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The Stalin Epigram: A Novel, by Robert Littell
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Based on a riveting historical episode, The Stalin Epigram is a fictional rendering of the life of Osip Mandelstam, perhaps the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century -- and one of the few artists in Soviet Russia who daringly refused to pay creative homage to Joseph Stalin. The poet's defiance of the Kremlin dictator and the Bolshevik regime -- particularly his outspoken criticism of Stalin's collectivization rampage that drove millions of Russian peasants to starvation -- reached its climax in 1934 when Mandelstam, putting his life on the line, composed a searing indictment of Stalin in a sixteen-line epigram and secretly recited it to a handful of friends and fellow artists.
Would Stalin and his merciless state security apparatus get wind of this brazenly insulting poem? Would the poet's body and spirit be crushed under the weight of the state if they did?
Narrated in turn by Mandelstam himself, his devoted wife, his great friends the poets Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, along with vivid fictional characters, The Stalin Epigram is the page-turning tale of courage and the human spirit told in deftly poetic prose by a perceptive, talented writer. With the benefit of extraordinary research and an almost mystical empathy, bestselling author Robert Littell has drawn a fictional portrait of the beleaguered poet struggling to survive the running riot of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s. This memorable novel culminates in a wholly unexpected encounter that illuminates the agonizing choices Russian intellectuals faced during the Stalinist terror and explains what drew Robert Littell to the poignant subject in the first place.
- Sales Rank: #935181 in eBooks
- Published on: 2009-04-24
- Released on: 2009-05-12
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Veteran espionage novelist Littell (Vicious Circle; The Company; etc.) trades cold war spies for interwar Russian poets in his wonderful new novel. In 1934, real-life poet Osip Mandelstam struggles to get published in the totalitarian state. A battered idealist who has witnessed his share of Stalin-orchestrated horrors, Mandelstam feels writers have an abiding responsibility to be truth tellers in this wasteland of lies. Much to the despair of his fellow poets, Osip writes an epigram likening Stalin to a ruthless killer, leading to Osip's arrest, brutal interrogation and exile. The robust narrative employs an array of narrators, including Osip's devoted wife, Nadezhda; his disloyal lover, actress Zinaida Zaitseva-Antonova; and Stalin's personal bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik. The most intriguing voice heard is that of Fikrit Shotman, a weightlifter turned circus strongman who shares a cell with Osip and whose journey from Moscow prison to Siberian gold mine perfectly captures the absurdity of life under tyranny. Littell is unflinching in his portrayal of Osip's tragic arc, bringing a troubled era of Russian history to rich, magnificent life. (May)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Critics agree that The Stalin Epigram is a powerful novel. Littell, who met with Osip’s wife in 1979 and recorded the story of his imprisonment and death, tells a harrowing, almost absurdist tale of imprisonment, exile, and death in the Soviet state. Turning from his Soviet spy thrillers, Littell provides an impeccably researched historical backdrop, and his multiple perspectives offer a full picture of the era’s emotional and physical horrors. The strength of the book lies in Littell’s command of the brutalities of Stalin’s regime.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC
From Booklist
Russian poet Osip Mandelstam once said Russia is “a country where poetry is respected—people are killed for reading it, for writing it.” Sadly, he was correct. He died in a Siberian gulag in 1938, one of millions of victims of Stalin’s terror. Littell, best known for espionage novels (The Company, 2002), turns to historical fiction by telling Mandelstam’s story through the eyes of the poet’s wife, Nadezhda, and various others, including writers Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova. Littell begins the story in 1934; Mandelstam is famous but impoverished because publishers are now afraid to release his work. His only powerful patron, Bukharin, has been banished from Stalin’s inner circle. He assumes his arrest is imminent, and he writes “The Stalin Epigram,” a 16-line poetic attack on the dictator’s brutalities. There is an awful beauty to Mandelstam’s story as Littell tells it. The characters are trapped in a country gone mad, yet they strive to maintain their humanity. Historically accurate and filled with period detail, this is both a tragic and life-affirming novel. --Thomas Gaughan
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Survives on the strength of its writing
By Dan Berger
What fascinates me about Robert Littell is how different his books are from one another. "The Company" was a spy saga, the best spy novel ever written. "Walking Back the Cat" was completely different, shorter and lighter. "The Once and Future Spy" had an entire story-within-a-story about Nathan Hale.
