Customer Reviews:
 Still Whispering October 29, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
You will never read a more granular, detailed and moving book about what Stalin did to his own people. The final whispering of the generations persecuted,the sheer number of people's stories might be overwhelming if they were not so individual and peculiar, so consistent and so different. You may go in thinking Stalin less evil than Hitler, but you will not finish this book with that idea. The sheer scale of the madness, the length of time it went on, will take your breath away. Orlando Figes writes plainly, and tells you first, what happened during the chapter (the context), then provides detailed examples, and follows a few family stories all the way from 1917 till today. This is great scholarship and history, valuable to professionals and ordinary readers.
Beautiful and necessary September 7, 2008
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
A fascinating book about the interior lives of ordinary Russians during the Stalinist period. Based on hundreds of family archives and several thousand interviews with survivors, it tells us more about the Soviet system than any other book I know. Beautifully written, it is a rich and deeply moving history, universal in its themes, which leaves the reader awed, humbled, yet uplifted by the book's humanity. Figes takes us into 'whispered' lives, going again and again to specific people with names and families, to reveal the human suffering, the personal betrayals and moral compromises, the acts of love and kindness, and the sheer resilience that defined private lives in the Stalin period. The opportunity to hear these Russians speak of these things as individuals, in their own voices, is overwhelming, and a gift to all of us. Orlando Figes visits their ordeals with enormous compassion, and he brings their history to life with his superb story-telling skills. I hope he writes forever.
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