Daily Life in Russia

The other reviewers have said what I enjoyed about this book. However, there were some chapters that essentially were catalogs of political officials, church functions, etc., most of which I forgot as quickly as I read them. I'm pretty compulsive about reading everything; I should learn to skim through or skip over sections like that. But most of the book gave me wonderful descriptions of what life was like in Russia at that time and those gave me great pleasure and left me with impressions which will stay in my memory for many years. I do also wish there were a glossary in this book of all the Russian terms which I could not look up each time I came across them and still get the flavor of the impressions described. I must say, finally, that I greatly enjoy Troyat's writing as he does so much research and puts this in his writing. The fact that he chose a fictional character, Russell, who was visiting Russia in 1903 and being shown around certainly helped this book to hang together.

A well-crafted historical resource for anyone interested in Russia under Nicolas II. It covers a wide range of daily life - everything from how the trains ran to steam baths to military service to haute cuisine of the time. I became so immersed in this book that at times I felt like I was there.

I have stacks of books about this era, and about Russia in general, but none of them give the flavor of the time and place quite so vividly as Troyat's narrative. He follows the adventures of a British businessman who is virtually adopted by a Russian family during his first visit to Moscow. The descriptions of family life, night life -- including the theater, the ballet, and restaurants and cabarets, of religion, and even of the streets, are filtered through the consciousness of a stranger, and so are more clearly described and, where necessary, explained than in books in which everyday life is more of a background to the rest of the narrative.If you're a student of Russian history, particularly the history of this particular era, this book is highly recommended. For writers who are researching the era, this is on the level of the Writer's Digest "Everyday Life..." series for information, and really indispensable. Even so, this is not some dry text. It's lively and occasionally amusing, and always fascinating.

Imagine time-traveling with a smart gentleman who is energetic, enthusiastic, sociable, and just happened to have lived there 'then.' This is the seamless, appropriately elaborate, and richly detailed adventure one experiences in reading this book. Troyat called this book a mere "sentimental promenade,' but he was much too modest. Biographer of Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Elizabeth I and others, he had a pre-Revolutionary Russian early childhood, and the recollections of his (refugees-to-France) family members. In this book he enthusiastically and carefully recreates the sights, sounds, smells of daily life. The peasantry, workers and their everpresent sufferings and struggles, commerce, law, food, the gentry, the tsar and his retinue, social life, the hapless serfs, plus plans, hopes, and dreams. The chapter "Moscow's Many Faces" is reminiscence, and very informative. The research is the backbone of this work, which is greatly enriched and informed by Troyat's emotional ties to -- and sensory recall of -- the time and place.