Here's some pictures of destruction and doom. A nice little set in today Graun, illustrating life in Leningrad during the German siege.
It's really an occasion, for me, to recommend an author and his finest book. Victor Serge and The Unforgiving Years.
If the Russian Revolution had taken a different turn, if it had succeeded, and that's a big if, Serge may well have been known as one of the greatest Russian authors of the 20th century. Then again, if the Russian Revolution had taken a different turn Serge would have written very different novels. His chief attribute, apart from being an acute observer of the revolution and its aftermath (unlike other supposedly acute observers, Serge had the advantage of actually have participated in the revolution wholeheartedly and practically) is his style of writing. It has the knack of being personal yet non-egoistic. Serge apparently professed to hate the word "I", yet his novels, especially his earlier ones, clearly follow his life's journey.
The Unforgiving Years was his last and best work, a four-part piece that seem impressionistic and disconnected (like, say, the free-standing chapters of Goodbye to Berlin), until the stunning ending. The central chapters are set in the ruins of Leningrad and, later, Berlin. Themes such as "the flame beneath the snow" hint nicely, I think, on the weird revolutionary potential that gathered toward the end of the war - leaderless and, of course, cruelly snuffed out.
