I am greatly impressed with this book. I'm an emigrant from the former USSR, Jew myself, and I thought that I know everything about our life, about the war and the suffering of Soviet Jews from Nazi and from the Soviet Communists. But I discovered so many new facts that I never new. I am amazed how deep the authors understoon the reality of Soviet life. I lived in Belorus for years and didn't even hear anything about mass graves of Jews that are everywhere in this country. We were never told about it! I wish this book will be translated into Russian and Ukranian languages. I remember, that Soviet people can hardly knew who's is Vasily Grossman, one of the greatest writers of the century.

The book is a basic read for anyone interested in the Holocaust, WWII, Soviet life, and Soviet literature. The Garrard's reveal the quality of Grossman's writings and his personal sacrifices in seeing his opus, Life and Fate, published after being smuggled from the USSR. Accounts in the book of Stalingrad, Nazi crimes in Berdichev, and Grossman's slow literary descent into obscurity will be little read by a complacent Western public more interested in Star Wars than in the trauma that real wars have produced in this century. I was moved by the book and enlightened about the enduring spirit of mankind in the face of repression. Highly recommended!!

Stanislavski in Rehearsal has been the most influential work that I have come across in regards to developing my craft. The book spells out the Method of Physical actions, which was what KS was working on when he passed away. This work also disgards/de-empasis some teaching in his earlier work, like emotion memory. This is a must read for all actors, escpecially one's who are interested in the work of Stanislavski.

This is a good book. Buy it, specially if you're tired of the mumbo jumbo that is being taught under the name of Stanislavski by the so-called "Stanislavski experts."

While few fictional books stand the weather of time (in this case, the Cold War, its thawing before then warming into something entirely new), Vasily Aksyonov's "The Burn" has manaaged to, and I expect will always, endure. The author, whose mother was the famous and very courageous Elena Ginsburg who wrote of her prison experiences ("Journey into the Whirlwind"), was trained as a medical doctor and had merged into literary circles, encountering virtually everyone from Steinbeck to the Metropol before being personally exiled by Brehznev. In short, he is a Giant, a prospective for the Nobel. This book long considered his magnus opus, chronicles a group of friends, their experiences in the former Soviet Union and combines jazz, science, politics and very large questions. Astonishingly, it has most often been compared to Pynchon's "V" and, as such, the author writes in a very western and post-modern manner; if Gogol had endured the Cold War and completed his "Dead Souls" series this might be something of what it would appear. This book soared as a bombshell upon its release (its own screaming across the sky heard far), and should be immediately acquired by anyone interested in Russian literature.

This review refers to the Russian language edition of the book.

Most books about America tend to be strongly negativistic. This one is different. As an emigre, Aksenov stands exactly at the border between an outsider and an insider -- the best place for observation. His view is deeply personal, yet honestly trying to be objective. The effort results in a good book with a fresh-eye view. I wish there were more books like this.

This book, "Moskovskaia Saga" ("Moscow Saga"), was published in the United States by Random House under the title "Generations of Winter". But if you are able to read in Russian, you would want to do it. This way you would understand it much deeper. This book will touch your heart.

This book is a proof that Aksenov is, without any doubt, a living classic of contemporary Russian literature. I absolutely enjoyed reading it in Russian...

After one reads Rimsky's autobiography _My Musical Life_, there isn't much left in English translation for those who want to know more about one of the greatest Russian composers. Thank God for Yatrebtsev. Yastrebtsev's biography provides a wealth of information Rimsky did not remember (since he wrote his autobiography years after the events happened), remembered incorrectly, or chose to omit.

_Reminiscences of Rimsky-Korsakov_ may well be unique in that it is a day by day record of Rimsky's words and deeds. I enjoyed the refreshing immediacy of Yastrebtsev's first-hand accounts of his visits with Rimsky not only for the candid comments, but also for an intimate look into the composer's daily habits. Their conversations help the student of Rimsky to put his works in context, for Rimsky and Yastrebtsev discussed others' works along with his own. It is a must-have for the student of Rimsky-Korsakov or of late 19th century Russian music in general.

