About book Molotovs Toverlantaarn: Een Reis Door De Russische Geschiedenis (2000)
This is a dense book. It has so much in it that you find yourself following several trails at once. Beginning in a flat full of books that once belonged to Molotov, Polonsky uses their discovery to deliver a history lesson, discussions of Russian literature and poets, a travelogue of a Russia that disappeared in the Revolution and one that is emerging under Putin. She offers insights into the modern country that is increasingly looming large in our consciousness and into the kind of people who run it with their private security and their nationalist, religious mysticism. Putin believes in Shangri-la (Shambala) and wants to find the way in. This man is running one of the most powerful nations on Earth. Worried? Me?Time and again, Molotov appears in the narrative a figure in the monstrous terrifying Stalinist regime that saw the brightest and the best exiled and murdered. Starting at his apartment where the author has a flat in the same block, all the most familiar 20thC figures from the Revolution onwards make an appearance as their connection with number 3 is traced and then followed out to the Mongolian borders where Russia becomes myth, legend, a spiritual landscape place full of madmen and shamen.This is an extraordinary book full of treasure. Read it. I had mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, this is a rambling account, not very well-written. On the other hand, it does give a lot of information about Russian history and culture from the point of view of someone who obviously has a deep passion for Russia and has spent a long time learning about it. I definitely learned things, but it was a plodding read, and there seemed to be no cohesive message.
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This is a thoroughly recommendable book with an original take on the mystery which is Russia.
—Samantha
