Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth Century RussiaRussia has endured more bloodshed than any other European country in the twentieth century. Yet, while countries such as Germany have learned the value of confronting the darker side of their own pasts, Russia has never faced the reality of its troubled history in a meaningful and collective way. In this provocative and highly original book, Catherine Merridale asks Russians difficult questions about how their country's volatile past has affected their everyday lives, their aspirations, their dreams, and their nightmares. Based on extensive research including rare imperial archives, Soviet propaganda, memoirs, letters, newspapers, literature, psychiatric studies, and texts, as well as interviews with doctors, priests, social workers, policemen, survivors, gravediggers, and funeral directors, Night of Stone seeks answers to the questions: What is the true impact of violence in the Soviet century? How successfully have the Russians psychologically rewritten their own histories? What rituals have survived the Soviet regime, and what do they tell us of the Russian mentality? Reminiscent of the highly successful The Hour of Our Death, Night of Stone is an emotionally wrenching, eloquent work that will appeal to all readers of Russian and European history as well as anyone interested in the processes of memory. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 93
... religious habits ; viciously anticlerical , but also hostile to millenarian and idealist thinkers in the ranks of ... religious tone and metaphor in his thought and writing . The same fate has befallen Stalin , whose speeches of- ten ...
... religious piety does not of itself stop people from behaving cruelly , from undervaluing the lives of other human beings . Ei- ther way , a good deal of popular religion survived , even in the folds of the red flag , and even many ...
... religious way because citizens ' funerals are still not established . The funerals of ordinary workers and pensioners are quite often conducted along religious lines . ” 27 In rural areas the habit of observance was etched even more ...
Contents
An Introduction I | 1 |
Another Light | 21 |
A Culture of Death | 47 |
Copyright | |
13 other sections not shown