Review: Russia Upside Down by Joseph Weisberg

This book is a joke. It’s a joke on how demented and caustic American mainstream media has become that you only read opinion pieces on how evil the bad guys are (Trump, Putin, Xi, Elon being in the lead). It’s also a joke on how nobody engages with the public on how to de-escalate the situtation with Russia. It’s also a joke on how simple yet practical the suggestions by the author are which can result in somewhat less animus relations. It’s also a joke, however, on the book itself because most of the suggestions are backed by hearsay like “I heard this…”, “I read this…”. Wish it was slightly more academic in its research. The book is more of a rebut than a refute.

Weisberg himself joined CIA but from what one can gather reading the book, he hardly worked there as went away for a year to take care of his ill father and then resigned after coming back. Still he doesn’t shy away from repeatedly stating “when I was at CIA…”. Well, everyone deserves a chance to pat one’s back for sure. He has brought together several suggestions on how US – Russia can normalize their relations, but they are more oriented towards the extremely biased, and hand-in-glove left-illiberal media. He also counters many famous, standardized narratives which have been paraded long enough to paint Russia and Putin as evil of the highest order. He does refer to few reports here and there but majorly to anecdotal evidence. One interesting postulate he brings forward is of that even the harshest Russian critics of U.S.S.R felt bad when U.S.S.R collapsed because it was their region. They were critics of the communist rulers and politicians but not of the region in itself because there was absolute mayhem after the collapse, a manifold increase in corruption and cozying up to the powers.

A book which is different than the league but not serious enough to garner any major support from anyone whatsoever. Intent is good though not backed by hard work.

Review: Stalin by Oleg Khlevniuk

Stalin

To consider Stalin, for most historians, anything other than a monster would be a crime of large proportions. In fact so much so that he is often deprived of all feelings and emotions he might have had when alive. Whether these feelings and emotions actually existed or not would never be known, but still voices of denials of their existence are more powerful than which claim otherwise. Khlevniuk writes, “in today’s Russia, on the other hand, Stain’s image is primarily being shaped by pseudo-scholary apologias. Most of these authors blend a lack of the most elementary knowledge with a willingness to make bold assertions”.

The book begins with events of March, 1953, when Stalin was critically ill and his closest comrades were around him, or were trying to be around him, perpetually in fear of arousing his wrath lest he accused them of interfering in his daily activities. They were: Georgy Malenkov, Lavrenty Beria, Nikita Khrushchev, and Nikolai Bulganin. The flow of the book is sequential, with dropped-in scenes from this March of 1953, when most awaited the vozhd’s death, or rather wanted his death. Ioseb Jughashvili was born on 6-December, 1878 – a fact rather hidden in the official Soviet biography of that time.

The author has diligently dug in the archives to bring out a clearer picture of the power struggle behind Stalin’s back. From Stalin’s school days to his rebellious youth in the religious church, the portrait drawn is neither dry nor garnished with unnecessary facts. Though now Stalin is being written about through this lens of hindsight, sometimes this leads to too narrow an approach. It seems no matter what Stalin did, he was always wrong. Or always plotting against someone or the other. His various affairs and the terror of repression and kulaks are written about in much detail. Of all the leaders after Lenin’s death, why could only Stalin become the vozhd? The author gives ornate descriptions of the mindset of various comrades and their actions, but it was only Stalin who had this insatiable zeal to come out at the top.

The later events of World War II, his meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt in Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, his efforts during Cold War to race ahead in arming USSR with nuclear-heads, his orders of shooting people close to him just to upset the balance of power, and his quirky behaviour with people associated with cinema – it’s all covered in this one. The analysis of Stalin when Hitler attacked USSR is nothing short of brilliant – the tension, the pressure, and the failure of the leader to lead. His transition to a ‘Generalissimo’ in eyes of his ‘followers’ is a tale worth remembering. The failures of Soviet leaders in terms of economic policies, wrong war-time decisions, strategic mistakes, political maneuvering are analysed in great detail by Khlevniuk.

