Imperium

"Imperium" is more than a mere travelogue of the states comprising the former USSR, although if the book were only visit to far-off spots (like Kolyma, Zabaykal'sk and Nagorno-Karabakh) that very few get to see, it would be worth your time. Ryszard Kapuscinski's masterful work not only describes places within "the Imperium" and the history behind them, it plumbs the very soul of Russia.

The book starts in Pinsk, in 1939, when the author was a boy. Stalin ruled the USSR and the Soviet Army's invasion of Kapuscinski's home city gave the author his first glimpse of the terror of the Soviet regime -- made even more terrible by the utterly arbitrary use of power. The remainder of the first section of the book describes Kapuscinski's travels on the Trans-Siberian railway in 1958 and in the southern portions of the USSR in 1967. Here we learn about the beauty and tragedy of Armenia and are given a feel for life in the "stans."

The second, and longest, section of the book describes the vast areas of the USSR visited by Kapuscinski between 1989 and 1991. Kapusczinski describes Moscow as it was, before Napolean's invasion, Moscow before the Bolsheviks took over, and their transformation of Moscow into a dreary, vaguely industrial-looking city. The symbol of the replacement of worship of God with the mastery of the State is the nearly overnight destruction of the magnificent Temple of Christ the Savior, which was built over sixty years, and its replacement with the Palace of the Soviets. Kapuscinski travels to Georgia, Armenia, and icy Vorkuta. In a chapter on Central Asia, Kapuscinski describes the destruction of the Aral Sea -- another man-made ecological disaster, caused by Brezhnev's order to turn Uzbekistan into a land of nothing but cotton. But the most heartbreaking chapter is on Kolyma, part of the gulag where millions were sent to their frozen, hungry deaths. This is difficult to read, but important.

Whither Russia? When this book was written, more than a dozen years ago, it seemed that Russia was starting to unfreeze -- at least politically and economically. Kapuscinski's outlook at the time was bleaker than most. He recognized the enormous problems facing Russia -- the legacy of terror and repression, the poverty, the demoralization of significant portions of the society and the ecological depredations. He also predicted a confrontation between Christianity and Islam in the border regions.

I wish that the author had been able to return to the Imperium and provide his unique insights into Putin-ruled Russia today. Unfortunately, Ryszard Kapuscinski died this year. This book is part of his important legacy.

Russia for all its' history has only worked well when it had a philosopher- king as its' ruler. Peter and Catherine did more to pull the country into a modernized version than all of their predicesors. Ivan III (not the terrible but the venerated) and Stalin had many of the same megalomaniac ideas of how to govern. I.e. Banish or exterminate anyone who doesn't agree with you (both had a son murdered on their orders) and rule by fear.

The one thing that you would have expected the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) to have accomplished in seventy years, was the construction of a massive infrastructure to allow them to better control the population. But the biggest problem in Russia today, is the work that was done during the communist period. Pre-revolutionary buildings (built before 1914) have held up better than those built under Stalin and especially those built after WW2. Russia has never been able to feed its' own people during the twentieth century because of the poor distribution system that exists to this day. It is estimated that half the harvest is lost each year due to a lack of infrastructure to move food from the farms to the cities.

Kapuscinski gives us a background on the ways in which the CPSU controlled the country but never learned to govern it. He begins with his visits in the pre-WW2 era, gives us extended tours during the middle century and an interesting view at the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In his ending section (His Sequel) he is prescient in discussing how he sees the beginning of the failure of 'democrats' to rule Russia and the beginning of the growth of monopolies and dictatorship. Only a strong hand will help Russia survive while it tries to set its' house in order. He saw Putin coming before anyone knew his name.

Ryszard Kapuscinski is a guru to many people in Poland, and his books were always received with unending awe - because he traveled, when hardly anybody else could o anywhere apart from other countries of the Communist bloc, and moreover - he could write about what he saw... I still marvel how he managed to write so many things, which were in principle against the system, and still get published, but it is another question (Polish censorship was maybe not that tight or not that clever, or - most likely - clever enough to allow the chosen one his writing in the name of relative peace???).

"Imperium" is one of my favorites among Kapuscinski's books (NB. I have read the original, so have no idea about the translation, but after reading some earlier reviews I think it must be good too). I have been driven to the mystery of Russia and its acquisitions as well as to the phenomenon of Soviet Union for a long time, and here Kapuscinski gives a lot on these subjects in a concise form.

