Everything Flows By Vasily Grossman

In Larry Lankton’s text, “Beyond the Boundaries” we gradually enter an unknown world that is frightening yet filled with immense beauty for miles. Due to the copper mining industry, a gradual increase of working class men and their families start to migrate to the unknown world with unsteady emotion, yet hope for a prosperous new life. In “Beyond the Boundaries”, Lankton takes us on a journey on how the “world below” transformed the upper peninsula into a functional and accepted new part of the world.

The Great Terror was one of the single greatest loss of lives in the history of the world. It was a crusade of political tyranny in the Soviet Union that transpired during the late 1930’s. The Terrors implicated a wide spread cleansing of the Communist Party and government officials, control of peasants and the Red Army headship, extensive police over watch, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, and illogical slayings. Opportunely, some good did come from the terrors nonetheless. Two of those goods being Sofia Petrovna and Requiem. Both works allow history to peer back into the Stalin Era and bear witness to the travesties that came with it. Through the use of fictional story telling and thematic devises Sofia Petrovna and Requiem, respectively, paint a grim yet descriptive picture in a very efficient manner.

In the late 19th century Russia had been notably behind Europe economically, they weren’t in possession of the modern farming technologies that could efficiently provide for a large country. As a result 90% of the Russian population were peasants (Massey, 4). The serfs lived in deep poverty; they didn’t have the appropriate apparatus to produce enough crops and most of their landlords had unbelievably high demands. In an effort to reform the economy’s recession tsar Alexander II liberated the serfs. However this created more bad for both the serfs and the nobles. In the beginning the serfs saw this is a great victory and another reason to be thankful for their tsar. But as timed pass by the peasants saw this life of liberty and freedom to

It is hard to imagine what living life in constant fear of death and arrest would be like, knowing that any slight slip in actions or speech could result in the end of one’s life as they knew it. Eugenia Ginzburg is an active communist member who finds herself on the wrong side of this situation. Arrested for over exaggerated claims of being a trotskyist terrorist, she is immediately thrust into a spiral of events that will dramatically change her, her ideals, and the entire state of communism. However, while in the prisons and labor camps it is interesting to note how her perceptions of life and reality change, including her affiliation to the state. This naturally begs the question; How do Ginzburg's perceptions of Communism and the Stalinist regime change throughout

In Fulcrum, Alexander Zuyev details what his life was like from his childhood up until his defection from the Soviet Union. Born in 1961, Zuyev spent his childhood in the Russian town of Samara in a simple apartment with his mother and father. While his father moved out when he was young, Zuyev’s mother raised him under strict rules in order to keep his grades up in school. His mother was also a devout Communist who believed the government of the Soviet Union was advancing society in the right direction. However, Alexander Zuyev began to recognize problems in his society at a young age. For instance, one of his friends who lived in his town resided in a high class home and

The following paper will be an analysis of "The Great Terror," that is, the arrest and often execution of millions of Russian and Russian minorities from 1936 to 1938, carried out by the Soviet secret police, known as, and hereafter referred to as the NKVD. The analysis will use Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg's, a Russian professor and writer who was arrested early into the purges and experienced, as well as survived, it in its entirety, memoir a Journey Into the Whirlwind as a primary source. More specifically, it will focus on Ginzburg's arrest and

In William Le Queux novel, Guilty Bonds (1895), Frank Burgoyne encountered various evasive characters that exposed him to a Russian society that nearly destroys him. Frank’s attempts to please his wife, Vera, taught him about the instability of the Russian government and the futile endeavours of the terrorist organization that failed to execute the Tsar of Russia. By using Frank’s experiences throughout the story, William Le Queux was able to formulate an image of Russia that elaborated on both the nation’s political turmoil and societal unrest.

