The Whisperers is history as seen across the kitchen table through a standard, 50 mm lens. Whereas much of the history of the Stalin era is writ large, swimming in the Gulag's sea of death and destruction, defined by war, purges and diplomacy, here Figes writes about Russian life on a smaller, more human scale. Tracing the lives of seven or so families from the 1917 revolution forward, this is not unlike a Ken Burns documentary in prose. Mined from memoirs and personal interviews, The Whisperers is intimate and deeply textured, particularly in its biography of the main character, the writer Konstantin Simonov, whose life was Molotov-esque in its reflection of the warped Russian reality of the 20th century. (Reviewed in Russian Life)

This is one the great history books of our times. Based on hundreds of family archives and interviews with the last survivors of the Stalinist regime, it opens up the hidden private lives of ordinary people, exploring family relationships and the interior lives of individuals. Brilliantly researched and written with compassion, it is full of heartbreaking human tragedies, stories of betrayal and lost relationships. It is a very draining read emotionally, but not depressing, for there are also stories of human kindness, love and sacrifice. There were many moments when I had to put the book down and take a breath, moments when I had stop and cry.

Figes and his team of researchers have done something amazing in getting all these people to speak so openly about their lives, and historians will remain in his debt for many years. The book is a monument to the suffering of millions under Stalin, and it will be read in a hundred years.

Over the last decade or so, a flurry of excellent works about Stalin and his times have appeared on bookstore shelves. But even among this stellar company, The Whisperers stands out. It draws on oral histories, interviews and privately-written manuscripts -- the raw material that is the first draft of history -- of all kinds to describe the experience of everyday life in Stalin's Russia. What was it like for a "kulak", a party worker, a scientist or engineer, a journalist, a housewife, to try and survive this totalitarian regime and its vast network of spies and labor camps? Figes doesn't just tell us, he shows us. The reader ends up caring so much about each of the characters he portrays so deftly that it's almost impossible to resist the temptation to fast-forward, using the index to jump to the pages where the next installment of that individual's life is described, in order to find out what happened to them. It's chilling -- especially when you combine it with a recognition of the nostalgia that some Russians now feel for the Stalinist era. Scholarly in nature and extent, almost impossibly ambitious in scope -- and yetsomehow Figes has managed to turn this into a gripping read.

This must be the most important book on the Soviet Union since The Gulag Archipelago, in 1973. It is based on hundreds of family archives and thousands of interviews with the survivors of the Stalin Terror which Figes and his team of researchers have spent years collecting from homes throughout Russia. The stories which they tell are amazing, heartbreaking. I defy anyone not to be moved.

Figes is a great writer - anyone who has read Natasha's Dance or the multi prize-winning A People's Tragedy will tell you that. But in The Whisperers he doesn't let his style get in the way of the people's stories which almost seem to come to us in their own voice. This transparency (and humility on Figes's part) only adds to the emotional and moral impact of the book.

Figes says that he hasn't set out to explain the origins of the Great Terror, or Stalin's cult or policies, but actually, as a student of these things, I learned much more from the stories of these people than from conventional histories. The story of Konstantin Simonov, which Figes places at the centre of The Whisperers, tells us far more about the nature of the Stalinist regime, about how it got people to collaborate with it, than any history book I've ever read.

The Whisperers is sub-titled Private Life in Stalin's Russia, but it is really about the Soviet system as a whole (its first chapter starts in 1917 and its last ends in the present) and about its legacies of seventy years of totalitarianism for Russia today. For anyone who wants to understand Russia (or the twentieth century) it is essential reading.

This book cannot be classified as history.To write something based mostly on a myriad of interviews does not qualify it under the category of scientific research.It distorts and minimizes the historical framework of those horrible Stalin times by ignoring the overall historical dimension. .
A great disappointment and a great miss indeed.