With "The Stalin Epigram", Littell leaves the espionage genre. This might be a historical novel, but I really think it's just a novel - one above genre, one that survives on the strength of its writing rather than by following any formula.
The novel is based on a true incident. Leading Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, already out of favor with Stalin's Communist regime and scraping to survive, wrote a 16-line poem, or epigram, directly attacking Stalin in 1933, after having seen, from a train passing through the countryside, the effects of the collectivization famine-genocide the Bolsheviks had visited upon the Ukraine.
The poem was essentially his death sentence. He escaped initially with four years internal exile which, along with his interrogation, broke his health and sanity, but was rearrested shortly thereafter and sentenced to a Siberian labor camp which proved to be the death sentence intended. He died in 1939.
I was initially wary of a book about poets, but Littell keeps it moving and I flew through the pages. Littell uses an unusual structure to bring to life this episode, which deserves to be better known in the West than it is. Each chapter is seen through the eyes of a different character close to it - Mandelstam himself; his wife Nadezhda; his friend and fellow poet Anna Akhmatova; an actress and mistress who turns Mandelstam in out of fear; Stalin's bodyguard; a weightlifter imprisoned at the same time who becomes Mandelstam's cellmate; and the like. Littell does well with the different voices - the peasant simplicity of the weightlifter, the poetic sensibility of Akhmatova and Mandelstam, the warmth and trepidation of friend and writer Boris Pasternak; their Slavic romanticism; and the political fear that pervades them all as the Communist terror grows. A mordant humor present in many of them keeps the book from being too overwhelmingly depressing, although the subject matter otherwise would and should be.
And Stalin himself: we see him justifying the terror as an advance purge of potential Fifth Columnists who might aid the Germans in the event Hitler invades, and holding in contempt what he sees as the weakness of the intellectual faction dominating the Old Bolsheviks - people too weak, in his mind, to do the dirty work a thorough social revolution entails. (Unlike someone of peasant roots like himself.)
The bones of the story are factual, mostly. Littell does a grand job imagining the conversations and providing the mood and detail - how people go into exile, how interrogations worked, and what life was like in the labor camps of Siberia.
Stalin's terror ought to be revisited by fiction writers again and again, particularly now, as so many records and memoirs have been released granting foreigners and latter-day observers far better factual information. Littell has done a grand and principled job in writing this book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
I loved it!
By pushkins
This book was absolutely tremendous. I heard about in an NPR review and decided to give it a try.
Mr. Littell did a wonderful job creating the tragic, romantic, intense and frightening world these poets, some of the world's greatest, endured. He incorporated anecdotes that I remember from Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope, but made the material his own. He portrayed the poets as the artists they were and also as well-educated, sophisticated city dwellers almost completely at odds with their savage times. His use of frequent quotations from Mandelstam's, Akhmatova's and Pasternak's poetry serves as a aid to understanding the context of their work. one Mandelstam poem I remember begins "I returned to my city (Petersburg), well-acquainted with tears". After having read this novel, in which Mandelstam briefly returns to Petersburg after his years of internal exile, this poem has more resonance for me.
I also enjoyed the sweet, comic character of Shotman, who seems to have wandered in from an Ilf and Petrov novel to take up residence here. his ability to cope with the extremes of Soviet life was a relief from the sufferings of the other characters.
I recommend this book, and the poetry of the characters, most highly.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A fascinating subject, a sometimes awkward book
By Esquilan
The story of the poet Mandelstam in the 1930s and of his relationship with Stalin is certainly fascinating and well worth telling. The narration in this book is clear, with a good choice of episodes and points of view, and a reasonable pace. The author brings much interesting information into a coherent and well-written story.
However, I do not find the book very convincing when it comes to imagining intimate details about the main characters and their psychology. I am under the impression that the author's command of the Russian language and history is not quite deep enough for the level of detail he describes. Although this is mostly a subjective impression of mine, let me cite two remarks which contribute to this impression. First, the author insists on the Georgian origin of the term "khozyain", which is used to describe Stalin. However, this is the common Russian word for "master". (See Tolstoi's short story, "khozyain i rabotnik".) Second, the author attributes to Stalin the almost superhuman power of predicting the forthcoming war with Germany.
The reader would certainly enjoy the book more if the picture was more credible down to the small details. Nevertheless, although I did not believe everything, this was a good read.
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