As an unambiguously non-Marxist philosopher: See here Lesley Chamberlain’s Lenin’s Private War: The Voyage of the Philosophy Steamer and the Exile of the Intelligentsia, St Martin’s Press, 2007.
In 1937, the year of the Great Purge: Memorial, an international historical and human rights society, and perhaps the most important organisation now committed to the task of preserving the historical memory of Stalinism, says about this year: ‘Nineteen thirty-seven was massive-scale repression engulfing all regions and all layers of society without exception, from the leadership of the country to peasants and workers infinitely removed from politics.’ The year’s extraordinary brutality signified ‘the revival in the twentieth century of the norms of the medieval Inquisition with all its traditional features of people being tried in their absence (in the vast majority of cases), quasi-judicial procedure, the lack of defence and the effective merging within one department of the roles of the investigator, prosecutor, judge and executioner’. An English translation of the document detailing Memorial’s assessment of 1937 can be found on the organisation’s website, www.memorial.krsk.ru/eng/Dokument/Other/1937.htm.
As Marina Gustavovna tells me the story of her father: Mandelstam’s words are from Hope Abandoned (Вторая книга).
In one of his most influential works, Don Quixote on Russian Soil: The book (Дон Кихот на Русской почве) was published in New York in 1982. The translation is mine.
The scene that Aikhenvald paints was replicated: Irina Sherbakova’s quote comes from the English translation of a pamphlet she prepared for the Russian National History Research Competition for High School Students: ‘Man in History: Russia in the Twentieth Century’. Sherbakova is the national coordinator of the competition. Please note ‘man’ here stands most definitely for a human being.
I write for a different reason: Brodsky’s words are from the essay ‘In a Room and a Half’ mentioned earlier.
Chapter 5: Moscow Metro
Our train departs; the last we see of the woman: In my alltoo-brief description of disability in Russia I have drawn on Anton Borisov’s Russian-language essay ‘Private Thoughts About One State Issue’ (‘Частные мысли на одну государственную тему’). The essay was published in the special issue ‘Excluded from Society’ (‘Исключенные из общества’) of the Russian edition of the international journal Index on Censorship. Severely disabled from birth, Borisov was abandoned by his family while in his early twenties. He currently lives in the United States.
In 2004, a nineteen-year-old student was travelling on the Metro: Galdetsky’s story was covered quite extensively in the English-language media. I have used the coverage provided by Novaya Gazeta.
When we fight, Billie and I are like two cocks: Clifford Geertz, ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, London, 1975.
Chapter 6: Glubinka
Venichka is not the stock Russian alcoholic: Michael Epstein, ‘Charms of Entropy and New Sentimentality: The Myth of Venedikt Erofeev’, in Mikhail Epstein, Alexander Genis, Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture, Berghahn Books, 1999.
Evgeniy Grishkovets, a much-loved contemporary playwright: The passages are taken from Grishkovets’s play How I Ate a Dog (Как я съел собаку), which premiered in Moscow in 1999.
Chapter 7: Mothers and daughters
Sheila Munro recalls her mother: Sheila Munro, Lives of Mothers & Daughters: Growing Up with Alice Munro, Toronto, 2002.
In a famous short story, writer Boris Akunin: Boris Akunin, Fairytales for Idiots (Сказки для Идиотов), Moscow, 2000.
Mishki’s slogan is ‘Thank you Mr Putin for our stable future’: Lev Rubinstein, ‘About Teddies and People’ (‘О мишках и людях’), www.grani.ru, 6 December 2007. As to Dmitry Bykov, his article is rather entertainingly titled ‘Theology of Late Putinism: Putin as the Main Russian Sacred Object, or the Cult of Substance’ (‘Теология позднего путинизма. Путин как главная российская святыня, или Культ субстанции’), 25 October 2007. Published on the APN (Agency of Political News) website: www.apn.ru.
Chapter 8: St Petersburg
Although I fell head over heels for St Petersburg: Vladimir Toporov, Petersburg Text of Russian Literature (Владимир Николаевич Топоров, Петербургский текст русской литературы), St Petersburg, 2003.
Toporov died in 2005, but it is safe to say: Elena Schwarz’s poem is entitled ‘Black Easter’ (‘Чёрная Пасха’); Part 2 ‘Where Are We?’ (‘Где мы?’), 1974.
It is summer holidays, and I am fourteen: The Shevchuk /DDT lyrics are from the song ‘Leningrad’ off their 1990 album Thaw (Оттепель).
Yes, it’s true I am jealous: I have come across Brodsky’s response to his city as a child in Solomon Volkov’s Conversations with Joseph Brodsky (Диалоги с Иосифом Бродским). The book has been translated in English by Marian Schwartz and published by The Free Press in 1998.
All these years later, I still suspect that I am a St Petersburg person: These two lines of Mandelstam are from the same poem, ‘Leningrad’, written in December 1930.
For many decades, the official Soviet rhetoric of equality and emancipation: On the role of Soviet women in WWII, see Belarusian oral historian Svetlana Aleksievich’s War’s Unwomanly Face (У войны не женское лицо), Moscow 2008. Aleksievich has used oral testimonies and eyewitness accounts to create twentieth-century history books of unparalleled power. Several of Aleksievich’s books have been translated in English, including her book on the legacy of Afghan war: Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War (translated by Julia and Robin Whitby, Chatto & Windus, 1992) and the legacy of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion: Voices from Chernobyclass="underline" Chronicle of the Future (translated by Keith Gessen, Dalkey Archive Press, 2005).