Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer

by Andreï Makine

Book Overview

They are virtual brothers, Arkady and Alyosha, young pioneers in Stalin's postwar world, marching to the clarion call of socialism, to the stirring beat of the drums. The future, they are assured, is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559705299
• ISBN13: 9781559705295
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A book worth reading

Andre Makine, who fled the Soviet Union in 1987 when he was thirty has been compared to Nabokov, Pasternak, and Proust. The author is a gifted story-teller with "Confessions" filled with skillfully-woven vignettes that provide a bitter-sweet view of Russian life. The book revolves around two friends and virtual brothers, Arkady and Alyosha, young pioneers in Stalin's postwar world. "Confessions" tells of the lives of their two families, those of Yakov Zinger - Arkady's father, and Pyotr Yevdokimov, father to Alyosha. There is adventure in Pyotr's skill as a sniper behind German lines in World War II, horror in the story of Svetlana, the "merry spinster" amidst survival during the Siege. There are magical scenes of Russian life and a most enjoyable vignette that revolved around the arrival of propaganda cinema presenting "The Threat of Atomic War", tirades against the "filthy American swine" and the bombing of Hiroshima and the exhortation from Russian authorities to build shelters. There is humor with Arkady on the drums and Alyosha on the trumpet bleating their protest against the apparitchik visitors from the Party but more singing out in the name of their Courtyard of families and friends, singing "in the name of the silence of our mothers". Alyosha is a fallen standard-bearer. Makine structures the book with Alyosha as narrator addressing his remembrances of their families' lives to his friend. In the end, Makine imparts a heaviness of heart with disillusionment with the Soviet dreams of Great Victory and a feeling of emptiness that the West (neither of Paris, nor of the States) has not been able to fill.

A beautiful book.

Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer is a beautiful book. The story involves two families, that of Yakov Zinger and Pyotr Yevdokimov. The story is told in the form of a memoir of their youth written by Pyotr's son Alyosha to Yakov's son Arkady. The story unfolds slowly. On the surface the memoirs invoke memories of the children's summers in their village. They were young pioneers filled (apparently) with a belief in the inevitable victory of socialism. As the name of this novel implies they were the standard-bearers of socialist youth marching towards the `radiant horizon'. However, flowing beneath the beautiful words evoking their idyllic summers is the undertone of tragedy that envelops each of the families' pasts. Those tragedies are slowly and inexorably revealed. Pyotr, a sniper operating behind German lines during the Second World War lost both limbs at the hands of an "unfortunate artillery mistake' by his own troops. Yakov survived a German prison camp in Poland by surrounding himself with a mountain of dead and frozen bodies. Their wives tragic pasts are also slowly revealed. One survived the siege of Leningrad and witnessed unspeakable horrors in the process. The other lost her parents to Stalin's purges and spent her youth in an orphanage for children of those purges. As these stories are revealed the boys' otherwise inexplicable actions leading up to their confrontation with their Pioneer group leaders becomes slightly more understandable. I cannot convey the beauty of this book in adequate terms. Its power lies in the contrast between the beauty and power of Makine's writing about village life through the eyes of innocent children and the stark but unexpressed horror that percolates through the lives of these two families. This unstated horror serves as the thematic counterpoint to the rather unremarkable events that form the core of the narrative. This was a book worth reading.