The Obscure Reading Group discussion

This thread covers the whole book, so in the almost-words of Susan Sontag, "Stalin spoilers" are allowed.

One of my favorite chapters in the entire book was the penultimate -- the appropriately named "Let Purity Be Treason" -- which, in its first half, features one of the few major female characters in the book, Popov's young daughter, Xenia.

And what a breath of fresh air her innocence and "purity" is after all the Soviet drudgery, bureaucracy, and fear! Set in Paris, yet, a bastion of bourgeois excess if ever there was one!

From p. 305, Xenia's take of the French capital she is visiting:

"It was a minute and peaceful universe, where people lived without discussing Plan quotas, without fearing purges, without devoting themselves to the future, without considering the problems of Socialism."

When Xenia visits Professor Passereau to seek his intervention in the fate of Kiril Rublev, scheduled to be executed for his part (read: "non-part") in the death of Comrade Tulayev, the good professor, like all other Soviet satellites living in fear, begs off as a means of protecting his own skin.

"Well, mademoiselle," he says, "I beg you to believe that you have my deepest sympathy... I assure you... It is terrible... Revolutions devour their children -- we French have learned that only too well... the Girondins, Danton, Hébert, Robespierre, Babeuf... It is the implacable movement of history...

"In short, mademoiselle, it seems to me that all hope is not lost. If Rublev is innocent, the Supreme Tribunal will accord him justice..."

Xenia: "Do you mean to say you believe that?"

"Professor Passereau tore yesterday's sheet from the calendar. This young woman in white, with her beret askew, her hostile mouth and eyes, her uneasy hands, was a strange being, vaguely dangerous, swept into his peaceful study by a sort of hurricane. If his imagination had been literary, Passereau would have compared her to a stormy petrel, and she made him uncomfortable."

If only there had been more to stand up and make the powers-that-be uncomfortable. Of course, Xenia, like all others, will pay a price...

I just finished this chapter, and noted some of the same things, Ken. Xenia was certainly a breath of fresh air!

The "revolutions devour their children" line rings true, sadly.

And later, when Madame Delaporte says, "To whom would you protest? To this hostile world around us?” ... I have to say this gave me pause, and made me wonder what I would do in a similar situation. It seems so easy to give up, especially when, like Popov, you're distracted by the constant pain of your rheumatism ... (feeling my arthritic joints this morning, so that one hit home!)

Sorry about the aches and the pains (which follow the weather, at times).

I thought it was brilliant the way Serge wrote about her departure from France, too. Smart girl, she refused to go, but go she did, with a unique mixture of carrot and stick from the Soviet agent sent to bring her back to face the music.

There are so many examples of the overwhelming and complex ways that Stalin carried out the purge of former communist revolutionaries.

Xenia gets squashed just like all the others; by cunning, malevolent and terrified foxes who use sweet promises and dark threats to get her to go along without a scene, and then how Krantz casually mentions that she should consider herself under arrest when they reach Russian airspace.

I found chapter 8, The Road to Gold to be a fine example of Serge’s exceptional ability to portray the mindset of Kondratiev as he, convinced he will soon get a bullet to his brain, navigates (or is it endures), his last days, right up to meeting with the Chief and the schizoid meeting and seemingly spontaneous reprieve. Such powerful writing.

Oh, I agree, Craig. Learning the overwhelming and complex ways Stalin carried out the purge was shocking to me. Mirroring that reality made the book feel overwhelming and complex at times too, but definitely powerful.

I'm in the last chapter, and then I hope to read over that Sontag intro.

I forgot to mention in Week One a connection made to my own family. Most of the Polish I learned from my Polish grandmother came in the form of swears. What's weird is how they didn't directly translate to English swearwords. For instance, I remember one translated to "Dog's blood!" (not exactly a vicious profanity on these shores).

Anyway, the Comrade Tulayev connection: multiple times characters shout, "Cholera!" That was one of the swears I recall my grandmother used in Polish (sounding something like "Ho-let-a!"). I asked her why cholera was a swear word, and she said you could never wish anything worse on a person.

Thus, I figured most readers were confused by the exclamation. Me, I got it right away. Apparently as fearful a curse in Russia as Poland!

Ken, I didn’t appreciate the “cholera” comments at all, and I just skipped over those quotes without understanding. So thanks for the enlightening.

I didn't get that either, but what a great story. Thanks, Ken!

I just finished the introduction. Wow. Brilliant. I was blown away by much of it, but particularly what Sontag pulled out of Serge's memoirs, about how individuality "contains many possible destinies, and … mingles … with the other human existences and the earth, the creatures, everything. Writing then becomes a quest of poly-personality, a way of living diverse destinies, of penetrating into others, of communicating with them … of escaping from the ordinary limits of the self …”

And sorry, one more, that I find particularly comforting at the moment:
“… the saving indifference, the saving larger view, that is the novelist’s or poet’s--which does not obviate the truth of political understanding, but tells us there is more than politics, more even than history. Bravery … and indifference … and sensuality … and the living creatural world … and pity, pity for all, remain unextinguished.”

Nice quotes from Serge via Sontag, Kathleen. So true. Though this book is about both politics (Communism run amok) and history (the Soviet ouroboros), it is much more than that. Its intricate architecture is an amalgam of portraits in bravery, indifference, and sensuality. The living creatural world is right (though the word "creatural" looks made up, showing the additional benefit of a poetic license -- I keep one handy at all times).

Are there any readers playing catch-up, or is this the Kathleen, Craig, and Ken show (an alliterative show, for sure).

Sontag’s introduction, which I read at the midpoint of the book, brought invaluable focus and background to this complex work.

Thanks to the “Obscure” group for opening the door!