"The Whisperers" by Orlando Figes is an outstanding piece of scholarship painting a harrowing picture of the results which Stalinist terror had on its victims and on the society it created. The book combines facts of historical developments at various significant stages of the Soviet bid for power, its consolidation, the phases of Stalin's rule and post-Stalinist developments with a wide variety of biographical data. In addition to following the life of one outstanding literary figure - Konstantin Simonov - and his family throughout the complete time span, Figes portrays people from all walks of life, so that the reader is able to identify with many individual lives and at the same time perceives that the people presented still are but a tiny minority, each person representing many whose stories remain untold. The book depicts the development in the oppression of the Soviet people, ordinary and powerful alike, from the almost rational liquidation of certain groups in the early years to the total terror of the hight of the Stalinist purges, when practically everybody could be arrested, tortured and shot or sentenced to up to 25 years of forced labour on the basis of a denunciation. It shows the effects both physical and mental which this had on the victims, their families and the others - those who remained unconcerned either because they believed in the official propaganda which pronounced those sentenced to be guilty of hideous crimes against the state or because they managed not to notice anything at all. The book goes on to describe the years of the Second World War and the aftermath. It answers the questions of what happens after terror lightens up, what happens, when people try to take up their lives after 5, 10 or more years, to rejoin their families, to find children scattered all over the country after being sent to different orphanages, when it slowly becomes clear what fear has done to people's minds, having eaten into them like acid for decades. The final claim is that "stoicism and passivity" as dominant features of the collective (post-)Socialist psyche are the results of those many years, in which people talked in whispers and were afraid of whisperers.

This book is a new look at the Soviet Union, emphasizing what life was like during the period from the NEP to Stalin's death and its immediate aftermath. Based on a large number of personal accounts and archival records of personal letters and testimony, many from ordinary citizens, many party members or associates, the book reveals a terrifying portrait of what life was like for most people in the nation. The title refers to a near complete lack of privacy so that conversations among adult family members often occurred in a whisper under a cloud of fear. It reveals how children could report parents' deviations, how neighbors might report families, how arbitrary condemnation to the Gulags could be, how being a relative of an enemy of the state reflected on even distant relatives, how rapid and total was the resocialization of citizens in many cases, and how prisoners could feel guilt during their imprisonment and afterward all in the words of the people themselves. It also portrays changes in experiences at the end of NEP, the 1930's purges, WWII, after Stalin's death, and after Khrushchev. The research is sound and the writing excellent. This is the only solid, book length account I know of that conveys information and emotional depictions of life under Stalin from a broad base of individuals who endured that life. It is must read to those who wish to gain understanding of life under communism in the USSR. It should also make one appreciate living in a liberal democracy to a much greater extent.

This book is captivating! I came into it with only the most basic knowledge of Russian history. A little more would have been helpful, but I managed to get what I needed from the internet. This book focuses on the impact of communism under Stalin on the lives of everyday people. It is full of fascinating details that give you an incredible picture of the fear and uncertainty that Soviets at the time would have felt. One of the striking points of the book is that no one was exempt from being spied upon or being reported to the Party. It was impossible to just keep your head down and go through life without being noticed, because if those in charge didn't notice, your neighbors surely would, and heaven help you if they were being pressured to inform, or if they wanted your space, your belongings, or were jealous in some other way. Normally I tend to zoom through books, but I found myself really slowing down to absorb every detail. If I found myself skimming because I was tired, I would put the book down and pick it up later when I was fresh, simply because I did not want to miss anything. Do not let the length and density scare you off- give it a try. I started reading "Natasha's Dance" by the same author, but I don't find it as captivating, so if you tried that one and didn't like it, your experience may not be representative of your attitude towards this book.

