Black Earth: A Journey through Russia After the Fall

Black Earth: A Journey through Russia After the Fall

Black Earth represents perhaps one of the best possible examples of a travel book, written in the vein of such masters as Mr Kapuscinski ( Imperium ) and D. Remnick ( Lenin's Tomb ) , where the author describes for the first time places that usually do not appear on the first pages of daily news, places somehow forgotten , but still part of modern Russia , places that the existing nomenclature has simply deleted from being, sometimes literally ( like a Chechen village of Aldy near Grozny with a heart-rending descriptions of a massacre of completely innocent people by crazed Russian 'kontraktniki ' , that shows the ongoing brutality and carnage reminiscent of the last Balkan war in Bosnia with the important difference , namely , it does not appear anywhere in media , or the town of Okha with its rows of the most dreaded Soviet-style residential blocks in the far East , where one cannot find even a single reastaurant , where the only way of survival is duck -hunting , ) sometimes one wishes that these places would never even have been built ( like Norilsk with its aboundant history of Stalinist massacres , slavery and complete economic insanity , from where there has been no escape for noone ,as the closest settlement is about 500 kms away in any direction ) ; the author shows immense knowledge of Russian history , and understanding for misery of its tragic peoples , who could have had different and better lives if there was no communism ( the plight of people he meets , destruction of nature around places he visits - e.g. Zheleznogorsk, the island of Sakhalin , economic mismanagement of the worst kind , modern plagues like aids , prostitution , drugs and emotional cruelty, all of which have been taking a horrible toll on the population , as the Russian demographic condition is one of the worst in the world with more dead than newborn); The author ends his portrayals in St Petersburg , as the former, pre-revolutionary Russian capital , which still astounds one with its preserved architecture , but is also an unofficial Russian crime capital , even exceeding Moscow itself , where couple of thousands of politicians , businessmen and journalists were gunned down in the most ingenious and brutal ways , without a single crime solved to date , all of that just part of the city 's dark spirit ; in Moscow he takes part in the gala orchestra night with all the most important new riche , generals and secret policemen included , gossiping about a price of a villa on the Spanish coast . In short : a must - read for anyone interested in the true nature of communism and its consequences today , where one must ask oneself : what has changed , if anything ,and is the cold war really over ?

The author travels all over Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. His trip to Chechnya is really eye-opening. If you're interested in Russia, I highly recommend this book.

Meier writes about the transition pains that Russians have and are experiencing as he travels there from 1995 to 2002. From Chechnya to Sakhalin to Norlisk, Petersburg and Moscow, Meier meets with ordinary and not so ordinary Russians to get a sense of their new post-soviet existence. His knowledge of Russian history and literature makes the book even more interesting as he commonly draws from the past and literature to explain the Russian character. This is by far one of the best accounts on contemporary Russia, a travelogue that gives the reader a real sense of not only what it means to live in Russia today but a good sense of where Russia is headed.

This book recounts the author's travels throughout Russia in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Overall, I think that Meier makes a worthwhile contribution to the already substantial number of journalistic travel narratives that focus on the post-Soviet realm. The book is divided into 6 chapters: the first and last ones discuss the author's time spent in Moscow, while the other 4 trace his visits to the southern, northern, eastern, and western edges of the country. His journey to the south takes him to Chechnya, where he visits a village that was the site of a purported recent massacre of civilians. This chapter was interesting if only for the fact that there is still a dearth of Western journalists who have managed to visit and write about the region. His interviewees there include Chechen civilians, Russian military personnel, doctors, local warlords, and others. His analysis of the political dynamics was fairly neutral and evenhanded. Meier's northern journey involves a trip up the Yenisei River from Krasnoyarsk to Norilsk, which lies above the Arctic Circle. Norilsk was founded as a prison camp and today is centered on the extraction of nickel and other natural resources. Meier is mostly interested in the city's history as a part of the gulag, and he interviews numerous people who were themselves prisoners. One of the chapter's themes is the fact that many of these people elected to stay in this polluted, isolated, freezing place even after they became free, simply because they had nowhere to go. Next Meier goes to the Pacific island of Sakhalin, home to some of Russia's largest oil fields. He hauntingly describes driving through near ghost towns that have been decimated by industrial collapse, emigration, and various other societal ills that are pervasive throughout Russia. Finally, Meier has a nice chapter on St. Petersburg, looking at the city's cultural and historical role in Russia. He uses the assassination of Petersburg politician and reformist Galina Staravoitieva to make a statement on the failure of liberalism in Russia, as an ideology and social movement.