The book is divided into several parts, starting with the author's earliest memories of Soviet Union, when he was a schoolboy of what is now Belarus, and with his surprisingly acute observations (reminding me of my own, never put into words, forty years later, when everything was already much more relieved, but still the school was mysteriously insane). Then we go through Siberia on the Transsiberian train (still a cult trip for many students in Poland, albeit it must be very different now), and proceed to the other republics of the Soviet Union.

Kapuscinski traveled as a journalist, but always he managed to get something private out of each visit, which had to have an official program and probably nothing more was permitted. He talked to people in the forgotten corners of the Imperium and in the representative places, watched them, saw the ancient rituals and old habits under (and clashing with) the overwhelming, transplanted Russian culture, and wrote about it, preserving the memories and triggering in several generations the urge to see it with their own eyes, managing to capture the atmosphere of each place he got to... He evokes the image of "Homo Sovieticus", at the same time wondering about Russian soul.

The book is full of literary allusions and connections and contains a rich bibliography at the end, which is also recommended. "Imperium", as Kapuscinski warns at the beginning, is a collection of observations and his thoughts, as deep as they can be in this form, but because the subject is vast, everything is treated personally and rather as an encouragement to inflame greater interest, and then more monographic works come in handy (e. g. reading in "Imperium" about the North led me to excellent books by Mariusz Wilk, a longtime resident of Solovki).

I heartily recommend this book - it cannot disappoint!

Think of Dante's ability to create entire worlds. Think of Dante's skill at capturing the largest of themes and extracting their essences. Kapuscinski's Imperium is indescribably more than memoir, travel stories, or USSR history. If you relish writing of the highest caliber, read this book. You will be rewarded on every page. Along the way you will also come to know the world that existed behind an Iron Curtain for most of the last century. This is the work of an accomplished master who has distilled 54 years of observations and 360,000 miles of travels into wisdom, insight, and poetry. I certainly wish that more than 5 stars could be awarded.

My grandparents left the territory of what would become the Soviet Union long before the 1917 Revolution. They came to America and I thank God they did. Whenever I read about the USSR, I always realize that only a couple of small decisions saved me from being born there, or more probably, saved me from being wiped out there, since I was born during World War II. Fate has a way of creating circles, though, and I've wound up teaching English to people from my grandparents' homeland. It's curious. Many of them are ethnically exactly the same as I am, but it is always obvious that there is a huge cultural gap. OK, they didn't grow up in America. I have never set foot in any part of the former USSR. I have spent the last 14 years peering into their pasts, constantly wondering why they are predisposed to think this way, act that way. I have thought long and hard about the issue, discussed it with many of my students, read their stories, listened to many more. A book like IMPERIUM goes a long way towards helping me understand that difference between me, "the one that got away" and them, "the ones that didn't".

Back in 1988, in a single week, I read three of Kapuscinski's books in a mad dash of fascination. I'd already spent over six years living in various Third World countries and his writing on Iran, Ethiopia and Angola captured something that no one else came close to, especially because he never sneered, he never condescended. No racist platitudes, no grandstanding for a Western audience for Kapuscinski. IMPERIUM, the description of his travels around the Soviet Union in 1958, 1967, 1989-90 and in 1992-93, continues in his own tradition of inserting himself into the most desperate of situations, visiting places where the most extreme sorts of human behavior have taken or are taking place. I feel that at times he does exaggerate certain events, certain facts may be forgotten or left out. (Plus, if you can't read Polish transcriptions, the names will all look strange to you.) No matter. He arrives at a picture that rings with authenticity; he is able to persuade you that you understand what is happening. (Or that nobody can understand what is happening.) This author can somehow portray the stupidity, the bestiality, bravery, and unconquerable human spirit that suffuses every event in our unhappy human history. He does it with a sense of immediacy, crossing every cultural and racial boundary as if it didn't exist. (Do they really exist ? Much less than most people think, I would say.) He visits the frozen horrors of the gulag archipelago, now fallen silent, crumbling into the permafrost. He describes the petty nationalist hatreds that increasingly suffused Soviet life to the end, the economic disaster, the environmental destruction, the brutality of a government that deliberately let ten million people starve to death, the lack of organizational knowhow, a dispirited despair. It is all a dark picture of a country that devoured so many of its own, shot itself in the foot so many times. He did come up with numerous insights that helped me to understand my own past or, as it were, my own non-past. No delving into party history, statistics, or laws and decrees; he cuts straight to the heart of the matter. If you need a single book that will describe the atmosphere in the former USSR, that will help you understand what happened to people there, choose this one.