This was a fascinating book that covers the history of Russia from approximately 1984 through 2015. This history is told through the stories of two groups of people. The first group includes four people born as Russia began its attempted transition to capitalism and democracy. The second group includes people who have thought about what it means to be Russian – a psychoanalyst, a sociologist, and a philosopher. Through the lives and work of these people, we learn about how Russia changed over this time period.

What I Loved About This Book

This was well written, engaging nonfiction. It felt like a true version of historical fiction, because I’m only used to seeing such personal perspectives when the author has the leeway to make things up. Here, the author has done so much research, they can give us that same sort of personal perspective from real people.

The vivid introductions and helpful cast list were enough that I could generally keep track of all 7 of our protagonists. The people we followed were chosen extremely well. They had a wide variety of experiences, coming from different social classes and different generations. I particularly liked when we saw the same event from multiple peoples’ perspectives. That made it possible to appreciate some of the complexity of these events.

What I Didn’t Love About This Book

The level of detail is part of what made this such an engaging read. It also contributed to the book feeling very information dense. I was always trying to absorb a lot of information about both the personal lives of the characters and the historical events they were living through. Like All the Kremlin’s Men, this book would work best for people who already had some knowledge of Russian history. It gave a great sense of what it felt like to live in Russia at the time, but it wasn’t a primer on the events of this period. Sometimes events were shown through the eyes of children, for example, making it harder to understand what was going on. The story was also not told completely chronologically.

The Author’s Central Claims

The author identifies two models they refer to throughout the book. The first is a psychological model and the second is sociological. According to the psychological model, Russia is like a person who hasn’t dealt with past trauma. The country hasn’t reckoned with the horrors of the past  or built a new identity not based on being a great empire. The author notes that this would have been a difficult undertaking due to the fact that many of the same people were both victims and perpetrators.

Parts of the psychological explanation for why Russia failed to become a democracy made sense to me. Critically, because of the lack of reckoning with the past, old power structures weren’t dismantled. This allowed the same people to maintain control and simply reshape themselves to present as a democracy. It also made sense that Russians would resent their loss of status and be upset to learn how poor they were compared to people in other countries. In the US, we’ve also seen a turn toward autocracy fueled in part by economic resentment. However, the author’s conclusion that Russians are like victims of abuse who feel safest in situations that replicate that abuse (where abuse= a totalitarian society) seems like a stretch to me. The suppression of dissent plus disillusionment with reforms seems like a simpler explanation for Russian reactions to Putin.

Few reviewers engaged with the psychological model the author used. Many of them repeated and/or criticized the author’s support for the sociological model they reference, which claims that the Russian people have been shaped to suit a totalitarian regime. The author describes this type of person, dubbed “Homo soviticus”, as being isolated, steeped in doublethink, and most comfortable under a totalitarian government. I think this model has the same essential problem as the psychological model. Both fail to recognize the ability of the Russian people to make new choices. These models suggest the return to authoritarianism is a foregone conclusion, partly because of the character of the Russian people. Again, it seems more likely to me that this regression is driven by harsh crackdowns on dissent and economic resentments looking for a scapegoat.

One last point – several reviews debated the author’s description of Russia as a totalitarian state. To me, this seems like an unhelpful quibble over the definition of totalitarianism, not a substantive disagreement about the character of the Russian government.

Helpful Resources

• This thorough review from the LA Review of Books clearly and neutrally describes the author’s arguments.
• Between minutes 10 and 20 of this podcast interview the author gives a concise summary of the two models they referenced. This definitely shaped my reiew!
• BookForum review critical of the idea of Homo soviticus
• Detailed review supportive of the author’s arguments from The New Republic
• Review from The Guardian quibbling about the definition of totalitarianism

Conclusion

I really liked this book! I still want to find something that’s a little more of a basic primer on the events of this period, but the personal perspective provided by this book was fascinating. It really did achieve the author’s goal of reading like a sprawling, engaging Russian novel – just one that’s true.

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