Orlando Figes’s latest book is based on the work of Memorial, a Russian organisation dedicated to the ‘awakening and preservation of the societal memory of the severe political persecution in the recent past of the Soviet Union’. As part of its work, Memorial has uncovered hundreds of family accounts of the Stalinist Terror, and conducted interviews with surviving members, giving Figes unprecedented access to the thoughts of ordinary Russians who tried, and often failed, to survive.

Lewis Siegelbaum writes:

Most of Figes’s witnesses are ‘ordinary’, though a few belonged to families that had been among the political, military and scientific-cultural elites before (but rarely after) their unwelcome encounters with the security apparatus. All had relatives who did time in special settlements, labour camps or as forced labourers. The book relies heavily on survivors’ memories, as recorded in interviews with members of Memorial, a historical research and human rights organisation, that were conducted between 2003 and 2006. Supplemented by letters, photographs, personal documents and official reports, these oral histories give us some idea of what it was like to live with a ‘spoilt biography’ in Stalin’s Russia. Organised chronologically, the book tells the Soviet experience in terms of family history across two and sometimes three generations.

(LRB 10 April 2008)

Allen Lane | hardback 740 pp. |ISBN: 9780713997026