Stalin’s civilization was first of all a civilization of relationships. The historian is drawn into a flood of documents, reports, public or secret decrees. He analyzes forms of power by going deep into authoritarian mechanisms. The autopsy of the Great Terror, remarkably carried out by Nicolas Werth in The Drunkard and the Flower Seller (“Le Monde des livres” of April 3), is an accomplished example.
But the USSR was also a huge field for the production of personal sources, showing history from the point of view of those who lived it on a daily basis. Collected by the Memorial association or the Sakharov foundation, deposited in the collections of literary archives or the secret police, buried in personal archives, these stories, written on the spot or remembered years later, tell of upset lives where alternate violence and tranquility.
Oral testimony sheds light on parts of a story that the documents conceal. These stories are made up of the meeting of the historian with the witness, the latter offering a narration of his life, it is true passed through the filter of the present. With The Whisperersthe British historian Orlando Figes thus leads us into the flood of voices of those who were born at the time of the Revolution.
This book is in line with his previous ones, paintings from the Russian and Soviet era, and focuses on the Stalin period. The writing is remarkably alert, served by a high-quality translation. From this fresco, which intertwines historical narrative and pieces of life, spring a succession of salient moments, upheavals, existences which suddenly change, but also the ordinary of the dark years.
This book offers to hear beautiful slices of life, told with the words of those who remember. Their words include the daily life of community apartments. “Residents started measuring every square inch of the hallway and communal rooms, and protesting that my mother had left some furniture there, tells of the daughter of a countess whose house has been divided into collective accommodation. The “neighbors” timed the time we spent in the bathroom.”
Figes emphasizes the privileges constituted by the often ephemeral access to special stores intended only for the elite of the moment. He describes on the spot the fear of arrests, the difficulty of returns, the whispers that are circumscribed to the family circle and translate the fear of speaking. It also traces the lives of those who pass from repression to consecration, from stigmatization to honours. So Constantin Simonov: this man, from a noble family, became official writer of Stalinism, continues his career, entangled in his contradictions, defending those of his corporation with caution but sometimes with effectiveness.
But if it leads the reader into a lively reading of history, the book does not simplify the landscape any less. As a result, it does little to understand the system as a whole. The author also pushes too far the idea that “the stories of families intertwined with the narrative in The Whisperers are probably too numerous for the reader to follow as individual stories. (…) Rather, they should be read as so many variants of a common story.” By offering a “exemplary life” made up of pieces of diverse lives, it makes us lose sight of the unity of each and the diversity of experiences.
Orlando Figes finally seeks to show that two worlds face each other: the one where words are whispered to each other, and the one in which, to survive and give meaning to one’s life, one tries to stick to the Soviet project. The story of the life of Pavel Drozdov illustrates this: arrested in 1925 for participating in a student organization, he spent two years in the camp, then, once released, remained there to work as an accountant. His career crosses paths with Berzine, one of the leaders of the Gulag, who makes him one of his close collaborators. He then became a high-ranking member of the NKVD, the political police. Figes concludes: “Not bad for a man who only a few years earlier was just an ordinary prisoner in the Gulag!” A formula that is no doubt a bit short, which observes without explaining, and which shows that the approach followed here does not really allow us to understand what Stalinism means as a mechanism.
More generally, moreover, one wonders about the method: the rewriting, it is true very successful, of an immense work of collection carried out by others, combined with a broad knowledge of recent historiography. We are grateful to Figes for providing the material collected (interviews and family archives) on its website (www.orlandofiges.com). On the other hand, he himself hardly made any interviews. What then remains of the historian’s direct contact with his witness, of the context in which the interview took place? What about the criticism of the procedure?
We also wonder about the status of this story of a genre that is very popular with publishers today: halfway between the novels of Jonathan Littell and scientific studies, these books depict a period through the adventure of a few characters. A story that seeks above all to thrill, without developing a real analysis. Seductive and fascinating, like good historical novels, these works lose part of what the researcher’s work produces: the critical look, the putting into perspective of the elements that allow understanding, the call for reflection more than to empathy.
THE WHISPERERS. LIVE AND SURVIVE UNDER STALIN by Orlando Figes. Translated from English by Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, preface by Emmanuel Carrère. Denoel, 791 pages, €33.
Alain Blum is a historian and demographer, author of “Born, live and die in the USSR” (Payot).
We should also mention the paperback reissue of The Russian Revolutionby Orlando Figes (Gallimard, “Folio Histoire”, 2 volumes, € 11.60 each).