The book is more than a litany of woe. There are cheerful pictures of cosmonauts’ weddings, of Khrushchev and Brezhnev having a snowball fight, of the four exceptionally lovely daughters of Czar Nicholas II. But let’s face it, those girls ended up being executed in a dank basement in Ekaterinburg, along with their parents and servants. The tale of Russia in this century is a mournful one, as the book’s text by Brian Moynahan loses no opportunity to point out. Moynahan, a British journalist and author, also knows how to focus on revealing details in the bigger picture. He describes the shops in St. Petersburg at the time of the revolution, “full of flowers, corsets, dog collars and false hair, bourgeois objects for which there was no demand.” He quotes an eyewitness to the first world war: civilians had faces “idiotic with fear,” and Russian women “snatched their greasy skirts and fled” at the sight of soldiers. While the text is longish and sometimes repetitive, the most frustrating thing about it is the lack of footnotes. At a time when new archives are changing the face of Russian history, to provide no footnotes is irresponsible.
The sources of the photographs are also unclear. Merullo and Jackson give credit wherever possible but tell us nothing about tracking these images down. A Random House editor says one photographer they found had used an old bucket as an enlarger; many others were also working in poverty and anonymity. We wish we knew more. One of the book’s most revelatory images comes from the official photo agency at Tass. It shows Lenin in a wheel-chair after he’s had a couple of strokes, his expression totally gaga. There’s no question why Kremlin rulers kept it hidden all these years. They were afraid of the power of images, and this fine book makes it dear why.
