Travel to Europe

Imperium

Format: Paperback
Author: Ryszard Kapuscinski
ReleaseDate: 08 August, 1995
Publisher: Vintage
Rating:

a step closer to the mystery of the Soviet Empire ;-)
Ryszard Kapuscinski is a guru to many people in Poland, and his books were always received with unending awe - because he traveled, when hardly anybody else could o anywhere apart from other countries of the Communist bloc, and moreover - he could write about what he saw. . I still marvel how he managed to write so many things, which were in principle against the system, and still get published, but it is another question (Polish censorship was maybe not that tight or not that clever, or - most likely - clever enough to allow the chosen one his writing in the name of relative peace???).

"Imperium" is one of my favorites among Kapuscinski's books (NB. I have read the original, so have no idea about the translation, but after reading some earlier reviews I think it must be good too). I have been driven to the mystery of Russia and its acquisitions as well as to the phenomenon of Soviet Union for a long time, and here Kapuscinski gives a lot on these subjects in a concise form.

The book is divided into several parts, starting with the author's earliest memories of Soviet Union, when he was a schoolboy of what is now Belarus, and with his surprisingly acute observations (reminding me of my own, never put into words, forty years later, when everything was already much more relieved, but still the school was mysteriously insane). Then we go through Siberia on the Transsiberian train (still a cult trip for many students in Poland, albeit it must be very different now), and proceed to the other republics of the Soviet Union.

Kapuscinski traveled as a journalist, but always he managed to get something private out of each visit, which had to have an official program and probably nothing more was permitted. He talked to people in the forgotten corners of the Imperium and in the representative places, watched them, saw the ancient rituals and old habits under (and clashing with) the overwhelming, transplanted Russian culture, and wrote about it, preserving the memories and triggering in several generations the urge to see it with their own eyes, managing to capture the atmosphere of each place he got to. . . He evokes the image of "Homo Sovieticus", at the same time wondering about Russian soul.

The book is full of literary allusions and connections and contains a rich bibliography at the end, which is also recommended. "Imperium", as Kapuscinski warns at the beginning, is a collection of observations and his thoughts, as deep as they can be in this form, but because the subject is vast, everything is treated personally and rather as an encouragement to inflame greater interest, and then more monographic works come in handy (e. g. reading in "Imperium" about the North led me to excellent books by Mariusz Wilk, a longtime resident of Solovki).

I heartily recommend this book - it cannot disappoint!.

Transcendent
Think of Dante's skill at capturing the largest of themes and extracting their essences. Think of Dante's ability to create entire worlds. Kapuscinski's Imperium is indescribably more than memoir, travel stories, or USSR history. If you relish writing of the highest caliber, read this book. You will be rewarded on every page. Along the way you will also come to know the world that existed behind an Iron Curtain for most of the last century. This is the work of an accomplished master who has distilled 54 years of observations and 36,0000 miles of travels into wisdom, insight, and poetry. I certainly wish that more than 5 stars could be awarded. .

A Walk on the Dark Side
They came to America and I thank God they did. My grandparents left the territory of what would become the Soviet Union long before the 1917 Revolution. Whenever I read about the USSR, I always realize that only a couple of small decisions saved me from being born there, or more probably, saved me from being wiped out there, since I was born during World War II. Fate has a way of creating circles, though, and I've wound up teaching English to people from my grandparents' homeland. It's curious. Many of them are ethnically exactly the same as I am, but it is always obvious that there is a huge cultural gap. OK, they didn't grow up in America. I have never set foot in any part of the former USSR. I have spent the last 14 years peering into their pasts, constantly wondering why they are predisposed to think this way, act that way. I have thought long and hard about the issue, discussed it with many of my students, read their stories, listened to many more. A book like IMPERIUM goes a long way towards helping me understand that difference between me, "the one that got away" and them, "the ones that didn't".

Back in 1988, in a single week, I read three of Kapuscinski's books in a mad dash of fascination. I'd already spent over six years living in various Third World countries and his writing on Iran, Ethiopia and Angola captured something that no one else came close to, especially because he never sneered, he never condescended. No racist platitudes, no grandstanding for a Western audience for Kapuscinski. IMPERIUM, the description of his travels around the Soviet Union in 1958, 1967, 1989-90 and in 1992-93, continues in his own tradition of inserting himself into the most desperate of situations, visiting places where the most extreme sorts of human behavior have taken or are taking place. I feel that at times he does exaggerate certain events, certain facts may be forgotten or left out. (Plus, if you can't read Polish transcriptions, the names will all look strange to you. ) No matter. He arrives at a picture that rings with authenticity; he is able to persuade you that you understand what is happening. (Or that nobody can understand what is happening. ) This author can somehow portray the stupidity, the bestiality, bravery, and unconquerable human spirit that suffuses every event in our unhappy human history. He does it with a sense of immediacy, crossing every cultural and racial boundary as if it didn't exist. (Do they really exist ? Much less than most people think, I would say. ) He visits the frozen horrors of the gulag archipelago, now fallen silent, crumbling into the permafrost. He describes the petty nationalist hatreds that increasingly suffused Soviet life to the end, the economic disaster, the environmental destruction, the brutality of a government that deliberately let ten million people starve to death, the lack of organizational knowhow, a dispirited despair. It is all a dark picture of a country that devoured so many of its own, shot itself in the foot so many times. He did come up with numerous insights that helped me to understand my own past or, as it were, my own non-past. No delving into party history, statistics, or laws and decrees; he cuts straight to the heart of the matter. If you need a single book that will describe the atmosphere in the former USSR, that will help you understand what happened to people there, choose this one.

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