Foma Gordyeff (The Man Who Was Afraid) by Maxim Gorky

Born into the bourgeoisie

Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) is one of the all-time greats in Russian and Soviet literary history, though American readers these days are unlikely to be familiar with his work. He is considered the founder of socialist realism, that Soviet genre of literature that advocates socialist and communist ideals. While we often hear about Russian writers or artists who were persecuted by the Soviet government, Gorky was embraced by the Soviets as a national hero. That’s not to say he was a sell-out to the regime in power, however. Gorky really believed in socialism and wrote realist works with proletarian themes. His fiction gained a wide readership in Western Europe and America in the early 20th century, back when readers in those nations were more sympathetic to labor and more open to socialist ideas. As the world became disgusted with Joseph Stalin and his authoritarian regime, however, Gorky’s brand of literature fell out of favor with readers outside the Soviet Union.

Gorky’s novel Foma Gordyeff was published in 1899. The title of the book is the name of its main character. The original title in Russian is Фома Гордеев. The 1901 translation by Herman Bernstein, available in the public domain, bears the spelling I’ve used in the title of this review. Within that edition, however, the name is spelled at least three different ways: Gordyeff, Gordyeef, and Gordyeeff. Alternate English spellings include Gordeyev and Gordjejew. The Man Who Was Afraid was tacked onto an English translation and doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense in relation to the book itself.

Foma Gordyeff is the son of a rich father who owns a successful shipping business that moves agricultural and industrial goods up and down the Volga River. From a young age, Foma is groomed to take over the family business, even though, as Gorky bluntly states, he’s not very smart. As a young man, Foma has a love affair that ends disappointingly and instills in him a bitterness toward the hypocrisy of polite society. When his father dies, Foma is taken under the care of his godfather, also his father’s right-hand-man, Yakov Mayakin, who continues to train Foma in the shipping business while trying to control every other aspect of the young man’s life. As Foma learns that Mayakin and capitalists like him are greedy exploiters of labor, he loses interest in the family business and starts leading a dissipated life of drinking and partying. He can find no satisfaction in life and longs to be free of Mayakin and his father’s legacy.

Foma Gordyeff is an anti-capitalist novel, but it stops short of being a pro-socialist novel. The hero is a wealthy bourgeoisie, and the word “proletariat” isn’t even mentioned until three-quarters of the way through the book. For the most part, this novel is simply about a rich guy continually bitching about how life is meaningless and sucky, and that goes on way too long. Gorky never gets you to like Foma before he turns him into a bitter, insufferable grouch. Gorky tried to cap the story off with a shocking ending, but it just feels week and anticlimactic. This novel is much less radical than the works of some American writers of the time, like Jack London (The Iron Heel) and Upton Sinclair (The Jungle). A few years after the publication of Foma Gordyeff, Gorky himself would crank the red rhetoric higher in works like The Mother.

London, a proclaimed socialist himself, loved this novel and even wrote an introduction to one of its English-language editions. That’s not surprising, since London, although born poor, was practically an American incarnation of Foma. London not only shared Gorky’s political beliefs but shared Foma’s depressing outlook on life and disgust at the pointless shallowness of much of modern capitalist society. By the time you’ve read through this protracted and dreary exercise in pessimism, you might find their depressing outlook to be contagious.

Beasts, Men, and Gods by Ferdynand Ossendowski

War memoir and Mongolian travelogue

Ferdynand Ossendowski (1876–1945) was a Polish scientist, explorer, and political activist who led a complicated and adventurous life. He was born in what is now Latvia. Sometime around his teen years, he moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, with his father. He taught science courses at a university in Tomsk and traveled to many different parts of Asia. Around 1905, he was sentenced to death for organizing communist activities in opposition to the tsar, but his sentence was commuted, and after some years of hard labor, he was released. Much like the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror that followed, the Russian Revolutions of 1917 were followed by a period of political extremism, persecution, and executions. This led to the Russian Civil War, in which Ossendowski fought on the side of the Whites (conservative nationalists) against the Reds (Bolsheviks, Communists, Soviets). In 1920, Ossendowski was living in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. This is where his memoir Beasts, Men, and Gods begins. The Bolsheviks consider him a counterrevolutionary and set out to capture and likely execute him. Ossendowski gets wind of their coming, however, and escapes. He decides to flee Russia through Mongolia, hoping to eventually reach a port city where he can emigrate to a safe place in Western Europe.

The danger doesn’t end, however, when Ossendowski crosses into Mongolia. Whites and Reds are active on that side of the border as well, where the Mongolians are also fighting for their independence from Chinese occupation. Ossendowski joins up with a band of Whites consisting of other “foreigners” (Ossendowski identifies as a Pole) who, while still hoping to make their exit from the region, engage in military battles against the Reds and Chinese. The landscape is littered with corpses, and torture and atrocities are ubiquitous. In an environment of rampant paranoia where spies are found everywhere, Ossendowski is equally in danger of being killed by White officers who suspect him of leaning towards the Reds.

Beasts, Men, and Gods was published in 1922. While Ossendowski’s life was certainly exciting, the way he tells his story here does not make for easy reading. This account reads as if it were written for an Eastern European audience who would have been intimately familiar with the events of the Russian Civil War. To those not in the know, the text often reads like a confusing barrage of unfamiliar proper nouns: geographical place names, various Red and White factions, government agencies and military units, the names of Russian generals, and various Chinese and Mongolian ethnic groups. At times it’s difficult to keep straight which groups are fighting for which side. In order to fully appreciate this book, I think I would first have to read a comprehensive overview of the Russian Civil War and another volume on the history of Mongolia.

While the war narrative is difficult to get through, the book is more successful as a study of Mongolian culture. While in Mongolia, Ossendowski spent much time in Buddhist monasteries. He met the Living Buddha, the highest Buddhist personage in Mongolia, distinct from the Dalai Lama in Tibet. The most vividly drawn character in the book is the White general Baron Ungern von Sternberg (1886–1921), a German aristocrat who has “gone native” and embraced the Buddhist religion. Ossendowski himself does not profess to having adopted Buddhism, but he relates Buddhist teachings and history with respect and an attention to detail. Fortune telling was a common practice in Mongolia, and Ossendowski writes about prophecies as if they were real and accurate. After the travel narrative ends, another eight chapters are solely devoted to the religion, myths, and legends of Mongolian Buddhism. As Beasts, Men, and Gods progresses, and becomes less about Russia and more about Mongolia, I found it more interesting and accessible. I felt lost for much of the first half of Ossendowski’s memoir, but I came to like it more towards the end.

Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov

Inaction hero

Oblomov, a novel by Russian author Ivan Goncharov, was published in 1859. The title character, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, is a member of the minor nobility (the English translation uses the word “barin” as the Russian equivalent of “baron”). He owns the family’s country estate, called Oblomovka, where he grew up. Oblomov resides, however, in a shabby apartment in St. Petersburg, where he lives the lazy life of a confirmed bachelor. Since Ilya has become the bearer of his parents’ estate, the Oblomov name has fallen in status, and the farm is not performing well financially.

The first few chapters of the novel are quite satirical. The running gag is that Oblomov refuses to get out of bed. From his prostrate position, he receives visits from a few friends who represent different segments of Russian society: a civil servant, a journalist, and fellow gentlemen, both Russian- and German-born. Oblomov’s failure to rise from his bed is indicative of the way he conducts his life in general. He is incapable of making decisions and committing to any form of action, neither in business nor personal matters. Like an overgrown man-child, he is utterly dependent upon his landlady, who takes care of his every need like a surrogate mother.

After this introduction, the novel flashes back to Oblomov’s childhood at Oblomovka. This is portrayed in heavily nostalgic realism. On the one hand, Oblomov enjoys his youth in an idyllic country setting. On the other hand, Goncharov pokes fun at this country-gentry life by exaggerating its quaintness, insularity, and simplicity. Growing up at his family estate, Oblomov’s every desire is catered to by his parents and servants, which contributes to his inactivity and ineffectualness as an adult. Following this trip down memory lane, the novel then takes another change in tone as it veers into a quite poignant romance. While at the beginning of the novel Goncharov wants the reader to laugh at Oblomov, over the course of the book one definitely comes to feel for him. As the novel proceeds, it becomes more realistic, less humorous, and as a result more compelling.

Oblomov was a popular novel in Russia, and the title character came to represent a recognizable type of Russian gentleman, as in “He’s such an Oblomov.” What this novel has to say about Russian society circa 1859, however, was largely lost on me, and probably will be unclear to most English-language readers. Only Russians themselves, or scholars of Russian history, will likely comprehend the social commentary. There is much made here of the distinctions between gentlemen of the landed gentry or nobility, and the lower peasant and servant classes. The attitude toward the latter segments of society ranges from sympathy to condescension. The rather generalized interpretation that I came away with is that Oblomov represents the minor nobility clinging to old ideas that are out of place in modern society, and as a result the dignity and standing of Oblomov’s class is sinking towards obsolescence as it phases into a lower-middle class.

Regardless of any social or political content, however, Oblomov is a novel that can be appreciated simply as a drama of human nature. People from different walks in society are shown living their lives in accordance with the hands they were dealt in life. Towards the end of the book in particular, the characters feel real, and they inspire real feelings in the reader. I would have preferred more naturalistic realism and less satirical humor—more Turgenev than Gogol, if you will—but I still found Oblomov quite engaging.

Mother by Maxim Gorky

Madonna of the Revolution

Following the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union, socialist realism became the prevailing, government-approved mode of artistic expression in the USSR. In the literary realm, Maxim Gorky is the epitome of this school of writing. None other than Joseph Stalin called Gorky “the founder of socialist realism.” Gorky didn’t merely write in this style in order to toe the party line; he helped draw the party line. In the early years of the 20th century, Gorky, a colleague of Vladimir Lenin, was active in the formation of the Bolshevik Party and an outspoken voice for Revolution. His novel Mother, published in 1906, is Gorky’s best-known work from this early period in his career. After the defeat of the First Russian Revolution of 1905, Gorky wrote Mother to inspire and motivate socialist revolutionaries in the struggle against the Tsar. Because the Tsarist regime banned the novel, it was first published in English in the pages of Appleton’s Magazine.

Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova, a Russian wife and mother, lives in an unnamed factory town with her husband and son. The husband, an alcoholic who repeatedly beats her, dies unexpectedly, leaving Vlasova to raise her young son Pavel by herself. When Pavel grows into manhood and becomes a factory laborer himself, he gets involved with the underground proletarian movement to incite a socialist revolution against the oppressive monarchical government of Tsar Nicholas II. Soon, Pavel is inviting groups of bohemian types to his home to read from forbidden literature and engage in discussions on political topics. At first the mother is frightened of this movement, but, like a good parent who loves her son, she accepts his guests with politeness. As she gets to know these young people, her fears diminish and she develops a genuine affection for them. As Vlasova listens to the socialist rhetoric of her son and his friends, she gradually becomes a believer in the movement. Eventually, she actively participates in the group’s activities, carrying out missions for this cell of revolutionaries.

Although Gorky may be the posterchild for Soviet socialist realism, his work does have merit above and beyond its propaganda value. In fact, American writers like Jack London and Upton Sinclair published some novels that are just as blatantly propagandistic than this one. London’s The Iron Heel and Sinclair’s The Jungle, however, are also clearly better written than Mother. For starters, Mother is unnecessarily long. Russian authors seem to have a propensity for monumentality in their works, but while authors like Tolstoy, Pasternak, and Sholokhov manage to maintain the reader’s interest over the course of their long works, Gorky’s Mother is too monotonous and repetitive. There are too many scenes of the mother sitting around someone’s kitchen with a few revolutionaries talking about how to distribute political pamphlets. The distribution of socialist literature is really the only revolutionary activity that the reader gets to see this underground network perform, which seems unrealistically kind and gentle for a cadre of insurrectionists. Also hard to believe, the goal of Pavel and his friends seems to be to get themselves arrested and exiled to Siberia. It is a source of pride with them, but hardly seems fruitful to their cause. Beyond a few main players, it is difficult to distinguish the supporting characters, who are mostly nondescript mouthpieces for Gorky’s socialist rhetoric.