Over the years I have read many short stories, and one of the things that has led me to prefer the novel by no small margin over the short story is that so many short stories seem to say so little. They always ended before the story line and characters had developed into anything.

Today, I still prefer longer prose works, but reading this collection of stories by Vasily Shukshin was a revelation. Despite their brief length, the author manages to establish genuinely palpable characters and a sense of completeness and significance so often lacking in the short story. 'In the Autumn' and 'Styopka' are both remarkably poignant pieces. I highly recommend this collection to anyone who enjoys literature in any form.

The book about United States as it seen by eyes of a new immigrant writer, thought provoking and very entertaining. I would suppose it is a must read for anybody who would like to make a fresh look around.

Suppressed in the early sixties, translated into English in the mid-eighties, and published under Gorbachev's rule, Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate is the most famous Russian novel of the Second World war. Historians such as Richard Overy, Catherine Merridale and Robert Conquest have praised it for its realistic account of Soviet life and its courage in Stalinism. Reviewers from Italy to France to Britain praised Grossman and compared him to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.

Now as Christopher Hitchens once pointed out, to be even compared to Tolstoy is no small achievement, so saying that Grossman does not meet this standard is hardly a damning criticism. Grossman, during the war a prominent journalist and later a novelists, was understandably horrified at the infinite cruelties and callousness of the Stalinist regime. That he is unsparing of the interrogations, the deportations, the tortures, the bureaucratic spite and viciousness, the way that political correctness encouraged cowardice and despair does credit to his courage. But courage is not enough, and one should beware those who believe it is a substitute for art. To say, as George Steiner, that Solzhenitsyn and Grossman "eclipse almost all that passes for serious fiction in the West today," is unfair. These subjects are powerful and moving is true, but beside the point. How could such they not be? Grossman must do more, and ultimately he does not do it.

Grossman suffers the vices of a journalist. His writing resembles romantic magazine cliches ("His love for Marya Ivanova was the deepest truth of his soul. How could it have given birth to so many lies?) The sententious title, all too reminiscent of War and Peace, does not help. Passages are suffused with rhetoric ("No, whatever life holds in store...they will live as human beings and die as human beings, the same as those who have already perished; and in this alone lies man's eternal and bitter victory over all the grandiose and inhuman forces that every have been or will be.") and the comments about freedom are particularly hollow. ("Does man lose his innate yearning for freedom?" "Man's innate yearning for freedom can be suppressed but never destroyed.") Behind the suppressed liberal, a middlebrow is waiting to come out.

Grossman writes at one point of how in totalitarian countries a small minority is able to bully or brainwash the rest of the country. This point has two flaws: it is a simplistic description of how modern terror works and Grossman does not bring it aesthetically to life. True, there are some stirring passages as the protagonist Viktor Shtrum finds all his colleagues at the scientific institute he works with drop away from him once he is criticized for supporting modern physics. But Grossman cannot portray the mind of an Anti-Semite or a Stalinist torturer. This failure is particularly damaging when one considers that Russian literature has no shortage of profound portraits of this sort of corrupt mindset (Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Chekhov, Tolstoy, even Nabokov's Humbert Humbert). While it is true that Hitler was not the product of a primordial German anti-semitism, Grossman's picture of the Holocaust where almost none of the perpetrators are actually anti-Semites, just cogs in an automatic system, is seriously misleading. (One thinks of Omer Bartov's Hitler's Army in contrast).

Stalinism per se seems to be a caste separate from the population. This is misleading because it does not deal sufficiently with the internalization of Stalinism among the Soviet population. Viktor Shtrum seems surprisingly calm and composed towards the Germans who murdered his mother because she was a Jew. What is really odd is that most of the rest of the Soviet characters feel the same way. On both sides there is stoicism, a sense of comradely duty, thoughts about loved ones. There is not on the German side violent racist loathing towards the enemy. Likewise, there is surprisingly little rage, indignation, heartbroken grief and anger or lust for vengeance on the Russian side, though God knows there was no lack of provocation from the Germans. It would have been very easy, indeed one would think it unavoidable, to show reasonably decent Russians consumed with rage against the Germans. But that would complicate Grossman's picture of evil flowing down from a totalitarian state. It also says something that the Communists never win an argument in this book. (When a Russian prisoner of Tolstoyan pacifist opinions speaks of redeeming the world with acts of spontaneous kindness, no one actually points out that a lot more is needed to stop the Nazis.)