This is a definitive biography of a man who cannot be just ignored or forgotten. A must read for anyone interested in Soviet history.

(And this was much better than Paul Johnson’s Stalin: The Kremlin Mountaineer – which was full of trite passes and biased writing)

Buy from Amazon:

 

Reflections: Vozvrashchenie (The Return)

Thanks to IMDB that I have discovered movies from different regions of the globe which otherwise I would have never heard of. An year and a half ago I came to know of a movie whose title was tongue twister. And it had got good reviews. The brief of the story was that the story is about two young brothers and their father who returns after 12 years to meet them. The description wasn’t very exciting but nonetheless kept it in my ‘to watch’ list. And finally on a cloudy Sunday afternoon I watched it, after spending the morning watching ‘Devi Ahilya Bai‘ – a historical movie but little slow even for me who wouldn’t get bored watching a dead fly for hours.

 

The movie is Russian and has won many awards including Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It starts with four young kids jumping off a tall tower over a lake and brandishing their courage in doing so. The last one –  Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) is unable to for the fear of heights. He is mocked by being called a chicken by his friends and his elder brother Andrey (Vladimir Garin). The two brothers start fighting and rush home to complain about each other to their mother, who asks them to be quiet as their father is sleeping inside. They are surprised as Otets (Konstantin Lavronenko) has come to meet them after 12 years. Though it isn’t apparent whether Ivan or Andrey have ever met him or not. He takes them on a trip which would include fishing but somehow he gets busy with a ‘business deal’ in the middle and drags along his two children with him.

Ivan finds his father not too friendly and remains distant from him while Andrey is comfortable. Till now the brothers have lived a very protected life with their mother. It is Otets who teaches them to fight to protect their right (though unsuccessfully), move a thing that ain’t moving by putting branches under it (a stuck up car), row a boat that’s lost in the middle of nowhere with a faulty propeller and how to anchor a boat on a beach side (again unsuccessfully). Otets hits Ivan and Andrey lot of times depicting his dominant side but also worries and cares about them by fishing and making tents for them.

 

Towards the end, before starting their return journey from an island where Otets digs up a small wooden box as a part of his dealing, the brothers get quite late while returning from a fishing trip and anger him. Otets slaps Andrey around four to five times and upsets Ivan who runs away and climbs a tall tower in the forest by the beach (and trust me those slaps are for real and very very hard!). Once on the top, Ivan shouts that he is not a chicken and not afraid to jump off it. Otets while trying to dissuade him from jumping catches hold of loose plank of wood and falls to his death. The brothers drag his body somehow to the boat (using the skills taught by their father), cross the huge lake in boat by rowing and arrive at the point where they had left their car earlier but forget to anchor it. The boat swerves away because of the intermittent waves and the boat sinks along with Otets’ body leaving the two brothers alone.

 

The direction by Andrey Zvyagintsev is focused on the details with hundreds of beautiful shots throughout the movie. The one towards the end where the boat is showed with Otets’ body and later sinks is beyond words. As with American Beauty in which Thomas Newman‘s music amplifies the hold of the movie on you, in this one Andrey Dergatchev‘s music magnifies the dark shades of the movie combined with the overall glum feel of the movie. ‘Final Titles‘ by Dergatchev is soulful to say the least.

There are movies which move you. This one shakes you up!!

 

(As a sad ending, Vladimir Garin, who played Andrey, got killed when he jumped off a tower by a lake side when challenged by his friends to do so. It was same tower showed in the opening scene. A haunting return indeed.)

 

(Wikipedia, though is probably the first source for us to know about many a things, is hugely biased in favour of ‘Western topics’. You search for Andrey Dergatchev and get nothing. Similarly, a few days ago I was searching for Yuri. V. Gankovsky – a Russian scholar – and I got nothing!)