Imperium Book

In 1917 an entire world went mad; a madness that came to be called the Soviet Union. The persecutions and wars that began with the October Revolution and that lasted for decades were marked by an almost incomprehensible series of mass exterminations; between 1918 and 1953 an estimated 54-110 million citizens of the USSR perished of unnatural causes. The Soviets left behind an enduring legacy of poverty, demoralization and ecological catastrophe.

Deftly weaving historical narrative, personal travel stories and the testimony of those he meets along the way, Polish journalist, poet and traveler Ryszard Kapuściński bears compassionate, clear-sighted witness to this world and its disintegration.

In one of the book's opening chapters, Kapuściński sets out from Peking on the Trans-Siberian railway in 1958 and reaches the border between China and the USSR: "Now it begins. The opening, the unfastening, the untying, the disemboweling. The rummaging, the plunging in, the pulling out, the shaking about. And what is this? And what is that for?...."

But the worst offenders are citizens of the Soviet Union who have brought in little sacs of kasha and it is the job of a customs inspector to sift through it all: "A careful, meticulous sifting through the fingers....The fingers, delicately and imperceptibly, but very carefully, very vigilantly, roll the grain about. They investigate. The experienced finger...ready to throttle the grain instantly, catch it in a trap, imprison it. But the little grain is simply what it is...."

And then comes one of those passages that set Ryszard Kapuściński apart--the flash of empathy, not for the more obvious victim of this nonsense, but for the inspector: "Why, these are fingers that should be should be sculpting gold, polishing diamonds! What microscopic movements, what responsive tremors, what sensitivity, what professional virtuosity!"

I have never read anything quite like this book. I finished it in just a couple of days and then immediately turned back to read it--study it--a second time. It's brilliant, beautiful, weird, astonishing, prescient, haunting and sometimes darkly comedic; filled with word-pictures that seemed rather like the glittering tesserae of a smashed mosaic. If you care about history, if you want to understand how and why the madness happened and why the world is still paying the price of this terrible time--read this book.

I've included more quotes and pictures of the former USSR in the comments section below.