Sashenka by Simon Montefiore
(New York, Simon & Schuster, 2008)
Seldom in human history has the human soul been put to trial as it was in 20th century Russia, a scorching trial that started well before the Great October Revolution and lasted till 1953 and even beyond.
Tens of millions of Russians lost their lives in the madness and randomness of the Terror, unleashed first by Lenin and vastly expanded upon later by his fiendish successor Joseph Stalin.
Many millions were shot, many millions dispatched to the icy wastelands of the Siberian Gulags after Kangaroo trials and false confessions extracted through brutal torture, many millions exiled to remote corners and many millions died in the forced famines in Ukraine and elsewhere (and we are not even including the many millions who died in World War II).
All but the most hardy perished in those hard years.
The vast majority of the victims (even the so-called Kulaks) were innocent of any crimes. Their only sin was to have been born in that benighted land.
Few Indians are aware of the great Russian tragedy of the 20th century. Back when we used to live in India, even the educated idiots were blissfully unaware or blithely dismissed our accounts of the brutality inflicted on millions in Russia as American propaganda.
In the name of an ideology called Socialism, in the cause of building a glorious Soviet nation and in the name of the great leader Stalin, countless innocent citizens were murdered and tortured, countless families torn asunder and countless children orphaned.
Sashenka – One Family’s Story
Sashenka by the historian and Stalin biographer Simon Montefiore is the fictional look at one victim family in Russia over an eight decade period.
We first encountered Sashenka’s author Simon Montefiore when we picked up his Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar at our local Border’s store a few years ago. The biography was an awesome work and led us to borrow the prequel from our library when it came out a few years later.
So, our expectations ran very high from Sashenka.
While Sashenka has a panoramic sweep as it compresses eight decades into 511 pages, unfortunately the historical novel is no patch on Montefiore’s two majestic non-fiction works on Stalin.
The book is divided into Continue reading »
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