From Samarkand to the Soviet Union
An eclectic guide to Europe.
Wednesday, February 22 2012 || Books || BY Nevil Gibson
Germania (Picador)
The German Genius (Harper Perennial)
If France provides the head and Italy the spirit, it is Germany that holds Europe together. Most of the focus these days is on the euro’s debt crisis and whether the Bundesbank can provide enough financial clout and to bail out its bankrupt neighbours. The modern concept of the European Union was actually a uniting force of the elite that opposed Hitler and eventually came to post-war power. Simon Winder’s Germania is an engrossing and often lighthearted history of how this paradoxical nation emerged. This is the place to look for answers to what Germans eat and why; its feverish work ethic and love of strange pastimes. Winder is a passionate admirer and the because the book is aimed at English readers, parallels and differences are highlighted.
At the other end of the spectrum, Peter Watson’s The German Genius is a far more daunting exercise. It provides an encyclopaedic survey of the contribution of every famous German artist and thinker to western civilisation. It starts around 1750 and is also aimed at a British audience, mainly to counter the obsession that everything German is only about Hitler and Nazism. Watson, author of the equally monumental Ideas, has nearly 1000 pages to cover off the rebirth of Greek philosophy, porcelain, musical symphonies, telegraphy, alienation, quantum physics, laboratories, metal mastery, genetics, homeopathy, radiography, Viennese waltzes, motor vehicles, chemicals, militarism, anti-Semitism, Zionism and psychoanalysis, amid much, much more.
EASTWARD, HO!
Red Plenty (Faber)
The Magical Chorus (Vintage)
If the Soviet Union ever comes back into fashion, Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty will have plenty of answers. A mix of imagination and scholarship, it recreates a 1960s world when Soviet communism appeared ready to conquer the west through superior technology and progressive ideas. The Soviet sputnik symbolised this short-lived triumph, though no one knew that at the time. But Spufford also shows the dark side and interweaves fact and fiction to provide, for example, the secret thoughts of Khrushchev when faced with American consumerism and a bewildering display of home appliances. Khrushchev is just one of a cast of real and imagined characters who in the end failed to create their dream. The book contains many fanciful and mind-boggling statements — but all are carefully researched and a large appendix of footnotes explains where to find out more about them.
More solidly grounded in historial fact, Solomon Volkov’s The Magical Chorus is a cultural history of Russia that starts with the reign of Tsar Nicholas II and runs through the repressive years of Lenin and Stalin to the modern era of perestroika. This will be familiar territory to readers of Orlando Figes, but it is notable for providing an informed Russian perspective and using previously inaccessible archives. Volkov focuses on the close and sometime fatal relationship between the tyrannical rulers and the great writers, dancers, composers and even film directors — Nabokov, Pasternak, Solzhenitsen, Nijinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Eisenstein, among many. Modern Russia is better known for its business oligarchs and conspicuous consumption than its artistic output, so this could be the last word on one of the world’s most outstanding creative eras.
COLD COMFORT
Lost and Found in Russia (Other Press)
The Possessed (Text Publishing)
Travelling in the post-Soviet period is no easier today if Susan Richards’ Lost and Found in Russia is any guide. She goes into the provinces that remain a mystery to most westerners, seeing how an extraordinarily diverse range of Russians copes with rapid change and resilient traditions. She is as familiar with the lives of the newly rich businesspeople and city dissidents as she is with eccentric inventors, cult leaders, witches and utopian eco-communities. She also enters Russia’s formerly closed cities, leaving one in haste that was home to UFO claims, psychic research and uranium mines. This kaleidoscope contrasts Elif Bauman’s literary memoir The Possessed, which gently sends up the academic shenanigans surrounding the study of Russian literature in California and also in Russia. She writes about conferences, seminars and infighting against a background of works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov. She also spends time in Samarkand studying the Uzbek language, an indulgence that belies her good humour and telling descriptions.
IMPERIAL POWER
The Party (Penguin)
Full Circle (Simon & Schuster)
The role of the Communist Party and its ruling Politburo in China is revealed in this masterly analysis of power at its most naked and pervasive. Case studies of party officials, bureaucrats and even entrepreneurs become cautionary tales in Richard McGregor’s The Party as the strings are pulled. No matter how big personal fortunes can become in a country of socialism with a capitalist characteristic, they can be removed on a whim. McGregor explains the way political power is exercised through control of commerce and the economy. Although the system has internal tensions, it is also deeply entrenched and unlikely to yield to democratic aspirations.
McDonald’s focus on the party’s monopoly over privilege is possibly one of the most important books you can read to understand the world’s next superpower. The parallels between modern life and the ancient classical empire are told in Ferdinand Mount’s highly anecdotal Full Circle. From the attention paid to celebrities and the entertainment world through to indulgence in food and sex, the ancient Greeks and Romans have been there and done that a couple of thousand years ago. This is not a scholarly work, though it is based on considerable knowledge, so don’t expect a serious historical analysis of the differences as well as the comparisons between the old and the new.
LIGHT FANTASTIC
Anything Goes (Atlantic)
Parisians (Picador)
The once over lightly treatment is also dealt to the 1920s in Lucy Moore’s Anything Goes, the decade of flappers and frivolity as well as technological innovation and financial exuberance. The money culture, leisure industry, organised crime and scandal rags boomed during an era now best remembered as the Jazz Age. The book is American-centric and largely ignores the deeper economic and political trends that led to the great depression and eventually global war. This doesn’t detract, however, from a lively read about the rich cultural tapestry that brought entertainment to the masses and the means, through the spread of consumer-focused industrialisation, to pay for it.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Paris over several centuries also provided the base for fun and fantasy. Graham Robb’s Parisians starts in 1750 and widens the story to include everyone from scientists and philosophers to spies and soldiers. The plotters and revolutionaries keep political intrigue to the fore while after dark activities aren’t forgotten, of course, with Paris fully deserving its reputation as the sex capital of Europe, if not the world. Robb also takes the reader on a comprehensive tour of the city’s physical charms, from the sewers, catacombs and metro below ground to the story behind the construction of the Eiffel Tower. This book gives every reason why you would visit Paris again and see it through more informed eyes.