Overall, Meier writes well and often with penetrating insight. His interviewees include a colorful cast of characters from all walks of life, including ordinary Russians, pensioners, cultural and literary figures, academics, and political leaders. As is the case with any book that often jumps from topic to topic, it is uneven at times. He jumps from past to present with regularity, and his efforts to connect the two are not always successful. In addition, like many working within this genre, Meier often can't resist the temptation to indulge in abstract philosophizing, although he is definitely less guilty of this than others. In short, I would heartily recommend this book to anyone with a general interest in Russia. Meier provides an insightful, empathetic analysis of the political, social and economic transformations wrought by the collapse of communism, and the ways in which these changes have impacted ordinary Russians' lives.

I was looking for a walk down memory lane. Yessir, I got it.

I was looking to be educated about Russia by a competent scribe who could cut through all of that jingoistic anti-post-Soviet (and mostly Western-instigated) gibberish that pervades the shelves of the big literary boxstores, which some people call "bookstores." Yup. I got it, too.

I wanted to be entertained with a book which, on the cold hard face of it, could have alternately emerged as a dry quote-heavy and source material-heavy non-fiction tour-de-force. It wasn't. So, uh-huh, that wish came true as well.

Andrew Meier's book is a sheer delight for the visual senses. Tolstoy would have been proud. Solzhenitsyn is chuckling about this, even today, and he's not laughing at Mr. Meier as much as he's laughing about what Mr. Meier writes about. Why didn't this come to market a lot sooner, Solzhenitsyn seems to be asking...

Russians across that vast expanse of territory situated at the top of the world atlas are also cheering in hip-hop-hooray at Mr. Meier's efforts. Across the colorful breadth of Mr. Meier's massive book, you get a sense inside its pages that a lone man's really devoted himself, monk-like, to the dissection and comprehension of the cross-section of Russian society in a way few researchers of his ilk really have. It's so impressive.

What you're going to read inside these pages, folks, is truly a work of admirable obsessiveness by a young man who has passionately found himself in a land not quite his own. I'm suddenly envious of him for finding a passion which has overtaken his senses to the degree that the former Soviet Union has. All of us must have this passion. Our lives depend on it.

I admit, like most Westerners, much of what we know about yesterday's and today's Russia is biased by more than forty years of the Cold War. Much of what we know is useless wide accusatory brushstroking that doesn't help us to understand what make these people truly tick.

Rarely has a Westerner had such an exclusive chance to probe into the depths and lives of a former "enemy. When an opportunity arose post-glasnost, Meier was one of the first Western reporters to really get a good look around at things. He tells you all about it in black and white.

I can't fault any of these chapters, really.

I'd love to have read more about the lives of the oligarchs, but I understand the comparative paucity and murkiness of the supplied information on the likes of Mssrs. Berezovsky, Gusinsky, and Potanin. It's clear that Meier could have been putting his very life in danger for doing so. We have all heard of the fates of Mssrs. Klebnikov and Theo Van Gogh and then, of the late Madame Politikovskaya. There's no use belaboring the point that Meier is an overly talented author who has more than just his authorial career at stake, in the mix. Though I appreciate his candor and the depth of incisiveness with which he was capable of going, sadly, authors in Russia can only probe thus far...

The section about Chechnya was simply marvellous. Meier really got in there, befriended all the right people and got into their thoughts and all. He's even written something about Chechnya in its own subsequent treatment, something which I'm going to get my hands on eventually. It's hard for all of us to visualize what's going on over there in the Caucasus--let alone look at it soberly and without judgement--for the simple reason that what the Russian armed forces are doing gets subsumed into that war on something starting with the letter "t." Because the Russians are deemed to be engaged in something totally acceptable as per the world's opinion, it suddenly doesn't seem all that wrong. Troublesome thoughts, indeed.

I warn you, ladies and gentlemen, this is by far an "easy" read. It's heavy and the print's for the most part, tiny. It's going to take you a good long while to finish it, and even if you're a fast reader, I recommend it best to meander about its pages for a bit. It's detail-a-plenty, and something tells me to gobble this one quickly is actually a disservice to Andrew's diligent toil.

He really covers all the bases, it's staggering. I'm still in awe.

While I finished this one in 2007, his is my best non-fiction book of 2006. Hands down.

Five stars from me.

Hand on the heart,
ADM in Prague