Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love and War
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'A Russian Wild Swans ... Some of the stories will stay with me forever' Sunday Times 'Heartbreaking, romantic and utterly compelling ... An astonishing personal history of love, death and betrayal' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Gripping ... This fascinating book is not a footnote to Soviet history: it is Soviet history, one of the millions of private tales of evil and astonishing endurance that make up the awful whole' Observer 'Epic ... extraordinary ... Matthews ... seems to contain an essence of a Russia that preceded the turmoils and savage inflictions that he so richly describes in his book' Simon Callow, Guardian
Product Description
On a midsummer day in 1937, Boris Bibikov kissed his two daughters goodbye and disappeared. One of those girls, Lyudmila, was to fall in love with a tall young foreigner in Moscow at the height of the Cold War and embark on a dangerous and passionate affair. Decades later, a reporter in nineties Moscow, her son Owen Matthews pieces together his grandfather's passage through the harrowing world of Stalin's purges, and tells the story of his parents' Cold War love affair through their heartbreaking letters and memories. Stalin's Children is a raw, vivid memoir about a young man's struggle to understand his parents' lives and the history of the strange country in which they lived.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am perplexed and surprised at the negative reviews of this book. The romantic Zhivago-esque marketing of the book is, admittedly, irritating and title not the best - the book is not about Stalin or his children, but as should be apprarent from the sub-title and blurb to all but the most obtuse reader- a memoir interweaving family history of the Anglo-Russian journalist Owen Mattews with broader development of Russia from the Great Purge to the corrupt, free-for-all capitalism of the Yeltsin era. (His family are 'Stalin's Children' in the sense that the fates of its members is set by the impact of Matthew's grandfather's arrest and execution in Ukraine in 1930s.)
I've read a lot of books about Russia, having studied and lived there in the 1990s, including many which like this one try to mix personal history/reportage with attempts to get to grips with Russia in broader terms. Many are very poor, degenerating either into personal diaries which reveal that authors are less than interesting, or cliche-ridden generic superficial histories going over the same ground, which barely scratch the surface of the country. This book, however, avoids such pitfulls.
It's well written, skillfully interweaves the different characters and era, genuinely insightful about Russia (even perhaps for those familar with the country) and very readable, flagging slightly only when we get onto the author's seemingly happy marriage at the end of the book as the Russian background recedes away. The core of the book is the relationship between the author's Welsh father Mervyn and Russian mother Mila, who met in Moscow in the early 1960s, but like a number of similar couples were blocked for years in their efforts to marry by the Soviet authorities. They are certainly slightly odd, but not I found unsympathetically so and their complex and interesting characters, which Matthew's unravels with an admirable balance, detachment and honesty about relationships and father adds another layer to the book.
I've read a lot of books about Russia, having studied and lived there in the 1990s, including many which like this one try to mix personal history/reportage with attempts to get to grips with Russia in broader terms. Many are very poor, degenerating either into personal diaries which reveal that authors are less than interesting, or cliche-ridden generic superficial histories going over the same ground, which barely scratch the surface of the country. This book, however, avoids such pitfulls.
It's well written, skillfully interweaves the different characters and era, genuinely insightful about Russia (even perhaps for those familar with the country) and very readable, flagging slightly only when we get onto the author's seemingly happy marriage at the end of the book as the Russian background recedes away. The core of the book is the relationship between the author's Welsh father Mervyn and Russian mother Mila, who met in Moscow in the early 1960s, but like a number of similar couples were blocked for years in their efforts to marry by the Soviet authorities. They are certainly slightly odd, but not I found unsympathetically so and their complex and interesting characters, which Matthew's unravels with an admirable balance, detachment and honesty about relationships and father adds another layer to the book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this book because it had been chosen by the Budapest culture club; I ordered it and when it arrived in the post I calculated that I needed to read at least 20 pages per day to finish it prior to the culture club event. From the first page I could hardly put it down. It's not an especially long book, but reading it within a week, as I did, was testament to the grip with which the author, Owen Matthews (a friend of a friend) took hold of me. The day before the club event our mutual friend invited me to dinner with the author, who I hadn't known when he lived in Budapest in the mid 1990's, and who I then had the great pleasure to sit next to and quiz about his book. Hearing him describe the process of writing it and having it edited gave me a fascinating insight into how editors contribute to the output of their authors.
It's a wonderful book, tracing the history of the author's family across three generations.
I cannot recommend it more highly.
It's a wonderful book, tracing the history of the author's family across three generations.