A comparison to Aharon Appelfeld's novels, or Gunter Grass's The Danzig Trilogy, or This way to the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen, shows Grossman's weakness as a writer of character. He assumes that most people are like himself. (Consider the failure in his portraits of Hitler and Stalin). And so there are endless scenes of people thinking about their loved ones, because Grossman cannot provide much more. They are endless scenes of women portrayed as the objects of men's affections, rarely as subjects, and certainly without the depth of other writers. (One notices that in Stalingrad the German soldiers have love affairs with Russian girls. They do not rape them). Strikingly, Grossman's characters are overwhelmingly Russian. Although the Soviet Union was a multinational state, other nationalities are usually only mentioned as reminders of Soviet persecution. In the end one is reminded that whereas Dostoyevsky could convince a reader that it is just and humane for Dimitri Karamazov to suffer the punishment for a murder that was actually committed by someone else, Vasily Grossman is unable to bring many of his liberal good wishes to life.

Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate belongs the category of suppressed literature in the Soviet Russia. The author dared to submit the manuscript of this big book approval only after the death of Joseph Stalin. But the Party's cultural wing even then refused its publication for next 500 years! One night they took away all the manuscripts from author's apartment. Only in the 80's the manuscript was recovered and published in first time. This is a novel in a Tolstoyean mould. It has a lot characters. The story hangs in and around Victor, a nuclear physicist, and his family and friends. The events happened during the period of second world war, when Russia was attacked by the forces of Nazy Germany. The Russians called it great Patriotic War. Every problems of soviet system was swept aside in the defence of fatherland. The novel was conceived in the mind of Vasily Grossman during years of new purge against the jews in the USSR after the second world war. People were hunted down or isolated again by the soviet authorities in the name of race, religion and ationality. Vasily Grossman once a communist now understands he is a jew also. The Central character in the novel, Victor, is the alterego of the author himself. Victor works as a scientist.He has a wife and one daughter.Victor's character is always in clash with his wife.His tender relationship with his friend's wife is the only spiritual solace for him. When war broke out everybody starts speaking for the war against German forces is to protect freedom and honour of people. Vasily Grossman finds the irony of such a slogan. A People without a freedom and individual honour for many terrible years under Stalin now think they go to protect it. When Victor's political stand threatens his own existence he becomes fearful and starts to think of an apology before the authorities. Everybody treats him as an alien and people fear his arrest is near. In such a lonely and desperate night Victor got a telephone call from Joseph Stalin himself....

The narrative is simple. Victor's mother's last letter from the German concentration camp is one of the moving chapters in the novel.The scenes at the Russian labor camp are also interesting and informative. Life anf Fate gives a total, let me say, accurate picture of the Soviet Union. As some critics said, while other writers went out of the soviet system and wrote about it, Vasily Grossman lived in and through the troubles of soviet society and wrote about it. Like Dr. Zhivago this is also an important book for them who who love great fiction.

Don't be put off by the size of this book, once you are used to the cast of Russian names (thankfully the paperback includes a list of major characters) and the various sub-plots this book is extremly readable.

The main story is about the occupation of Stalingrad by the German army during World War II. Historical and fictional characters are mixed as the story of the Russian offensive of Winter 1942 is told.

All the subplots are linked by the Shaposhnikov family; Viktor a Moscow nuclear scientist being the main character. The various sub-plots include a Russian labour camp, Viktors fight against the authorities and his conscence and the harrowing story of a train load of Jews an the way to the gas chambers of Auswitz.

Along with Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, Vasily Grossman has wrote a truly classic book about the injustice of Stalin's Russia, which you don't have to be an expert on Russian history to read.