Even Gorky admitted that this novel has its faults. That doesn’t detract, however, from the fact that the book does contain a few very powerful scenes of oppression and resistance. The possibility that Mother may be one of the most influential novels of the 20th century is due more to its political content than to its literary merits. Nevertheless, the book would not have had such an impact if Gorky hadn’t the ability to inspire pathos and passion in his readers, as he occasionally does here in Mother.
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Early Stories by Mikhail Sholokhov

Realist vignettes of Cossack life

Russian author Mikhail Sholokhov, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature, is known for his epic novels, most notably the monumental And Quiet Flows the Don and its sequel The Don Flows Home to the Sea. Not all of Sholokhov’s fiction comes in big packages, however, as evidenced by the half dozen works of short fiction in Early Stories. This collection was published in English translation in 1966. The book has no introduction or bibliographic information, so there’s no telling when exactly these early stories were first published.

Much like And Quiet Flows the Don, the stories collected here demonstrate Sholokhov to be a master of realism. More specifically, Sholokhov is a socialist realist who achieved great acclaim and won numerous awards in the Soviet Union. Sholokhov’s literature toes the party line, so to speak, and he enjoyed the approval of Joseph Stalin. Even so, his writing is not mere Soviet propaganda but truly insightful and powerful literature of the human condition that just happens to be set amid Soviet society and ideology.

Sholokhov was born in the territory of the Don Cossacks (near the Don River), and much of his literature is concerned with Cossack life. Most of the entries in Early Stories take place around the 1920s, when the majority of Cossacks were hostile toward communism. Sholokhov’s depiction of this time and place reveals the contrasts between the traditional pastoral Cossack lifestyle and the encroaching modern communist regime. As Sholokhov depicts it, the armed conflict between these two forces is played out in the bleak and dusty environment of the steppes, where life is hard to begin with even without the added horrors of warfare. Sholokhov’s writing here reminds me of the stories of Mexican author Juan Rulfo in his book The Burning Plain, which take place during the Mexican Revolution. Both authors vividly recreate the experiences of their homelands in stark and unsparing tones and illustrate the riveting drama of unsung human lives amid brutality, poverty, and oppression. Each relates such dark themes, however, not without touches of beauty, humor, and a mystical surrealism. Their works transcend location and ideology to elucidate universal truths of the human experience.

In “The Bastard,” an 8-year-old boy is reunited with his father, who has been gone for years fighting in the communist army. Their neighbors in their Cossack village, however, are not favorably disposed towards the Reds. In “The Azure Steppe,” an old serf tells his grandson stories of life before the Revolution, detailing the violent treatment of peasants by the landlord, and how some of those peasants fought back. In “The Herdsman,” a young man with communist leanings dreams of an urban education, but he’s stuck in his backwards Cossack village. “The Birth Mark” depicts the lawlessness and banditry rampant during wartime. “Alien Blood” is a poignant tale of a Cossack couple who lose their son to war, while “The Foal” relates the life of a horse unlucky enough to be born to an army unit during a military campaign.

Despite his Nobel Prize, I imagine Sholokhov’s association with Stalin hasn’t done his long-term literary reputation any favors. Nevertheless, communist or not, Soviet or not, Sholokhov is a terrific author of powerful and fascinating fiction. And Quiet Flows the Don is a masterpiece. By comparison, these short stories are more like the sketches of a master painter. They aren’t as impressive as the artist’s masterworks, but they display the same prodigious talent. Anything by Sholokhov is worth reading; unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot available in English. If you come across a copy of the now out-of-print Early Stories in a used book store, snatch it up.

Stories in this collection

The Birth-Mark

The Herdsman

The Bastard

The Azure Steppe

The Foal

Alien Blood

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What Shall We Do? by Leo Tolstoy

Thought-provoking utopianism mixed with drunk-uncle curmudgeonliness

Leo Tolstoy is renowned as one of the world’s greatest novelists, but he also wrote short stories, plays, and nonfiction works. In the latter category, Tolstoy was quite prolific as an essayist and philosopher. His book What Shall We Do? was first published in 1886. In this nonfiction work, Tolstoy addresses the topic of poverty and the inequality of the class system. What Shall We Do? has also been published in English as What Must Be Done?, What Then Must We Do?, or What is to Be Done?

Tolstoy was born to a wealthy aristocratic family. He owned a few thousand acres of land worked by over 300 serfs. Around 1870, Tolstoy had a “born-again” experience. Although not a proponent of organized religion, he developed a philosophical conviction that one should live one’s life in accordance with the moral and ethical teachings of Jesus Christ. From What Shall We Do?, the specifics of Tolstoy’s theological beliefs are not entirely clear (I believe he covers that ground more thoroughly in his 1884 book What I Believe), but he definitely advocates the emulation of Christ’s life by giving up one’s riches for the benefit of others. His ethical views bring to mind those of the Christian socialists or Christian anarchists.

The first dozen chapters or so of What Shall We Do? feel like a waste of time, quite frankly. Tolstoy relates how he discovered poverty while residing in Moscow. He visits the housing projects of the poor and converses with beggars on the street. He tries to come up with charitable endeavors to alleviate the sufferings of the urban poor, but none of his attempts are satisfyingly successful. He asks his rich friends to donate money to the cause, and they all agree to do so, but then never deliver the funds they pledged. There is an annoying disingenuous to the way that Tolstoy discusses poverty in these chapters, acting as if he were a naive country boy who never realized that rich people or poor people existed before he hit the age of 50.

After this lackluster intro, however, Tolstoy starts to get into the nuts and bolts of his views on political economy. He discusses at great length the “division of labor,” which he sees as an excuse for the wealthy and privileged to avoid doing their share of the work in society. Whenever it is pointed out that some people labor like mules while others perform no labor at all, the reason given for this inequality is always “the division of labor.” Tolstoy sees no valid reason why the wealthy, the clergy, scientists and artists should be excused from manual labor, or why they are financially rewarded for doing so. In Tolstoy’s view, everyone should grow their own food, for starters, and contribute a fair share of manual labor required to legitimately justify their existence. Science and art are things should be done in one’s spare time and should not be funded by tax dollars. Tolstoy argues with an old-fashioned curmudgeonliness. In What Shall We Do?, he comes across as anti-government, anti-religion, anti-science, anti-art, and anti-birth control, among many other antis. He calls to mind American thinker Wendell Berry in that they both seem to think we would all be better off if we reverted to some quasi-Amish lifestyle. 

