I didn’t care for the flavour Sixsmith added to his take on the far history of Russia, yet here I am reading his sequel, covering the entire Soviet empire, start to finish, and enjoying it. In his first book, Sixsmith wrote from the perspective of “Western” approach = good, “Eastern” approach = bad. Everything bad about Russia was therefore the result of the Mongol occupation and its lasting effects on the Slavic mentality. But there are no Mongols here, and Sixsmith actually lived through the Soviet era (I mean this literally, he has spent significant portions of his life there), so this time he aims his disdain at the actual people making decisions, and grounded with the testimonies of the people (though there is still a clear underlying current of the same mentality). He’s still selling a point of view, but he provides a really solid overview of nearly a century of chaos.
It helps that I actually know Soviet history, but as with many children of Soviet parents, my knowledge has the shape and texture of Swiss cheese, and Sixsmith helped fill quite a number of gaps. He starts with the politics of the revolution itself. The cultural narrative that I grew up with, even from now very conservative parents, was that while the revolution was terrible, shit really hit the fan under Stalin. I was therefore quite surprised to learn about the beautiful cornucopia of nightmares Lenin was able to implement, and how little connection he and his confederates had to the actual revolution they used to surf into power. Sixsmith subtly demonstrates the way these new leaders used new words but in practice led the exact same way their predecessors had, going back a thousand years. Much like the war lords and tsars that shaped the region, the Soviet government was authoritarian from the start, at their attempts at democratizing no different than those of Catherine the Great – a placation meant to reinforce the legitimacy of the existing social structures. The real difference was that while previous leaders would say that it was their right, obtained from the divine or from violence, to do as they felt right, the new leaders acted just as mercurially, but told the populace it was for their own good (rather than the good of the country, for example).
This led to a fascination discussion of the tension between the original concept that grounded the Soviet ethos – a worldwide workers’ revolution (and so necessarily anti-nationalist) and the undeniable power of nationalism to mobilize people. This tension is especially interesting in the wake of the shift in modern politics, where countries (other than the US and Russia) are trying to walk an analogous tightrope between leaning into the nationalism brought on by political antagonists and re-committing themselves to global cooperation in the wake of losing its two major anchors. If the story of the Soviet union is anything to go by, that tightrope is even more precarious than it looks.
Sixsmith also provides you with an ocean of first person perspectives from all over. Artists, factory workers, farmers, journalists, all living under the weight of constant dread, of enduring, but not without losing something essential in themselves. He also brings in first hand experiences from politicians, news reports, art. This is especially effective in an audiobook format, because not only are you hearing about first hand experiences, you’re hearing it from the people themselves.
Though a few years old now, this book seems more timely than ever, and perhaps all the more interesting, because it explores similar themes to what is happening geopolitically now, but perhaps sufficiently removed that people can read it without activating their entrenched political views.
Then again, maybe not, but a worthwhile read nonetheless, especially if you’re interested in gaining a better appreciation for how we got to where we are, or why so many people have such intense feelings about communism as a concept.