The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin by Carol Any (review)

Nabokov may have been reluctant until late in life to travel by air, but reminiscences of early aviation (see ‘Time and Ebb’) and transatlantic flights (see Pale Fire) figure in Nabokov’s work. Here Leving channels the poetry and non-fiction of Aleksandr Blok, among other notable cultural figures of the early twentieth century, in establishing the prominence of aeronautics for the pre-Revolutionary Russia in which Nabokov came to maturation. Well-illustrated and featuring a number of relatively rare auto-related photos of Nabokov and his family (his son, of course, raced automobiles as a young man), Nabokov in Motion reflects its subject matter in a fitting, engaging way. It seems a bit churlish to fault the author for leaving out this or that cultural reference from his impressive overview of the era, but Leving might have mentioned Walter Ruttmann’s seminal film, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City, with its frenetic focus on modern contemporary life in Berlin of the 1920s. More so than any early Soviet film Leving happens to mention in his study, Ruttmann’s ecstatic, yet somewhat ominous celebration of modern Berlin runs remarkably parallel to the urban world in motion that Nabokov creatively captured on paper as an émigré writer in the city. Nevertheless, Leving captures the long, yet rapid trajectory of Nabokov’s progression through the twentieth century like few scholars can, and we are fortunate to be able to go along on this now-translated ride.