Nevertheless, Tolstoy has some very interesting things to say about money, the exploitation of labor, and income inequality. One of his more interesting ideas is that everyone should spend a few hours of each day performing manual labor, intellectual labor, and artisan handicraft labor. That may be an unrealistically utopian idea for today’s world, but it’s a utopia I might enjoy living in. Overall, I found What Shall We Do? to be a confusing mash-up of liberal and conservative ideas, but not without glimpses of enlightening wisdom. You’re bound to find something to agree with here, but it’s unlikely you’ll agree with all of it.
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Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght

Moderately interesting field-work memoir

In 2005, Jonathan Slaght was working on a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. To achieve his degree, he formulated a research project to study the Blakiston’s fish owl. This majestic bird, the largest owl species in the world, lives in the forests of Eastern Asia. Slaght decided to conduct his research in the Russian province of Primorye, along the Pacific coast northeast of Vladivostok. Though an American by birth, through his father’s occupation and some time in the Peace Corps Slaght had previously lived in Primorye, spoke the language, and was familiar with the region’s customs. Over the course of the next few years, Slaght made repeated trips to Primorye to find Blakiston’s fish owls, capture them, and fit them with radio telemetry devices to track their movements, with the end goal of crafting a conservation plan for the fish owl and completing his dissertation. Slaght’s 2020 book Owls of the Eastern Ice is a memoir of his time spent in Primorye conducting this research project.

Owls of the Eastern Ice is basically a 24-page National Geographic article that has been drawn out into a 300-page book. There isn’t enough of interest here to merit such a lengthy treatment. At least half of the book consists of Slaght and his team looking for owls and not finding any. The reader gleans a little bit of a feel for what life is like in this remote portion of Russia, but Slaght doesn’t delve much deeper into the culture than many episodes of drinking in hunting cabins. The most memorable passages of the book involve Slaght and his Russian colleagues escaping some natural threat or obstacle, such as a flood or blizzard.

Other than the fish owls that Slaght is searching for, he doesn’t offer much discussion of the rest of the ecosystem beyond a few mentions of other species spotted here and there. The reader never really gets the feeling of what it’s like to be among these forests. Although this is a book about nature, it’s not really nature writing. A naturalist like Bernd Heinrich might combine concrete bird science with broader Thoreau-like musings, but Slaght’s book is strictly focused on his research. For other zoologists engaged in projects involving the tagging and radio-tracking of animals, this might be a helpful case study in methods and techniques. As an average bird-lover, however, I was disappointed to find that I learned more about capturing fish owls than I did about the birds themselves. This is a perfectly sound volume on an ornithological research project, but I’m not sure why the publisher decided to give this book the full-on trade book treatment and market it to general readers.

I envy Slaght’s adventures: exploring remote wilderness in a foreign land, observing beautiful birds, uncovering previously unknown facts about them, and working to conserve wildlife. His writing, however, while exhibiting the perfectly competent and articulate voice of a scientist, didn’t really generate much excitement in the relating of his travels. This memoir isn’t colorful enough to succeed as a travelogue. The audience most likely to enjoy this book are Slaght’s fellow ornithologists, not for its scientific findings—which would be presented in his dissertation or other academic publication—but for its relatable anecdotes of field work.
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Engineer Menni by Alexander Bogdanov

Prequel to Red Star’s Martian utopia

Physician, philosopher, and Russian revolutionary Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov was one of the founders of the Bolshevik party before being expelled by his rival Vladimir Lenin. Bogdanov also authored two science fiction novels. Engineer Menni, published in 1913, is the prequel to his 1908 utopian novel Red Star. In Red Star, an earthling is invited to visit a perfect Communist utopia on Mars. Engineer Menni takes place a few generations earlier and shows how that Communist paradise came into being. Both novels have a character named Menni. Engineer Menni was briefly mentioned in Red Star as the illustrious ancestor of the Menni character in that book. In this second novel, Bogdanov delves deeper into the earlier Menni’s life.

The story begins in the year 1667 of our calendar. By that time Mars had already developed a technologically advanced civilization. Although Mars has a few large bodies of water, the famed canals that were viewed by Earth telescopes of the 19th century did not yet exist. To create more habitable land for Mars’s growing population, a genius engineer named Menni comes up with an ambitious plan to dig a system of canals to direct water into desert areas of the planet. Not only will this irrigate vast stretches of land for agriculture; it will fundamentally alter the climate of large areas of land, making them more livable. (This “terraforming” of Mars calls to mind the planned climate alteration of Frank Herbert’s Dune.) In assuming the leadership of his Great Project, as it comes to be called, Menni is granted a great deal of political and financial power, effectively making him one of the most powerful men on Mars. His uncompromising attitude leads to conflicts with various stakeholders, including government officials who resent his high level of authority and workers who dislike his negative attitude toward trade unions.

Just as with Red Star, it’s really quite amazing how well-written this is. For a science fiction novel that was published over a century ago, it shows none of the clunkiness or kitschiness suffered by so many of its contemporaries. Surely some of the credit for that is due to the translator, Charles Rougle, who prepared the English text of both Red Star and Engineer Menni for the combined edition published by Indiana University Press. Although the story deals with topics pertinent to the burgeoning Russian Revolution, the prose reads as if it were written last week. Bogdanov forgoes any far-fetched futuristic flights of fancy to present a narrative grounded in science (including political science). Even though we know now that there are no literal canals on Mars, Bogdanov manages to construct a very rational and realistic narrative around the idea.

Despite all its admirable qualities, Engineer Menni is not quite as interesting or compelling as Red Star. Menni is not a socialist but a capitalist, so whereas Red Star was an optimistic book about what’s right with communism, this is a pessimistic book about what’s wrong with capitalism. The critique that Bogdanov presents is not fiery enough to be exciting. The book often takes the form of policy debates between Menni and his young socialist protégé Netti. There is a commendable verisimilitude to the proceedings of politics on Mars—one can almost recognize some of today’s Congressional hearings—but Bogdanov ultimately veers away from realism into dream sequences and a touch of mysticism. Together, Red Star and Engineer Menni make for an impressive literary achievement, but the latter book is clearly the weaker of the two. Fans of vintage science fiction will enjoy these books, whether a Bolshevik or not, but they will appeal especially to those with an interest in the history of the Russian Revolution and the birth of the Soviet state.

