of Russian history.
If Russia, in Churchill’s words, is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, this splendid biography by Aron (Russian
Studies/American Enterprise Institute) does much to unwrap the mystery of one of Russia’s most enigmatic statesmen. Opinion in the West about Yeltsin has veered from incomprehension through idolatry almost to contempt. While showing Yeltsin’s conspicuous faults, it is Aron’s great virtue to reveal his even more impressive virtues: Even as an apparatchik, Yeltsin showed an enormous capacity for work, was demanding, incorruptible, and almost disdainful of the privileges to which he (as a member of the nomenklatura) was entitled. But his supreme virtue has been his courage: his unprecedented criticism of the corruption of the old guard at the 70th Party Conference in 1987; his steadfast refusal to bow to attempts to discipline him; the memorable moment when (with Gorbachev in detention and the Communist hardliners seemingly in control) he rallied the democratic forces by his speech from a tank; the economic revolution which, in the teeth of diehard opposition, he brought to Russia; and, perhaps most remarkable of all, his insistence—in the face of plummeting polls, pessimistic advisers, and his own illness—on holding democratic elections as scheduled in 1996, ultimately winning against all odds. In between there were some inglorious moments: the brutal and incompetent war in Chechnya; the periods of passivity, depression, and apathy (reminiscent, Aron says, of a manic-depressive cycle); and the times when a corrupt group "under the pseudonym Yeltsin" seemed to run the country. But for all these failings, Yeltsin (whom Aron compares to De Gaulle and Lincoln) has provided, in the most tolerant and the least aggressive regime in Russian history, "the irreducible tripartite core of a modern democracy": a free press, free opposition, and free elections. In richness of information, analysis, and judgment, Aron illuminates not only a great man but a supremely critical period
of Russian history.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-25185-8
Page Count: 896
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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