It amazes me that with all the information that has been released from the Russian archives with regards to the Stalinist period that there are still influential people in the west who minimize or excuse the crimes of Stalin's regime. Oh, there are people around who deny the crimes of Hitler as well. The difference is that those who deny the crimes of Hitler are ostracized and in some countries even subject to criminal sanctions. But those who deny or minimize the crimes of Stalin and his henchmen are generally given a pass in Western societies. I have often wondered why that is, maybe the best answer is that that left-leaning elites consider the Stalinist terror a minor error made in the service of a "just" cause. It is ironic that many of Stalin's biggest supporters in the US were Russian emigres and their offspring and many of those were embedded in opinion-shaping professions here such as education, journalism and film-making. So maybe its no wonder that we still have apologists for communism in prominent positions.
The Whisperers is a fine history that should help put further to rest any idea that Stalin was any less of a monster than Hitler. It doesn't serve any purpose to argue about which man was responsible for more deaths. One is just as dead whether the bullet that kills you comes from the gun of an SS man or from the gun of an NKVD executioner. One is just as dead whether he was killed because of his ethnicity, religion, or because he was a "kulak". What you will learn in The Whisperers is how millions of people were cowed into accepting the necessity of the brutality of the Stalinist regime and in the end wound up looking only after their own interests. Though some decent people remained, friend turned on friend, neighbor on neighbor, and relatives on one another in a desperate bid to avoid that knock on the door in the middle of the night that meant exile or worse.
I won't rehash the story, others have done so. But if you have any interest in gaining a broader knowledge of the machinations of the Communist police state, the human tragedy it spawned, and how it impacted ordinary Soviet citizens then The Whisperers is highly recommended. Orlando Figes has painstakingly woven together a complex web of anecdotal evidence of communism's crimes through the stories of a number of survivors of Stalin's terror whose trust he earned enough for them to be forthcoming enough to tell the tragic stories you read here. Once you finish the book, you may feel as though you actually know some of the people whose stories are told. It may be heavy reading, and its a thick book, but the understanding you'll gain will make it more than worth the effort expended.

I have read many books about Russia and the Soviet era. I am shocked by the details of life under Stalin. I always knew millions had died. However, I never realized how evil this period was. It is almost beyond belief how communism broke all standards of human decency. It is really beyond belief to read how the Russian people basically ate itself alive via their leadership.

I seem to be on a roll. I recently read about abuses in North Korea and China. Also here there are also shocking stories of abuse.

Over the years I've read many books about Russian and Soviet history, from Roy Medvedev's "Let History Judge"to Montefiore's "Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar," with significant stops along the way for Solzhenitsyn's magisterial polemic "The Gulag Archipelago." Orlando Fige's "The Whisperers" is one of the best single-volume studies of life in Soviet times I have read. It is a fairly long book, but very engaging: I found myself reading 30 to 50 pages at a stretch. There is a cast of characters as long as in one of Tolstoy's great novels, but these are all real people, describing or recollecting their experiences in Stalin's Russia. It is a tribute to Mr. Figes that he arranges the narratives in such a way that this reader was never confused following the threads of so many lives over the course of such turbulent decades. In addition, Figes provides short accounts of the ideological, political and economic shifts in the Kremlin which directly influenced the lives of the people in the chapters which follow. For conciseness, clarity and readability, his narrative is outstanding when he writes about the NEP, Stalin's anti-Kulak campaign and collectivization of the countryside, the rapid rise of the Gulag and slave labor as a mainstay of the Soviet economy, and the malign influence on family relations of the1930s propaganda cult surrounding Pavel Morozov. Figes includes information in this book which I've simply not seen in histories before. He shows floor plans of communal apartments which makes clear how little privacy many urban dwellers in Moscow and Leningrad had at home, and how Stalin's regime nurtured malicious watchers as well as whisperers. The diary and letter extracts in "The Whisperers" can be deeply moving. There is a photo in the book of Nikolai Kondratiev's letter to his daughter Elena, written from a labor camp. It shows a drawing he'd done illustrating a fairy-tale in verse he'd written for Elena entitled "The Unusual Adventures of Shammi." The drawing is simple, the verse is charming. It makes one think of how many millions of times in different times and places parents have entertained their children by spinning stories. But the circumstances here are grotesque: Kondratiev was one of millions of innocents imprisoned under Stalin. And the outcome is tragic: in 1938 he was shot by a firing squad. This is just one example of the dozens of different accounts of lives of ordinary people warped or crushed by this monstrous regime. The sum of such narratives creates a very rich mosaic of a society and its time which even those of us who have visited Russia in the recent past have difficulties understanding.