In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

An eye-opening look inside Stalin’s think-tank prisons

Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, might be best known for his nonfiction opus The Gulag Archipelago, a history of the system of forced labor camps scattered across the Soviet Union during the reign of Joseph Stalin. Less well-known is his earlier novel In the First Circle, published in 1968, a fictional narrative set within a Soviet prison. The prison in this case is a specific kind of gulag called a sharashka, a research and development facility staffed by prisoners with science and engineering backgrounds. Solzhenitsyn had first-hand experience serving time in both a hard-labor gulag and a sharashka. His personal insight lends credence and authenticity to this brutally frank exposé of the Soviet prison system.

Marfino is a sharashka located just outside of Moscow. The inmates there are primarily working on projects of an auditory nature. Stalin has ordered a coding device to scramble top secret telephone conversations that can only be unscrambled by the listener. (This takes place in 1949, so they are trying to accomplish this with pre-digital technology.) Another zek (prisoner) is working on using sonographs of human speech to identify the speaker in a treasonous phone call intercepted by the MGB (a precursor to the KGB). The zeks work side by side with “free workers,” non-prisoners who act as guards while also collaborating on research projects. Though deprived of their freedom, separated from their loved ones, and denied anything approaching the luxuries of life, the prisoners in this sharashka know they are better off than those sentenced to a Siberian gulag. In Solzhenitsyn’s depiction of Marfino, there is no violence, but all the prisoners know that if they don’t cooperate they may at any time be shipped off to a gulag where they may be frozen, starved, or shot.

Despite such depressing subject matter, Solzhenitsyn injects a gallows humor throughout. The absurd excesses of injustice under Stalin’s regime is frequently discussed in a sarcastic tone, likely the only defense mechanism available to those inevitably forced to resign themselves to having their lives taken away. Solzhenitsyn often shows the zeks’ trying to circumvent rules and get away with whatever they can. Such transgressions are not depicted with the goofiness of Hogan’s Heroes’ capers, but rather with a mixture of humor and poignancy reminiscent of M*A*S*H. The narrative of the novel is not confined to the prison, but also covers the lives of prisoner’s wives, free workers, and prison officials outside the walls of Marfino.

The main problem with In the First Circle is its inordinate length, 96 chapters in all. The fact that a book is long doesn’t make it bad, but lengthiness is unjustified when the narrative becomes repetitive and tedious. After a while it feels like you’re reading the same cell-block debates on the pros and cons of Communism over and over again. (Some zeks still believe wholeheartedly in Communism, despite their treatment by the government.) At first it seems as if the novel will focus on a few prisoners, but the cast quickly expands to the point at which it’s difficult to tell all the minor characters apart. Even after the 80th chapter, Solzhenitsyn keeps introducing new characters, whose stories aren’t that much different from those he’s already profiled. When one zek has an affair with a female free worker, it feels realistic; when two or three risk such romances, it feels like overkill.

Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn populates this novel with compelling characters and provides a truly eye-opening look at life under Stalin. Westerners will come away from this novel with a much more informed and vivid understanding of Soviet society. After dozens of chapters, the book starts to feel like hard work, but for those interested in this subject, the work is worth it.
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Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky

Embracing the psychological effects of color and form

The Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky emigrated to Munich, where he became a leader in the movement of German Expressionism. He was a member of the group of Munich artists known as Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), named after his painting of that title from 1903. Kandinsky’s art was more abstract than his Expressionist contemporaries, and he is now regarded as a pioneer in abstract painting. Kandinsky was also a teacher of art, and he published a few books during his lifetime, including the book or woodcuts entitled Klänge (Sounds) and educational texts like Point and Line to Plane and Concerning the Spiritual in Art, the latter published in 1910.

Don’t let the word “Spiritual” scare you away. Kandinsky was a follower of Theosophy, a religion established by Russian mystic Madame Helena Blavatsky in the late 19th century that placed a heavy emphasis on colors and geometric forms as symbols of spiritual qualities. One need not subscribe to any such color cult, however, in order to appreciate what Kandinsky is saying here. Even atheists and materialists can understand and accept Kandinsky’s theories of “spiritual” art by simply substituting the word “emotional.” Essentially what Kandinsky is saying is that certain colors and shapes carry specific psychological and symbolic baggage with them that inspires particular emotional effects in the viewer of a work of art. An artist should embrace and utilize these emotional effects to create art that engenders a deeper psychological experience in the viewer than that attained through mere camera-image representation.

One aspect I don’t like about Concerning the Spiritual in Art is Kandinsky’s constant denigration of representational art. One must remember that, at the time, the academic art establishment and modern artists were basically at intellectual war with one another, the latter often being disparaged as “degenerate,” “naive,” or just plain terrible artists. The more abstract the art, the more the artist in question was a target for such invective. These days, however, I think we can recognize that there is a place in our lives for both representational and abstract art, just as there is a place in our lives for classical, jazz, and pop music. Each genre has its share of good and bad artists. There’s no reason why a realist painter couldn’t employ the ideas that Kandinsky imparts in this book, and doing so would probably result in a more effective and powerful end result.

As far as these artist manifestos go, I tend to judge them on three criteria: 1) Is the writing articulate? 2) Is the author saying something that’s actually useful to artists? and 3) Is it inspiring? Does reading this book make you want to paint? Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art is pretty successful on all three counts. Despite the rather abstract subject matter, Kandinsky’s writing is clear and accessible. Readers who know nothing about modern art will come away from this book with a better understanding of the theory behind abstract paintings and how to appreciate them. Kandinsky’s teachings are practical and applicable to artists working today, even those who are in no way spiritually inclined. Much of the most useful information is contained in Chapter 6, The Language of Form and Color, which should be assigned reading for undergraduate art students. Lastly, reading this book really does make you want to pick up a brush and go to work. Kandinsky’s advocation of freedom from pictorial conventions is liberating, and he reminds the artist that art is an ongoing experiment in which there are still discoveries to be made.
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Red Star by Alexander Bogdanov

Ingenious Bolshevik utopia on Mars

Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov was one of the founding members of the Bolshevik party in Russia and a friend of Vladimir Lenin until they had a falling out. Bogdanov was also a physician, philosopher, and a writer of science fiction. His first and best-known work in that genre is his novel Red Star. The book was published in 1908, after the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. Bogdanov nevertheless kept Bolshevik hopes alive with this novel about a utopian Communist society on Mars. An English translation of Red Star by Charles Rougle was published in 1984 by the University of Indiana Press, in a volume edited by Loren Graham and Richard Stites.

