White Terror and the Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia

by Abraham Cahan

Denne yderst fascinerende roman omhandler den prærevolutionære terror og de antisemitiske optøjer i zarernes Rusland i slutningen af 1800-tallet og i begyndelsen af 1900-tallet. Den russisk-amerikanske forfatter Abraham Cahan forener historiske fakta med blændende digterisk fiktion og indfletter en sandfærdig og gribende kærlighedshistorie. Han tager læserne med ind i zarernes og adelens pompøse liv, i underklassens armod, i konspiratoriske revolutionære miljøer og deres brutale kamp mod magthaverne. Romanen handler ikke mindst om idealer og drømme, kærlighed og religion, racisme og terror. Temaer, der ikke blot var superaktuelle for samtidens læsere, men i høj grad også er det i dag.“En fremragende fortælling – skrivekunst i verdensklasse. ”The Bookman, New York."Velskrevet, fængende og velunderbygget.” New York Times Book Review.

Genres: Historical Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Abraham "Abe" Cahan was a Lithuanian-born Jewish-American socialist newspaper editor, novelist, and politician.

Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Perry Whitford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding novel about the awakening of a young Russian aristocrat's revolutionary sentiments, set in train by the ill-treatment of his favourite teacher and the inspirational protest of a young woman.

Prince Pavel Boulatoff is the nobleman who becomes embroiled in the nascent Nihilist movement which led to the assassination of Czar Alexander II ('a lone man on top of a dynamite pile'). The workings of the revolutionary movement was realistically portrayed by an author with firsthand experience - the risks they ran, the disagreements in strategy, even the petty prejudices and rivalries which often have as much influence as the cause itself.

Cahan was also a Jew and his depiction of the Jewish community in provincial Miroslav was both fascinating and heartbreaking. Idealistically the Nihilists deified the peasants and demonised the Jews. When the pogroms came they welcomed them because they hoped to light the spark into a wider conflagration. They stood by as the Jews were looted, beaten and raped.

Boulatoff eventually meets and falls in love with the girl whose action inspired him, Clara Yavner, a Jewess. She intercedes during a prison break by the revolutionary Makar and becomes ne-legalny, an enemy of the state:

'From this minute on Miroslav would be forbidden ground to her. A ne-legalny is something neither dead nor alive, the everlasting prey of gendarmes, policemen, spies of the Czar himself, it seemed ; a "cut-off slice" ; an outcast without the right of being either an outcast or a member of the community, a creature without name, home or identity. She was appallingly forbidding to herself. But then in the underground world ne-legalny is a title of indescribable distinction, and at this moment Clara seemed to feel in her own person the sanctity which she had been wont to associate with the word.'

Everything about this story interested me, everything about it was convincing and believable.