In the long essay which follows the fictional story of War and Peace, Tolstoy first developed the concept that armies are not just regiments of men following the will of their commander, but individuals who have individual consciences. History isn't just the deeds of Napoleon and Alexander, but of each aristocrat, tradesman, artisan or peasant who fought in the Napoleonic wars, and of their families back home. Each of their lives is as worthy of examination as that of any Tsar or Generalissimo. Because of this, I think Tolstoy is properly the godfather of oral history. Orlando Figes has done a great job gathering and editing the accounts of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people living during the cruelest years of Stalinism. He also conveys the sense of freedom and comradeship experienced by many during the worst days of the second World War (which the Soviets hallowed as the "Great Patriotic War"), a mistaken sense of freedom which landed Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag. For all these reasons, I think old Tolstoy might be pleased in literary heaven could he only read these accounts of real lives and real consciences played out in the pages of "The Whisperers."

One small caveat: Kirill Simonov was a very successful writer in the Stalin literary establishment who came of age during World War II. Because of his public life of letters and his colorful personal life he occupies many pages in "The Whisperers." As was the case with many successful people in the Arts world under Stalin, Simonov was morally compromised. (I'm paraphrasing Lev Kopelev, but that writer has a pithy quote that "Every society has bad people who do bad things. But under communism, good people were encouraged to do bad things." This describes Simonov.) For better or worse, and because he wrote so much and was so active for all the decades from the Thirties until the Seventies, Simonov emerges as the main "character" in this book. This has its merits, but it also throws into harsh relief the fact that many of the less-lettered accounts in this oral history don't always seem as real, or as present, as Simonov. Because this is a history and not a work of fiction I'm not sure this imbalance could ever have been effectively redressed, but the imbalance is there.

A final word of praise: I've travelled to Russia several times since the overdue demise of the Soviet Union, and seen life change radically not only because of the introduction of Russian-style market capitalism, but because a generation has grown up without memory of life under communism. Figes points out that young people in Russia have no great interest in what to them has also become the story of an alien life lived by grandparents and great-grandparents during the 5-year plans. The people who do remember are old, dying out, with failing memories. "The Whisperers," and the archives on which it is based, is commendable because it helps to save so many of these survivors' accounts to historical memory.

Figes had already established himself as perhaps the preeminent historian of modern Russia before this book came out but with its publication he has confirmed that claim many times over.
When reading about the years of Stalin's tyranny it is easy to become inundated by the scale of the suffering inflicted on so many people with such murderous persistence. There is a tendency to become removed from the enormous numbers and see it all in a rather academic light.
Figes succeeds brilliantly in preventing that by giving each victim a name, a family, and a story while still being able to convey a very vivid sense of the scale of the crimes committed in the name of The People.
Strange as it may seem, this is a book that speaks with warmth and humanity on every page - the humanity of the victims, those who fought and fell, as well those who continue to fight against their memories and suffering. And also the humanity of a writer able to convey their stories with such astounding sensitivity and compassion. Highly recommended.

I learned about the book The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, by Orlando Figes due to Amazon.com which linked it with my memoir (Family Matters and More: Stories of My Life in Soviet Russia, by Sol Tetelbaum) that was published recently. My first thought was that a person like me, who was born in Soviet Russia in the middle of the thirties, read a lot of about Stalin's time could hardly find much new in The Whisperers.