Leonid, the narrator of Red Star, is a mathematician living in St. Petersburg and, like Bogdanov, a Bolshevik revolutionary. Through his political party activities he meets an unusual man named Menni, who claims to be a visitor from the South. After they strike up a friendship, however, Menni reveals to Leonid that he is a Martian. His people have already conquered the problem of space travel, and he invites Leonid to join him on a journey to his home planet. In fact, Menni confesses that he has intentionally recruited Leonid as a possible cultural exchange ambassador through whom the two cultures can learn about one another before the Martians reveal their existence to the people of Earth. Leonid, or Lenni as the Martians call him, agrees to the trip and accompanies Menni to Mars, where he finds an ideal communist society in operation, the likes of which he and his Bolshevik comrades have envisioned in their dreams.

I read a lot of utopian and dystopian science fiction from the early years of the genre. I enjoy experiencing the futuristic visions of antiquated writers and seeing how those visions measure up to subsequent history. Old sci-fi literature, however, is often unrealistic in its speculations and clunky in style. Sometimes this can add to a book’s charm, but sometimes it merely annoys. Bogdanov’s Red Star, however, reads as remarkably intelligent, eloquent, and relevant more than a century after it was written. Some credit for that is likely due to Rougle, who’s translation renders Bogdanov’s prose as lively and articulate as if it were written last week.

Bogdanov himself, however, deserves commendation for how well thought-out his utopia is. Nothing in Bogdanov’s vision of the future is there without a reason. When he describes the fictional technological advances of Martian society, his speculations are supported by reasonable scientific justifications. There’s no superfluous fantasy just for the sake of “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . .” The same holds true for the book’s political content. Every element of the story is specifically designed to express Bogdanov’s ideas on Bolshevism. When the characters talk about events in Martian history or policies of the Martian government, there is always a well-conceived reason for those decisions, within Bogdanov’s conception of Marxism.

Unlike a lot of utopian novels, Bogdanov does actually include a satisfying fictional narrative amongst all the political, scientific, and economic theory. The book doesn’t read like a stuffy treatise. An unconventional romance livens things up and doesn’t feel gratuitous. If there is an aspect of the book that feels a little overdone, it’s the focus on the narrator’s mental health. Lenni’s propensity for mood swings and hallucinations is at times a bit too histrionic. That is a small complaint, however, in what is otherwise a fascinating and entertaining read. Having not only influenced many subsequent authors in the genre but also the very development of the Soviet Union itself, Red Star is truly a landmark work of Russian science fiction that will be of interest to more than just Bolsheviks.

Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy 1905–1953 by Simon Ings

The twisted politics of Soviet science

Published in 2016, Stalin and the Scientists is a science history book by English novelist and science writer Simon Ings. The book is essentially a detailed history of the Soviet Union’s attitude and policies towards science, and how scientists and other academics were treated under the Soviet regime. Although so absurd at times it’s almost funny, it amounts to a horror story of what happens when an authoritarian government, led by a despotic dictator, deliberately denies scientific truth in order to further its political aims.

It wasn’t just Stalin who made life hell for many of the Soviet Union’s scientists. It was the very ideology of Bolshevism itself. A scientists’ research had to fit in with that ideology, or it wasn’t allowed to continue. Academics who didn’t toe the party line faced denunciation, blacklisting, exile, imprisonment, or execution. Anyone with a university education was suspected of being a bourgeois liberal, so the Communist government and the press favored “citizen scientists,” such as farmers who came up with one good idea in plant breeding or laborers who increased efficiency in their factories. These folk heroes were hailed as authorities in scientific disciplines, even when their unscientific methods didn’t merit such accolades, and the government appointed them to positions of authority over more capable researchers.

From the title and the propagandistic cover art, I imagined sinister master plans for the development of military technology, and there is a bit of that here. Mostly, however, the book focuses on the biological sciences, and genetics in particular. Why genetics, you might ask? For a nation that faced decimating famine several times in the 20th century, the breeding of productive agricultural crops was of vital concern. The fundamental basis of genetics, however—that some individuals are born with advantageous characteristics—was antithetical to Bolshevik philosophy. Instead, the Soviet regime favored a Lamarckian approach that insisted that characteristics acquired during one’s lifetime could be passed down to one’s children. This more Communistically palatable view was carried to the point of denying the very existence of the gene itself. Geneticists who experimented with fruit flies were denounced as anti-patriotic, time-wasting quacks while citizen scientists little better than snake oil salesmen were allowed to perpetuate their erroneous, fraudulent, and damaging theories of plant and livestock breeding. Meanwhile, research into eugenics—the “science” of selectively breeding the perfect human—was encouraged until the Nazis became known for it, at which point it was deemed a fascist undertaking.

The catchy title really doesn’t do justice to the scope of this book. For starters, Ings’s narrative begins before the Russian Revolution. Stalin doesn’t really show up until halfway through the book. Many of the scientists whose lives Ings traces over the course of the book began their careers under Lenin and ended their careers (and often their lives) under Stalin. After Stalin’s death, Ings continues his study into the reign of Khrushchev and beyond. The book ends with a very thought-provoking epilogue that suggests the whole world is now operating under misguided and politicized science similar to the Soviets’ mistakes of the 20th century. We continue to disregard the signs of catastrophic climate change, burning voraciously through natural resources, while hoping that some future utopian technological miracle will make everything OK. Thus we are guilty of the same scientific sins that amused and horrified us throughout the preceding book.

