I spent the last 6 months or so reading this absolute tome, a saga of the Russian Revolution, and of course have no one to discuss it with!
I kept a running list of questions towards the end:
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Was the Western world aware of The Great Terror at the time it occurred? Beyond the high profile show trials that is, were people aware of the hundreds of thousands of people executed between 1937-38?
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Many of the "characters" make overt references to God, or to religion, or cry out to God in moments of desperation. How successfully did religion persist post-revolution? (E.g. Arosev's wife Gera Freund crying out during her arrest, "No, I cannot do it. Lord, why do you send me such trials?")
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If the Purges hadn't occurred, and the Old Bolsheviks remained alive to teach their young adult children Das Kapital, and Marx-Engels-Lenin economic theory, would Bolshevism live on in a second generation? Would the Soviet Union's goals of moving towards true Communism have "evaporated without anyone quite noticing"?
What I carry with me from this book: "Human salvation depends on the marriage of predestination and free will – or, in Voronsky's terms [Soviet terms?], of 'historical inevitability' and conscious human action…" Essentially, what is out of our control in this world, and where can we take action to affect it?
by tolstea