I left Soviet Russia at the end of 1988 and witnessed many events, some of which were described in Orlando Figes' book. Later I was able to find and read a few books that were prohibited in the USSR. I didn't know the author of The Whisperers, never read his books before, and doubted that a foreign writer would be able to find many unknown details about this gloomy tragic time. Nevertheless, I decided to read it for the sake of curiosity.

I was hugely impressed; the book literally overwhelmed me. The author has done an incredible job interviewing thousands of people - victims of many years of terror. Those people were among the lucky few who managed to survive. I must say that the author recreated the forest while paying attention to each tree.

Telling about fates of individual people and their families, the author shows what was going on in the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain. Living in the USSR over 50 years, I knew and read a lot, but reading The Whisperers I felt indescribable pain and horror. Fates of hundreds of thousands, even millions of Soviet people were possible to describe with the same four words: falsely accused, arrested and shot. And what was even more horrible, all of this became habitual.

Recalling that not very remote time, I think about one more phenomena: despite everything that was going on in the country, people wanted to live a normal life. In the daytime, they worked, entertained, attended theaters, movies and were busy with other activities, and at night they could learn that they, or their relatives, or their friends, or people they knew for a long time, all of a sudden, became "enemy of the people," were arrested, and disappeared forever.

Orlando Figes in his The Whisperers showed very truthfully, through the tragic lives of many thousands of victims, one of the most awful political systems - totalitarian power. I would like everybody to read this book, both supporters and opponents of democracy. The opponents vividly will see that the totalitarian system is deadly for all, and the supporters one more time will be convinced that democracy is weak; it is needed to be defended.

In his book, the author of The Whisperers described with details the years from 1917 to 1956. Stalin died in 1953. It was the time when I began to understand events and the difference between slogans and reality; I began to realize that the Soviet power was killing in people everything human. The author showed great insight and deepness describing those times. But most importantly, he noticed that the fear of Great Terror penetrated deeply into Soviet people's souls and didn't disappear later. He wrote that the KGB " had access to a huge range of draconian punishments ... and its power of surveillance...instilled fear in anyone...who could be seen as anti-Soviet." I still remember that paralyzing fear, but I also remember that despite that fear, people were dying to have a human life; Soviet power wasn't able to kill in people everything and this could be seen as a victory of humanity. "Human spirit cannot be destroyed" as Mr. Tsitrin wrote in his review." I would be extremely glad to see this topic as Orlando Figes' next project about Soviet Russia.

I would like to emphasize the actuality of Orlando Figes' book, especially now, in Putin's time when, according to the author, "the restoration of authoritarian government encouraged many Russians to return to their reticent habits."

I strongly recommend everybody to read the book. Nothing should be forgotten because what is forgotten has a tendency to be repeated.

Sol Tetelbaum.

Just a superb work. Extraordinary historical research and excellent writing. Haunting and essential. Quite simply the best work of this type about the Soviet Union.

This is a terrific book, providing a very personal look at a terrifying and challenging time of Soviet history. By examining the history through diaries and personal stories, with illustrations of houses and photographs of families, Figes takes a difficult subject that could easily be treated through numbers or made very distant, and turns it into a narrative that provides a strong understanding of the mindset and lifestyles and goals of everyday and privileged people living through the revolution and terror. If you are interested in Soviet history, you should definitely add this to your library.

Even though the book is quite long, I wished it were longer.

The Whisperers is an excellent read. It captures what it was like in the Soviet Union especially during Stalin's reign. It is filled with quotations, poems, interviews and letters. It must have proved difficult to get people to talk about these days and Figes sites examples of people still too frightened to say anything. He also brings up that it was a time for joy for many whose lives were not directly affected. He even brings out the the joy people felt when they were affected. It is hard to imagine the horror of people's lives for us in the west how an entire nation can be brought to its knees by the cult of one person. Figes was also captured the rationalization of those on both sides of the spectrum. For a country the size of the Soviet Union with its varied cultures to succumb to such a cult of personality says much about the human person. The winning of the Great Patriotic War defined the pride the people had in their country and why even today Russians are reluctant to emigrate. But Russians historically have always been subjected to a single leader with dictatorial powers and a secret police with people reporting on each other. The only thing I question was the easy way in reporting the death of Stalin. He dismisses the whole thing in one paragraph with fear in the Doctor's Plot. In my other readings this was only part as Khrushchev and others present were more likely to hesitate in the hopes of Stalin's death.

