Word: soloviev
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...NINE LIVES IN THE RED ARMY (308 pp.)-Mikhail Soloviev...
...generation of Mark Surov, writes Soloviev, "had nothing; yet it was rich...
...peasants and dissident Communists forced to labor like slaves. Because of an order from Stalin, he must lead a winter march down the Amur River to set up the industrial city of Komsomolsk. Without proper food or clothing, the march of the Young Communists turns into a pointless sacrifice; Soloviev's description of how they follow the Amur, dig holes in the ground for shelter, and perish from cold and hunger, is a masterpiece of reporting...
...creaking? Don't worry; an old tree creaks a long time before it snaps, doesn't it?") Mark dreams of assassinating the Beloved Leader, but Volkov dissuades him: "The point is not to kill Stalin, but to destroy his system." "Deny It." In describing the purges, Novelist Soloviev throws in some sensational details which he does not manage to authenticate as history, but which have at least fictional verisimilitude. Stalin's bosom friend, Ordjonikidze, poisoned by Stalin's orders, shouts into a telephone as he lies dying: "Koba, I go, but you will follow...
...tempestuous vigor of his story tends to blur the fact that few of Soloviev's characters have any individual flavor or depth. Mark Surov is more a window opening on to Russia than a credible person; most of the others are stock villains or victims. Only the Old Bolshevik Volkov, apparently modeled on Nikolai Bukharin, comes to life. And appropriately, it is he who carries the meaning of the book: "We, my boy," he tells Surov, "are the victims of our own crime...