Antony Beevor is a master historian - his book on the fall of Berlin in 1945 is absolutely riveting. Compared to such previous works, this book is a minor achievement, but it is an enjoyable one nevertheless, mostly because the tale that unfolds is totally improbable - and yet completely true. Olga Chekhova, niece of the great Chekhov, survived the Russian revolution, emigrated to Berlin, became an actress, found celebrity and wealth as a famous movie star, and ended up as one of the goddesses of the Nazi era cinema - a dubious achievement that is counterbalanced by a stunning fact: she also was a spy for the Soviet Union. Her story is fascinating, and Beevor tells it in a fast-paced way, mixing it with the story of the Chekhov clan in the USSR (which is, on its own, as bizarre and convoluted as Olga's story). One wishes that Beevor had spent more time on all those characters, though - obviously he knows what he's talking about, but he seems to rush from one episode to another, and leaves the reader a bit frustrated: more details, more facts, more in-depth analysis (on Olga's career, on her secret activities - we never really know what kind of work she truly did as a spy- or on the condition of an artist under the Nazis, for example) would have been more than welcome. In a way, it feels often as if this book is a summary of the book it could have been. Yet, if only because of its wonderful cast of characters, and of the numerous intertwined stories that unfold in ways that a novelist would not dare invent, it is a very pleasant read.
The Mystery of Olga Chekhova turned out not to be particularly mysterious and for this I definitely subtract points. Olga Chekhova, a White Russian actress, doubly related by marriage to Anton Chekhov, ended up as a star of the German film industry in the 1920s and 1930s (she even made a German version of a Hitchcock film) and as a minor favorite of Nazi Party leaders like Hitler and Goebbels. After the war, she continued to live in East Germany, so the "mystery" is whether she was a Soviet spy, and the "answer" is that of course she was, or with her background, she would have been dead or in a Gulag post-1945. (And her brother, Lev Knipper, was definitely a Soviet agent, so there's no mystery on that score either.)The book itself was best when discussing the privations of post-Revolution Russia in the early 1920s; otherwise, the material on Nazi Germany was nothing new, and given that the central premise of the book (that there was a mystery surrounding Olga Chekhova's activities) was so thin, this seemed as if it would have worked better as a long essay in a historical journal rather than as a book-length piece of nonfiction.
Do You like book The Mystery Of Olga Chekhova (2005)?
Llibre interessant a estones, potser excessivament dispers i mancat de ritme, que dóna a conèixer al gran públic la figura d'Olga Chejova, actriu russa emigrada a Alemanya el 1920 que arribà a ser l'actriu preferida del Reich, mentre paral·lelament feia tasques d'espionatge pels soviètics. Aquesta figura és l'eix central, però Beevor també analitza, amb major o menor intensitat, els altres membres de la família Knipper-Chejov, i esmenta molt de passada al final el que potser era el principal objectiu del seu treball: l'anàlisi de les relacions socials i humanes entre Alemanya i Rússia, dos països amb veleitats imperialistes, unes relacions d'amor i odi que van afectar el destí d'Europa Central i Oriental.
—Joaquim Alvarado
