost impossibly ambitious in scope -- and yetsomehow Figes has managed to turn this into a gripping read.
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