I like this book so much that I wish I had written it. Orlando Figes is the author of several great books including "Natasha's Dance" and also a history of the Russian Revolution. These were great works. This book is even better in that it rescues from oblivion stories of life during Stalin's reign.

The problem that historians in the 21st century will have writing a history of the Soviet Union will be the lack of conventional sources to learn what life was like. Historians looking at the United States in 1935 will have a whole host of magazines and newspapers that convey what life was like for a segment of the population. Anyone attempting to understand the mindset of the Soviet Union at the same period will be confronted with a sense that the entire population had to have been brain washed.

What Figes has accomplished is to bring to light the lives of the ordinary people who were swept up in Stalin's destruction of his own country in some cases before it is too late. He begins with the late 20s and continues through to the period after Stalin's death. A great deal of the material involves the use of interviews with survivors. There are also diaries from Stalin's victims as well. All in all, this is a work which is likely to have increased significance in the future.

I am certain that this book will be one of the more important works on Soviet history, not only does it provide the casual reader with a sense of what happened in the larger sense, but it also illustrates what life was like for those who found themselves the victims of history.

I first heard of The Whisperers on a NPR interview with the author. I was intrigued with the focus of the book and bought it the same evening. It was a stunning historic read. I was gripped by the individual stories weaved within the various political changes of the moment.

The deep level of research performed and then assembled to create this book is mind boggling at the least. I highly recommend this for those who want a more person-centric view of the purges.

This is a tremendously moving book! It is incredibly well written, meticulously and thoroughly researched, powerful, and heartbreaking.

Indeed, it seems at times that the heartbreak will not end, as the author narrates the tragic lives of one family after another, and the reader must force him- or herself to plunge ahead and delve into the ruined lives of dozens and dozens of individuals and families that suffered unendurable heartbreak and tragedy.

Those individuals represent the tens of millions who were swallowed up by Stalin's prison camps, the notorious GULAGs. Many were executed or were simply worked to death, while even those that survived were emotionally, physically, and psychologically shattered.

But then the author provides an uplifting story, a ray of light in this evil history, and his dark spell is temporarily broken, allowing the reader to breath freely once more and to believe that the good in Man outweighs the bad.

This is a difficult book to finish, simply because the human heart and mind can only absorb so much tragedy and suffering. And yet this is a story that should be read by all, simply to remind ourselves of our capability for cruelty and kindness, suffering and forgiveness, condemnation and redemption.

The subject, the interior of those ordinary lives affected by Stalin's brutal rule, is significant. For those who, for any reason, are unaware or only slightly knowledgeable about the tragedy that befell those unlucky individuals in the USSR during a period stretching over the heart of the last century, please buy and read this powerful history.

With this said, I fear many will find this book heavy going. You almost need to be a Stakhanovite reader to get through these many pages. While Professor Figes is a talented historian on all things Russian, here he was in need of more discipline in his presentation of so many oral histories. Too often it seems like an individual's thoughts are cut and pasted into this book in the effort to tell every story possible, so no one story is omitted. Given both the magnitude of the crimes and the population size of Russia, this is patently impossible. It is a classic case where less would have been more.

I think it impossible for anyone to read this book and not wish that somehow Lenin and Stalin could still be punished. Maybe they are in some just afterlife.

