Abstract
Below, and in the article which follows, two Russian writers — one in London and the other in Siberian exile — look at the impact of a long-suppressed anti-Stalinist novel
Some 20 years after it was written, Anatoly Rybakov's novel Children of the Arbat was published in the Soviet Union last year — and this September came out in English (translated by Harold Shukman; Hutchinson $$12.95). The novel concerns an elite group of young men and women growing up in the Arbat quarter of central Moscow in 1934 — the year of the 17th Party Congress and, according to Rybakov, the beginning of the real ‘tragedies’ of Stalinism. Stalin himself is a central character in the novel. Here, an emigre critic discusses the book and the reasons for its colossal impact in the Soviet Union, while in the article which follows exiled writer Vazif Meilanov describes a debate on the book which took place in a remote settlement in Siberia.