The Whisperers : Private Life in Stalin's Russia

Fellow Orlando Figes
Picador USA
 9780312428037
0-312-42803-0

A New York Times Notable Book of 2007"A tremendous achievement."--The Sunday Times (London)The Whisperers is a triumphant act of recovery. In this powerful work of history, Orlando Figes chronicles the.

read more…

private history of family life during the violent and repressive reign of Josef Stalin. Drawing on a vast collection of interviews and archives, The Whisperers re-creates the anguish of family members turned against one another--of the paranoia, alienation, and treachery that poisoned private life in Russia for generations. A panoramic portrait of a society in which everyone spoke in whispers, The Whisperers is "rigorously compassionate. . . . A humbling monument to the evil and endurance of Russia's Soviet past and, implicitly, a guide to its present" (The Economist).