Ings describes himself as “not an academic,” and his writing is very accessible to general readers. He does not, however, sacrifice scholarly rigor in his historical research. This is a complex history with multiple branches to follow, but Ings renders it all in very understandable and lively prose. I learned much from Stalin and the Scientists, and it is truly a fascinating read.
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Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol

The romanticization of war taken to the extreme

Taras Bulba, a historical novel by Russian author Nikolai Gogol, is set in the 17th century in the Ukraine. The title character is a middle-aged Cossack and veteran of many battles. His two sons, Ostap and Andrij, have finished their studies at the Kiev Academy and have returned home to their father’s house. Taras, an old-school Cossack raised in a Spartan militaristic style, can’t wait to usher his boys into their first battle, thus initiating them into true manhood. The father and two sons gear themselves up for a campaign and head to the Zaporozhian Sich, where thousands of Cossacks have gathered for a drinking binge. Eager for battle but with no one to fight, they decide to break a peace treaty and attack the Poles.

Taras Bulba was first published in 1835 and revised in 1842. The events in this novel are based on the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 to 1657, the same conflict that serves as the basis for the novel With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz, who tells the story from the Polish side. It is interesting how Gogol depicts the Poles as aristocratic dandies, as opposed to the Cossacks, who are salt-of-the-earth he-men. Andrij Bulba falls in love with a Polish woman who essentially converts him into a Pole, setting up a classic brother-against-brother war story.

Gogol has a reputation as a satirist, and aspects of the novel lead one to wonder whether Taras Bulba was written with satire or sincerity in mind. The way Gogol celebrates the drunkenness and machismo of the Cossacks is so over-the-top it reads like caricature, similar to the kind of slurs that are aimed at the “drunken Irish,” for example. On the flip side, in Andriy, the more sensitive and chivalrous of the Bulba brothers, those qualities are amplified to a feminine extreme, to the point where he comes across as a sobbing, subservient milquetoast in the presence of his lover. Despite such exaggerations, however, after the first couple chapters it becomes clear that Gogol wrote the novel with dead seriousness. Everything about this story is ramped up to the nth degree, from the violence and gore to the military brotherhood and self-sacrifice to the bigoted hatred of Catholics and Jews.

Usually I don’t mind novels that take Romanticism to larger-than-life excesses, particularly when it comes to patriotism or nationalism. Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three is a good example, or Sienkiewicz’s trilogy of With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Pan Wolodyjowski. Such books bring to life not only the historical events but the mindsets and values of the periods they portray. As a battle epic, Taras Bulba is sufficiently exciting and not badly written. Gogol’s obsession with violence and die-with-your-boots-on masculinity, however, only serves as a constant reminder that all this torture and mutilation was merely the result of ignorant people fighting pointlessly over minor variations in how they worshipped the same god. The frequent anti-Semitic portrayals of Jews throughout the novel are also quite off-putting.

Novels about the Cossacks comprise a genre of their own in Russian literature, leading one to wonder if the Ukrainian Steppe was the Russian equivalent of the mythic Wild West. It certainly reads that way from the way Gogol romanticizes the Cossacks’ military ethos. With a different costume and weapons, a hard-drinking, grizzled, two-fisted hero like Taras Bulba would be right at home in a vintage Western hunting down Indians instead of infidels. If it’s realism you want, you won’t find it here. Instead, seek out Mikhail Sholokhov’s masterful two-volume epic And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea, or Leo Tolstoy’s semi-autobiographical novel The Cossacks.
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The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin

Anarchist-Communism as the cure for society’s ills

The Conquest of Bread by Russian author Peter Kropotkin was first published in 1892 as a series of essays in the French journal Revolté (Kropotkin wrote the text in French). The book is a political treatise that proposes Anarchist-Communism as the world government of the future. Just as Karl Marx is the patriarch of Communism and his book Das Kapital could be considered the “bible” of that movement, Kropotkin is the godfather of Anarchist-Communism and The Conquest of Bread its sacred text. Unlike the works of Marx, Kropotkin seems to have written The Conquest of Bread for the common man, and one doesn’t need a PhD to understand it.

Kropotkin asserts that Capitalism is a form of economic feudalism not much different from medieval feudalism, under which the majority of the world’s population exists as wage slaves to a wealthy aristocracy, just as peasants, slaves, and serfs have served their masters for centuries. The solution to this problem of inequality and exploitation is a Communist economic system that values labor over private property and distributes the wealth of society accordingly to satisfy the needs of all. Kropotkin’s particular take on Communism is Anarchist-Communism (or Anarcho-Communism). Kropotkin felt that a revolution was inevitable and imminent, and Anarchist-Communism would be the result. The bulk of the book consists of Kropotkin outlining how that future society would function to create a classless utopia.

What exactly is Anarchist-Communism? Kropotkin states that “Anarchy leads to Communism, and Communism to Anarchy,” because both are driven by the pursuit for equality. The difference is that Kropotkin would have never condoned the authoritarian bureaucracy of the Soviets. Rather, he advocates abolishing centralized government in favor of a government by free agreement. He cites as an example how multiple companies established a continent-wide network of railways without any overarching governing body such as a ministry of railroads. Kropotkin’s anarchy seems like a wise solution for many industrial and agricultural problems, but it’s hard to comprehend how it might work for every function of government. Like many utopian socialists, Kropotkin downplays the need for such institutions as law enforcement and the military by refusing to account for the lazy, the stupid, the selfish, and the evil in humanity.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of sense in much of what Kropotkin has to say. Most governments have become more socialistic and labor-friendly since the late nineteenth century (e.g. the eight-hour work day, no more child labor, public education, social security), which would please Kropotkin, but his Communist utopia still hasn’t materialized, and income equality and poverty still run rampant even in “first-world” nations. Kropotkin has some insightful things to say about the industrial revolution, decentralization of industry, and the beginnings of globalism. As a historical document, the book provides insight into radical movements of the past. For what did Sacco and Vanzetti die? For what was Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated? Reading The Conquest of Bread sheds light on these historical events and the history of labor in general.