The whisperers is a remarkable book. In nine large chronological chapters Figes treats Russian history from 1917 till now, but does so from the viewpoint of its victims. Describing the several waves of repression during the Stalin-regime, and its effects on private life, Figes gives us the stories, not of he ones who were shot - as a simple, but many times repeated sentence tells us - but of the ones who survived and wound up in the miriad of camps all over the Soviet Union, from the Solovietsky Islands - now a tourist attraction - to Magadan and Kolyma. In a nutshell - one of 650 pages - it tells of the millions of families who were ripped apart, whose members disappeared and surfaced again after many years, trying to find their loved ones, or take up a normal life. It is not about hatred, as you would perhaps expect, but about shame, guilt, spoilt biographies, about silence, hiding your past and trying to build up a new life. And fear of course. Very much about fear. The book is based on interviews, letters and diaries, all collected with the help of Memorial which, as its website says, is many things, but especially a movement commemorating the millions who were killed, or held as slave labourers in the Russian gulag.
The Whisperers consists of hundreds of very sad short stories, and if there is one complaint you could have, it is this: that the book has no real center. Although Figes obviously tried to do what he did in A People's tragedy - where he uses several recurring figures as bearers of the story - and has said that he considers Konstantin Simonov, the Soviet writer, as the main character of The whisperers, and Simonov does indeed get extensive treatment, and although other characters are present in several parts of the book as well, the enormous amount of stories does not always make for light reading, certainly not for those who have a hard time distinguishing the Russian names. Simonov's story is interesting, by the way, and is well told, like everything else in the book. I didn't know he was responsible for publishing Bulgakovs Master and Margerita. The Whisperers is in effect a monument, a memorial, one with many names ingraved, and it would perhaps serve well, perhaps even better, as material for a series of documentaries, two of which have indeed been broadcasted by BBC radio. And I doubt if is is a coincidence that Figes' name on the cover of the book is printed in very small letters.
The saddest thing of course is that one wished to be able to say that Russian things have changed. But we all know that that is not the case. In the afterword Figes tells us that as a result of his investigations of Simonovs literary estate the official archives were closed for researchers until 2025. Didn't Putin, when Politkovskaja was shot - as the sentence goes again - say something like: She was an unimportant old woman?

An absolutely fascinating book, and another jewel in the canon of Orlando Figes, whose every book quickly becomes essential. Tough to think of another scribe of Russian history at present who can match Figes' combination of scholarship and compelling prose. He really knuckles down in this epic book about the interior lives, really, of Russians during the Stalin years. Beautifully written, there's no fluff in The Whisperers, nothing unnecessary. It's pared down and boiled out. The result is a rich, moving account of a huge swath of human history, of violence and justice, told with exquisitely patient intimacy, told almost with a whisper. It's a remarkable achievement. From beginning to end, Figes takes us deep within the mystery of 'whispered' lives, going again and again to specific people with names and families, the nuts and bolts of suffering detailed clearly, coursing like a monodic procession ejecting myth forever. The opportunity to hear these Russians speak of these things as individuals, in their own voices, is overwhelming, and a gift to us. Orlando Figes visits these ordeals with enormous compassion, and a clearly gifted touch as a storyteller. I hope he writes forever. Recommended with gusto!

An absolutely fascinating book, and another jewel in the canon of Orlando Figes, whose every book quickly becomes essential. Tough to think of another scribe of Russian history at present who can match Figes' combination of scholarship and compelling prose. He really knuckles down in this epic book about the interior lives, really, of Russians during the Stalin years. Beautifully written, there's no fluff in The Whisperers, nothing unnecessary. It's pared down and boiled out. The result is a rich, moving account of human history, of violence and justice, told with an exquisitely patient intimacy, told almost with a whisper. It's a remarkable achievement. From beginning to end, Figes takes us deep within the mystery of 'whispered' lives, going again and again to specific people with names and families, everything is detailed clearly, coursing like a monodic procession ejecting myth forever. The opportunity to hear these Russians speak of these things as individuals, in their own voices, is overwhelming, and a gift to us. Orlando Figes visits these ordeals with enormous compassion, and a clearly gifted touch as a storyteller. I hope he writes forever. Recommended with gusto!