Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia

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Granta Books, 2000 - Family & Relationships - 506 pages
Conveying the darkness of Russia's twentieth century, and the extraordinary suffering of its citizens. ..During the twentieth century, Russia, Ukraine and other territories of the former Soviet Union experienced more violent and avoidable deaths than anywhere else on earth. Two world wars and one civil, state-created famines and purges are only the most significant chapters in an unrelenting epic of destruction. ..How did Russians cope with loss and bereavement on such a vast scale? How does such a society mourn, and how does it treat its dead? Nights of Stone starts with the ornate, public services of the old Orthodox rite and traces the various attempts to impose an acceptable and emotionally fulfilling atheist alternative as Bolshevism bore down on public and private rituals of all kinds. ..The narrative touches on forgotten utopian-scientific theories of materialist resurrection (hence the embalming of Lenin's and Stalin's corpses) and failed attempts to banish superstition. It is also, above all, the history of a silence. Untold millions of Russians were forbidden to mourn their loved ones who died as enemies of the people, kulaks, prisoners of war or vanished victims of the purges. ..Merridale has interwoven the history of the modern Russian empire with the intensely personal memories of those left behind, the bereaved, and in her attempt to understand how they dealt with loss she has written an unforgettable book.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION
1
ANOTHER LIGHT
27
A CULTURE OF DEATH
60
Copyright

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