I cannot recommend it more highly.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There's a famous quote often misattributed to Stalin, "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." I couldn't tell you where the quote comes from, or if it was just a piece of western Cold War propaganda. No matter its authenticity, the quote is certainly the kind of thing Stalin would have said, and sums up perfectly the callousness of his rule.
Owen Matthews' book - part memoir, part biography - looks at the horror of Soviet Russia through the microcosm of a single family, and in doing so focuses the reader on the tragedy, rather than the statistics. Previous reviewers (I'm thinking of the two - inexplicable - 1 star reviews) have said they don't understand the point of this book, as if only the major players of the era (Stalin, Trotsky, Yezhov, Beria et al) are worth writing about. Others, even more bafflingly, have criticised the title of the book, as if, despite the blurb, they were expecting a book about Josef Stalin's biological offspring.
All of these reviews (hilariously, in the latter cases) miss the point. Owen Matthews' mother and maternal aunt were every bit 'Stalin's Children', effectively orphaned by the state, raised to believe in the dictator's benevolent, paternal image. He shaped their lives to a greater degree than their ill-fated parents ever could.
If I have a minor criticism of the book, it's in the writing itself. Matthews states he spoke Russian before he could speak English, and has spent much of his adult life living in Russia (and presumably still speaking Russian as a first language), which may explain why his writing occasionally suffers from what Martin Amis would call elbows - sentences that just don't scan - but for every "elbow" there is a turn of phrase or a detail that's spellbinding. For anyone interested in the minutiae of domestic life in 20th Century Russia, this book is indespensible.
If you're looking for an account of Stalin's inner circle, or the large-scale horrors of the purges and the Gulag, go read Simon Sebag Montefiore or Anne Applebaum. If, however, you're looking for an intimate and heart-breaking personal account of Russia's past and present, I can think of few better books than this.
Owen Matthews' book - part memoir, part biography - looks at the horror of Soviet Russia through the microcosm of a single family, and in doing so focuses the reader on the tragedy, rather than the statistics. Previous reviewers (I'm thinking of the two - inexplicable - 1 star reviews) have said they don't understand the point of this book, as if only the major players of the era (Stalin, Trotsky, Yezhov, Beria et al) are worth writing about. Others, even more bafflingly, have criticised the title of the book, as if, despite the blurb, they were expecting a book about Josef Stalin's biological offspring.
All of these reviews (hilariously, in the latter cases) miss the point. Owen Matthews' mother and maternal aunt were every bit 'Stalin's Children', effectively orphaned by the state, raised to believe in the dictator's benevolent, paternal image. He shaped their lives to a greater degree than their ill-fated parents ever could.
If I have a minor criticism of the book, it's in the writing itself. Matthews states he spoke Russian before he could speak English, and has spent much of his adult life living in Russia (and presumably still speaking Russian as a first language), which may explain why his writing occasionally suffers from what Martin Amis would call elbows - sentences that just don't scan - but for every "elbow" there is a turn of phrase or a detail that's spellbinding. For anyone interested in the minutiae of domestic life in 20th Century Russia, this book is indespensible.
If you're looking for an account of Stalin's inner circle, or the large-scale horrors of the purges and the Gulag, go read Simon Sebag Montefiore or Anne Applebaum. If, however, you're looking for an intimate and heart-breaking personal account of Russia's past and present, I can think of few better books than this.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
In the end, was it worth it ?
As one reader pointed out already, I am somewhat surprised by the strong feelings this book has generated towards some readers and Amazon buyers. Or maybe not. Read more
Published 10 months ago by buc
Good in parts
As one of the former Surrey University students that the author's father apparently felt 'contempt' for, I was particularly motivated to read this book and find out more about him. Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2010 by D. Parsons
Couldn't finish it
All families have fascinating stories to tell particularly if they've lived in times of historical turmoil, but that doesn't mean that there is a book in it. Read more
Published on 27 July 2009 by Elka
How come this book was ever published?
This book is a terrible disappointment. One reviewer asked why this book was ever written: I want to know how come it was ever published. Read more
Published on 11 July 2009 by M. Tomlins
Why was this written?
It is difficult to see why this book was ever written - it does not reflect well on any of the main protagonists. Read more
Published on 7 July 2009 by Hound01
Stalin's Children
Ordering and delivery were first class. Unfortunately the book was not what I was expecting - the title meaning children of Stalin in its very broadest sense, i.e. Read more
Published on 22 Jun 2009 by Rowley
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