Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union

by David Satter

Release Date: 01 June, 2001

Edition: Paperback

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Literally Hell On Earth

David Satter's stunning book is one of the most vivid accounts I've ever read about the day-to-day reality of life in the old Soviet Union. He was a reporter in and out for the last 18 years of the regime and interviewed many, many inhabitants, dozens of whose stories he tells in this riveting, horrifying book. It turns out that Orwell's "1984", which is fiction for most of us, was documentary reality for these poor people. It's a chronicle of wasted lives and blasted hopes. Satter tells of a total lack of human freedom in the smallest aspects of human life (typified by the internal passport, a document which dictates where you live, what your job is, and even who you can marry.) The most basic concepts of compassion and even common courtesy were swept away, and many people admit that behaving like animals was standard practice in relating to other people. Add to this the grinding poverty, the bullying by local authorities (because you have no rights as an individual, you are at the mercy of "the good of the collective"), and the atmosphere of the total lie in newspapers, television, and even conversation with your "friends" who may be informers. Satter diagnoses that the basic problem of the Communist experiment was it attempted to do away with the idea of transcendent morality. Becuase matter is all that is, you can do anything you want to it--thus producing the mass slaughter of the Stalin years (which only came to light in Russia during Gorbachev's ill-fated glasnost. The new knowledge destroyed the remaining moral authority of the regime.) After finishing the book, you will be shaken enough to admit that the phrase "evil empire" was totally appropriate. Satter closes with a few stories of people trying to rebuild from the ruins; a local party secretary becomes a priest, a convicted murderer helps build a new church on the site of a Stalinist mass grave. One can only wish the Russian people good luck after seventy years of catastrophe.

Riveting Chronicle of the Last Days of the USSR!

I could not put this book down and am happy to report that it is one of the finest books about Russia ever written. No details, no personalities were left unexplored by this incredibly talented author. The ideas I had of the USSR were sharpened and some of the myths I had believed dispelled. An extraordinary historical work!