“Confiscation and Requisition” in Revolutionary RUSSIA
- Book: Red Winter
- Location: Russia
- Author: Dan Smith
1920, central Russia. It is bleak, cold, dark, it is densely forested and there is a murderer roaming freely, executing locals and branding them with a red star. It is a time when the country is in turmoil, no-one can be trusted, no-one is giving anything away. All the factions, whether Red or any colour of the rainbow are fighting each other, changing sides and being duplicitous – it’s a scary and uncertain world, with a very uncertain future. Russia is a country that has suffered years of “confiscation and requisition”.
Much of the feel of this book is reminiscent of The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, as people wander in search of meagre food rations and shelter the devastation of the surroundings is palpable. This is a country on the edge, the inhabitants living on adrenaline, looking out for the next danger, and the next attack. It is a bleak and stark landscape.
Nikolai Levitsky, known as Kolya, has deserted from the army, and has brought his mortally wounded brother Alek to the family izba, where he anticipates finding his wife Marianna and his two boys. But their home is deserted. Galina, their neighbour is in hiding, and is distraught at the brutal murder of her husband, so much so that she takes her own life in front of Kolya by walking into the nearby lake and drowning herself. Gradually, it becomes evident that a watery death is a common occurrence amongst the women victims. The name of Koshei starts to be thrown about, linked to the gory deaths – he is a mythical figure of terror, a legend, a nebulous character from old fables, yet he seems all too real in the terror he is visiting upon the people of Central Russia. He seems particularly focussed upon Kolya. Kolya is driven to plough onwards to find his family and to solve the mystery of the sadistic killings, trekking and riding through the snow-bound landscape, the snow that “..covers everything, from the Autumn mud and the flame-coloured leaves to the sounds of the forest and the bodies left in the wake of armies and oppressors. Marianna always told me that God sent us the snow to make our country beautiful to hide whatever ugliness we created for ourselves’…
Red Winter is a riveting novel that transports the reader to the harshest of climates, in the depth of Winter, and has gained many accolades: The Times says it has a “superbly shivery atmosphere” and The Sunday Times: “Smith has fashioned a story of page-turning intensity that simultaneously possesses real depth of characterisation”.
Connect to this link for an author interview: http://tripfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/Novel-set-in-revolutionary-Russia.html
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