Simon Montefiore - Sashenka

Review by Corinna on show 15th July 2010
This is a gigantic book in all senses, a romantic novel, with a glamorous and idealistic woman at its centre. Written in three parts the first beginning in St. Petersburg in 1916 in a country on the brink of a revolution . Sashenka Zeitlin 16 years old, beautiful and headstrong is the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family. Educated at a privileged school and with an English governess waiting for her after school she has also been noticed by the Tsarist secret police because of her radical sympathies. With her mother out living it up with gay abandon and her father otherwise engaged in his business interests, Sashenka is free to engage in undercover meetings with her Bolshevik comrades, often out all night mingling with the ordinary people.

Atmospheric details of life in Petersburg then are good QUOTE:
Guards in green tunics, gendarmes with their sultan-spikes and the Cossacks in leather trousers and high furs flicking their thick whips, bivouacked around bonfires in the squares. The air steamed with horse scent and manure and sweet woodsmoke; the cobbles clattered with the clip-clop of a thousand hooves, the rumble of howitzer carriages, the metallic rattle of rifles, horse tackle and scabbards.”

Part two is set in 1939 in Moscow where Sashenka enjoys a good life as the wife of a Soviet functionary; she has two lovely children and is the editor of the Russian equivalent of Vogue. She should be safe from the wrath of Stalin whom she has met and entertained at her home but she falls in love with a writer which makes herself vulnerable to suspicion.
What happens next is heart-breaking and appalling . Untold horrors take place and many people are removed and disappear. At that stage we are not told what ultimately is the fate of Sashenka and her family.

Part three is set in the 1990s and concerns a young historian Katinka who is commissioned by a Russian oligarch to research the truth about his mother who all her life is unaware of her origins. Katinka’s researches lead her to the story of Sashenka and her fate.

At the end of the book whilst perusing the archives which tell a harrowing tale, Katinka and her assistant says QUOTE “ In Russia the truth is always written not in ink, like in other places, but in innocent blood. These archives are as sacred as Golgotha. In the dry rustle of the files you can hear the crying of children, the shunting of trains, the echo of footsteps down to the cellars, the single shot of the Nagan pistol delivering the seven grammes. The very paper smells of bood.”
There is an unforgettable climax to this sweeping novel which reduced me to tears. It is all about women and men forced to make unbearable choices. It made quite an impression on me and is well-worth reading for its remarkable historical background.

The author has an interesting background and was a foreign correspondent in the 1990s in Russia and spent 10 years researching the Russian archives and interviewing families in that country. He has written history books and “Young Stalin” won a Costa biography award. He plans this book to be the first of a trilogy, with the next one set in Moscow during the second world war.
review by Corinna