The Use of History in Putin’s Russia

scene of the 1930s – Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Lugovsky, Nikolai Zelinsky among many more – who were experiencing tremendous hardship due to the early years of the war, evacuation, censorship, Stalin’s terror and family dramas (much of it intimately connected). As Gromova notes, gradually one gets to see the writers’ personal stories and the many faces they encountered, or an invisible map of these people and their lives. What emerges is an entwined and distinctive landscape resembling a book of anatomy and its blood vessels (p. 80). A number of important letters and locations in central Moscow are introduced to the reader, almost taking us on a virtual tour of Arbat’s backstreets and alleyways. Whilst this is a very well written and intriguing novel, it is rather easy to get lost. Gromova focuses her book on those in the background, who surrounded the great Russian writers, not only to piece together the period but to ‘open up the past in a fuller way’. The novel’s appeal is in its archival nature, and yet, this is precisely why the reader might stumble along the way. By design, the novel continuously moves between time periods, persons and subjects – much like one would in the archives. If one does not have a notepad beside them, losing track of the characters is all too easy. Sections within lengthy chapters that regularly chop and change make for a challenging read. One line I revisited several times offers an explanation as to why the reader loses their bearings and may struggle to keep up: ‘It’s impossible to immerse oneself in an era that one hadn’t lived’ (p. 78). And perhaps that is the point; the past is gone and may be beyond our ability to reconstruct. Olga Bessarabova’s and Maria Belkina’s notebooks bring this world back to life through Gromova’s account, but in a way difficult to piece together properly. Whilst Moscow in the 1930s is certainly a slow read, it is worthwhile for scholars and students. What doors are we trying to unlock, and what keys will fit? The prize behind the door may simply be a key to another door, which when opened, takes our path in a completely new direction. Much like a mosaic, the past looks messy up close. One must take a step back to both admire and conceptualize it properly. The small pieces around the primary picture are often those which bring the past to life.