The dominance of Soviet Russia’s government and societal norms are key factors that control the fate of those who live in the area. Soviet Russia, well known for their communistic society, is deemed by Americans as a place with “horrors” and can be seen by outsiders as amusing (70). Katya’s lover, an oblivious American, inquires about these horrors as a way of seeking “some entertainment—for an easy amusing, and preferably sexy story about the exotic world to which his lover belonged” (70). Unfamiliar with the Russian communist lifestyle, Katya’s lover is merely a spectator to the customs and culture of Katya’s homeland, which seem oppressive in nature to him. On the other spectrum, Katya is startled and unaccustomed to the perception others might have of the society she comes from. She reminisces on miniscule happenings such as the lack of freedom of

The book Point Blank by Anthony Horowitz is really exciting. This book is about a suspicious school, named Point Blank, that is high in the Swiss Alps with a few sons of the rich. The teenage boys are sent here for bad behavior and when no other school can handle them. It is supposed to make them a new person and they will be better when they come home. The setting takes place in the Swiss Alps and also in London England, where M16, a spy group, is stationed. This affects Alex, a 14 year old boy sent to Point Blank to investigate, because he can't get away from Point Blank easily because the only way up is by helicopter or skis.

Revolutions aim to overthrow or change an existing regime and focus on releasing the shackles of oppression that hold them down. In Stalinist Russia those who revolted, or were seen as a threat, would sentenced to imprisonment where there was little to no chance of escape or freedom. Even though the revolutionist may be denied freedom, there is a belief that resonates within; hope. The want for freedom instills hope in individuals who seek to remedy the environment in which they live. Paradoxically, it is the very hope that the individual has that perpetuates the environment of discomfort and pain that drives said individual to leave it. Hope, in its essence, constrains freedom, as seen through Masha during her imprisonment in Vasily Grossman’s

He introduces his readers to a middle-aged man named Dmitriev and his wife, Lena, and daughter, Natashka. This family of three lives in a communal apartment in Moscow. Dmitriev is no-one special; he is an average man who lives a rather unremarkable life. Yet, from his story, one can gain much insight into the intricacies of everyday life of a citizen of Soviet Russia. The apartment in which Dmitriev and his family live is quite small, providing very little privacy. The cramped conditions results in Dmitriev creating a makeshift room for Natashka, in order to give his daughter a sense of privacy. The created space was more akin to a “cell,” as Dmitriev called it, than a bedroom: a thin screen separated her bed and small desk from the rest of the apartment (Trifonov, 21). However, the screen gave merely the illusion of privacy. At night, Dmitriev and Lena would be careful to not wake their daughter, but would at times call out “Natash! Hey, Natash!” to find out if their daughter was actually asleep (21). This pseudo-privacy that they created for themselves is analogous to what the Soviet government was attempting: force the people to live in uncomfortably close quarters, designate which rooms in the communal apartments were public and which were

The first chapter of ‘All Things Fall Apart” by Chinas Achebe was very interesting. The book started by explaining the setting of the village then it introduced Okonkwo and his achievements as a young man that led him to be very wealthy. What caught my attention was the difference in character between Okonkwo and his father Unoka. In page four it revealed how Okonkwo felt about his father and how he disliked individuals like his father that were unsuccessful and lazy.

Moreover, Dostoevsky again asks the reader “How much better is it to understand it all, to be aware of everything, all the impossibilities and stone walls” (Dostoevsky 1313). Subsequently, according to the author, “twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too” (Dostoevsky 1305). It is this “freedom” that is so crucial to man.

"Jetliner" Now he takes his mark At the farthest end of the runway Looking straight ahead, eager, intense With his sharp eyes shining He takes a deep, deep breath With his powerful lungs

In the introduction to our edition of Chekhov's short stories, by George Pahomov, it is stated that Chekhov's fiction “captured the burgeoning Russian democracy” and that “in Chekhov's democratic world view, no one was excluded” (vii-viii). We see these ideals being put forward in the two stories by Chekhov that we will discuss in this paper. In these two stories, “The Resurrection” and “The Dance Pianist,” we can see how Chekhov depicts a world where the author's own democratic ideals may be in mind, but which is in reality still very much based on the old-fashioned concepts of status and rank. We will see that both of these stories center around the concept of social status, especially in the way that