The unquiet ghost : Russians remember Stalin / Adam Hochschild.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Although some twenty million people died during Stalin's reign of terror, only with the advent of glasnost did Russians begin to confront their memories of that time. In 1991, Adam Hochschild spent nearly six months in Russia talking to gulag survivors, retired concentration camp guards, and countless others. The result is a riveting evocation of a country still haunted by the ghost of Stalin.

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Library Journal Review

Hochschild's search for survivors of Stalin's Terror results in a moving historical horror story. He spent half of 1991 in the disintegrating USSR, listening to former prisoners, guards, executioners, and families describe mass murder, imprisonments, interrupted lives, and hopes destroyed. Russian-speaking journalist Hochschild, a founder of Mother Jones , was among the first Americans to enter KGB archives, where he received records of executed Americans. He visited gulag sites and chapters of Memorial, an organization documenting the Terror. He traveled to Kolyma, the frozen final destination for many and a name that resonates among Russians with the power of Auschwitz. Hochschild's questions are disturbing and timeless: Why did the Revolution devour itself? What makes someone an executioner? Hochschild's people, as well as his honesty and passion, make this unforgettable book essential for everyone concerned about history and human rights. Strongly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/93.-- Donna L. Cole, Leeds P.L., Ala. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Journalist Hochschild (Half the Way Home), records the long-suppresed memories of Russians still healing from the wounds of Stalin's rule. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Hochschild has written a fascinating book about the victims and executioners of Stalinism. Taking advantage of the liberalization associated with glasnost, he interviewed scores of Russians over a six-month period in 1991 to determine their views of the most horrendous totalitarian movement in history. In lucid, dramatic style, the story of the evilness of Stalinism unfolds from the lips of children, intellectuals, workers, soldiers, and men and women of all walks of life. The insights are fresh and interesting, for example, the revelation that after Marshal M.N. Tukhachevsky playfully lifted Stalin over his head to show his strength, Stalin had him shot. The eyewitness accounts of the terror and tragedy of the Stalinist years are valuable sources of history. The book is highly recommended to the general public and the academic community. All levels. D. J. Dunn; Southwest Texas State University

Booklist Review

The decaying gulag isn't everyone's idea of a four-star itinerary, but Hochschild braved the discomfort to take a tour in 1991. Fluent in Russian, he made his way to dreadful places like Kolyma, the Auschwitz of the labor-camp system, but his real interest, and the value of this narrative, was in talking to people, both jailers and victims, who lived through the horrors. Nobody was exempt from an instant dispatch into hell, as his interview with Stalin's translator shows, but for some, those days weren't all bad. In the steppe town of Karaganda, Hochschild was entertained by a former camp commandant, who proudly showed pictures of himself speaking to an audience of convicts. He spoke with the daughter of a secret-police officer responsible for mass executions, a woman anguished by that knowledge but who, like millions at the time, figured the dead really were enemies of the people. The why of such supinity, and of complicity, is what pulls this acute observer across the vast archipelago. Hochschild attempts to convey some answers, but ultimately his contribution is to seek out witnesses of Stalinism and preserve their ruthlessly realistic testimony. ~--Gilbert Taylor

Kirkus Book Review

Although 20 million people died during Stalin's two-decade reign of terror, Russians have only recently, with the advent of glasnost, begun to confront their memories of that time. In 1991, journalist and memoirist Hochschild (Half the Way Home, 1986; The Mirror at Midnight, 1990) spent six months in Russia talking to prison camp survivors, retired concentration camp guards, and countless others: the result is a riveting and eloquent evocation of a country still haunted by the ghost of Stalin. Hochschild compares Russia to an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse who has spent years denying ``the elephant in the living room.'' Many of Hochschild's subjects open up to him with the intensity of patients confessing long-repressed secrets to a therapist. In the Siberian town of Kolpashevo, Galina Nikiforova, the daughter of a school principal who was taken away one night in 1937 and executed, reveals her certainty that her father was among those buried in a secret mass grave ripped open by the flooding river Ob in 1979 and immediately destroyed by the KGB. Galina can forgive her country anything but its refusal to grant its dead a decent burial. Meanwhile, Galina's neighbor and childhood friend, Inna Sukhanova, daughter of the chief of Kolpashevo's secret police, struggles with her love for her father--a former doctor who spoke four languages--and the anguish she bears for his having ordered the execution of thousands, including Galina's father, for ``nothing.'' Vladimir Glebov, a philosophy teacher in his 60s and son of Party boss Lev Kamenev, who was shot in 1936, spent his childhood wandering through Siberian orphanages and was sentenced, in 1949, to ten years in the gulag for preferring Emily Dickinson to Mayakovsky--experiences that, miraculously, have not dulled his sense of humor or his passion for anti-Stalin jokes. As sensitive, subtle, and moving as Chekhov: journalism raised to the level of art.