It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway : Russia and the Communist Past

by Satter, David

• ISBN13: 9780300111453
• ISBN10: 0300111452
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-13
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Russia today is haunted by deeds that have not been examined and words that have been left unsaid. A serious attempt to understand the meaning of the Communist experience has not been undertaken, and millions of victims of Soviet Communism are all but forgotten. In this book David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent and longtime writer on Russia and the Soviet Union, presents a striking new interpretation of Russia's great historical tragedy, locating its source in Russia's failure fully to appreciate the value of the individual in comparison with the objectives of the state. Satter explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society. He shows how it is possible for a government to deny the inherent value of its citizens and for the population to agree, and why so many Russians actually mourn the passing of the Soviet regime that denied them fundamental rights. Through a wide-ranging consideration of attitudes toward the living and the dead, the past and the present, the state and the individual, Satter arrives at a distinctive and important new way of understanding the Russian experience.

Author Biography

David Satter is senior fellow, Hudson Institute, and fellow, Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He was Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times from 1976 to 1982, then a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for the Wall Street Journal. His previous books Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union and Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State are both available from Yale University Press. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
List of Abbreviations and Administrative Delineations	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The Statue of Dzerzhinsky	p. 11
Efforts to Remember	p. 29
Butovo and Kommunarka	p. 49
St. Petersburg	p. 75
The Appeal of Communism	p. 95
The Responsibility of the State	p. 112
The Trial of the Communist Party	p. 128
Moral Choice under Totalitarianism	p. 142
The Roots of the Communist Idea	p. 167
Symbols of the Past	p. 88
History	p. 207
The Shadow of Katyn	p. 229
Vorkuta	p. 256
The Odyssey of Andrei Poleshchuk	p. 279
Conclusion	p. 300
Notes	p. 307
Bibliography	p. 357
Index	p. 365
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.