One problem with Communism is that no one can seem to agree how it should be implemented, and that’s evident here as Kropotkin picks apart the dogma of other Communist and Socialist sects. (The Capitalists don’t seem to have the same troublesome disagreements over free-market enterprise.) The Conquest of Bread will leave left-leaning readers with a melancholy for what might have been in a perfect world, but there’s still a lot to learn here. Kropotkin’s great Anarchist-Communist revolution is unlikely to happen soon, if ever, but there may still be some seeds of reform here that have yet to sprout.
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A Confession by Leo Tolstoy

Straight talk from a seeker of meaning

Published in 1879, A Confession was Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s first work of philosophy. By this time he had already achieved fame through his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Around the age of 50, Tolstoy underwent an existential midlife crisis. After living a morally dissolute life, he began to question whether life has any meaning at all when all one’s accomplishments and experiences are wiped away by inevitable death. Is there a purpose to evolution, or is humanity merely random assortments of atoms, just animals struggling to feed themselves while living in fear of poverty, privation, illness, and death? Tolstoy contemplated suicide but didn’t have the courage to go through with it (his view, not mine). Instead, he began a deliberate quest for the meaning of life, seeking answers from scientists, sociologists, and philosophers and studying the religions of the world. A Confession is Tolstoy’s memoir of this personal quest for meaning.

In his rational examination of metaphysics, Tolstoy takes nothing for granted, and the book can get pretty dark when he contemplates the possible pointlessness of existence. This would not be a good read for someone with suicidal thoughts. Tolstoy is incredibly honest and forthright in his discussion of his moral failings, his loss of faith in God and life, and his attempts to find answers and become a better person. There isn’t a trace of egotism or intellectual arrogance in his narrative; he is merely a humble supplicant seeking knowledge, relating his findings, and admitting his ignorance when applicable in hopes of helping others with their spiritual quests. While some of the text can be philosophically dense, for the most part Tolstoy’s prose is very accessible to the general reader. When necessary, he constructs vivid metaphors and parallels that illustrate the ideas he’s trying to convey, thereby aiding the reader in understanding complex concepts.

The ending of A Confession is rather inconclusive, with Tolstoy still searching for answers. He mentions that he will continue the narrative of his quest in a later work. Tolstoy would follow A Confession with The Gospel in Brief (1881) and What I Believe (1884), in both of which he further elaborates on his religious and philosophical beliefs. The latter two books are mainly defenses of Christianity (or the aspects of Christianity that Tolstoy feels are worth defending) and therefore will appeal mostly to theists. A Confession, however, is an account of spiritual searching that can inspire both believers and heretical freethinkers alike. Tolstoy takes a critical view of organized religion, and when he does express a belief in God, it resembles a rational theism similar to Spinozan pantheism. As a freethinker and skeptic myself, I have never encountered a more reasoned and rational discussion of faith than that which Tolstoy presents here. Even so, from a nonbeliever’s perspective, his argument still seems to rest on faith as a last resort or faith by the process of elimination, rather than on a positive embracing of theism.

A Confession is a very candid and detailed account of Tolstoy’s thought process in searching for the meaning of life. While he talks about how he turned away from a parasitic life of wealth and status to admire the simpler life of the peasantry, I wish he had given more practical insight into the changes he made towards a life of asceticism—how did he go from Tolstoy the rich and famous author to Tolstoy the wise man who looks and lives like a monk? Perhaps he discusses that further in another essay, but he doesn’t delve too deeply into such matters in A Confession. Nevertheless, there is much food for thought and ethical lessons to be learned from this enlightening book. It may be one of the most depressing and one of the most inspiring books you’ll ever read.
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Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Alexander Levitsky

More an academic monograph than a sci-fi anthology

Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction was published in 2007. The target audience for this book seems to be editor Alexander Levitsky’s fellow scholars in Russian studies or literary criticism. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. For what it is, it’s quite well done. When this book pops up as a Kindle Daily Deal, however, the average reader may think it’s simply an anthology of short stories from Russian authors that will appeal to a curious science fiction or fantasy buff. While there certainly is material here that the general reader will enjoy, there is also quite a bit of historical and cultural analysis in the form of critical essays between the entries. The works collected here are not chosen for their entertainment value but rather for what they reflect of Russian and Soviet culture and to support Levitsky’s theses on those topics. Some of the greatest writers in Russian literature are included here, but in order to fit all their works into the volume many of the selections had to be abridged. Much of the book’s contents consists of truncated stories or isolated chapters from novels. Even if those chapters pique your interest, you may not be able to find the complete novel in English translation.

All the reservations mentioned above are forgivable, given what Levitsky is trying to accomplish with this book. What really disappointed me about this volume, however, is the extremely broad parameters of what is considered to constitute fantasy or science fiction. In one sense, just about anything that’s fiction could be considered fantasy, but most readers would probably apply the word to the Lord of the Rings genre or at least fiction in The Twilight Zone vein. Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky are certainly among Russia’s greatest authors, but one could question whether some of their works included here really qualify as fantasy. In Levitsky’s definition, however, all manner of dreams, ghosts, angels, folktales, and religious visions of the afterlife are included. As an analogy, imagine if someone were to compile a book on English fantasy and science fiction that started with Beowulf and proceeded through Arthurian legends, Robin Hood folktales, Thomas More’s Utopia, the Romantic poets, and Dickensian ghost stories before ever getting to William Morris, H. G. Wells, or J. R. R. Tolkien, abridged excerpts from whose works would occupy only the final quarter of the volume. The result would say a lot about British culture but would likely leave typical fans of the science fiction and fantasy genres disappointed with the overall offering of selections. Such is the case here. I learned a lot about Russian literature, but wasn’t interested in much of the literary content presented.

Of course, there is much to like in this volume as well. Valery Iakovlevich Briusov’s story “Republic of the Southern Cross” is a delightful horror story of a utopian city in Antarctica. Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin’s “Liquid Sunshine,” about an eccentric scientist’s visionary experiments in South America, calls to mind the sci-fi tales of Wells or Arthur Conan Doyle. Mikhail Bulgakov’s entertaining satirical novella The Fatal Eggs appears to be reproduced in its entirety. Space travel doesn’t factor much into the collection until four-fifths of the way through, where there’s a special section devoted to it. Three fragmentary stories by Andrei Platonovich Platonov contain enough innovative scientific theories to spawn at least a half dozen sci-fi novels. Ivan Antonovich Efremov’s novel The Andromeda Nebula is an intriguing Star Trek-style saga of mankind’s exploration of the galaxy, but the reader only gets portions of the first two chapters.

None of my comments are intended to be negative criticism of Levitsky’s scholarship. Kudos to him for writing this book. I’m just trying to help other readers decide if they want to read it.
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