Fear

The Arbat Saga continues and , together with greats such as Arthur Koestlers 'A Darkness At Noon' Vassily Grossmans 'Forever Flowing'and the works of Solzhenitsyn ,the Orwellian terror of the Stalin years in the Soviet Union been captured so accurately. The true characters of some of the people who we met in Children of The Arbat are revealed. Sasha Pankratov becomes a wiser,more cynical man who finally realises the nature of the Communist society in Russia. Varya Ivanova blooms into a remarkable young women who faithfully waits for Sashas return and through her mistakes,trials and tribulations has gained great strength One of the most touching aspects of the book is the relationship between Varya and Sashas mother Sophia Alexandrovna who Varya is devoted to and who sees Varya as a beloved daughter Together they help each other through these terrible times .Yuri Sharok fully integrates himself into the NKVD with all the cunning and cruely which this evil organisation requires .Vadim Marasevitch shows himself up as a spineless flunky who sells innocent people out in order to survive.However unlike Sharok ,his conscience destroys him psychologically in MacBethesque fashion.His sister Vika -as opportunistic and immoral as she can be-has to be admired for managing to extricate herself from the Soviet tyranny and through an opportune marriage resettling in democratic France where through her husband and an aqauaintance with a colourful Russian emigre/celebrity she enjoys the high life she has always yearned for.Nina Ivanova for all her blind loyalty to the Communist Party falls victims to its brutal machinations and ,helped by Varya, flees to the Far East ,to escape being another victim of the purges,to her soldier boyfriend Maxim Kostin. Rybakov's extensive delving into Stalins mind is a brilliant study of evil. Ultimately we learn how tyranny and removal of even the most basic freedoms destroys the lives of so many ordinary people . We are forced to realise the terrible horrors we create by letting power be concentrated in the hands of one man,group,clique or party

Fear - Rybakov's sequel to Children of the Arbat continues chronicling the lives of Soviet youths in the 1930's. The nature of the Terror - the Yezhovshchina - is chillingly described. While some have criticized the minor characters, I found they added depth to the story, although I did not care for Stalin's "internal dialogue" - an attempt to see the Terror through the eyes of the beast that created it. Fear is excellent fiction - although still not as good in my opinion as Children of the Arbat; but then again, sequels rarely are as great as the first episode.

This is a marvelous, and terrifying, sequel to "Children of the Arbat," given additional strength and authority by the clearly autobiographical protagonist Sasha Pankratov. Rybakov *was* Pankratov -- he knows whereof he speaks. I cannot agree with Kirkus Reviews' damnation-with-faint-praise. There are weaknesses in "Fear," but many of them are due to a somewhat clunky translation which alternates over-literalism with quaintly inapposite English idiom, and also has a problem handling Russian verb aspect and verb reflexivity in the translation. These faults can certainly not be ascribed to Rybakov! Kirkus also considers Sasha a minor character (i.e., as opposed to Stalin) -- clearly not true; it is Sasha who represents the Russian people, as they are and as they should be.I do share the Kirkus criticism of several of the (actually) minor characters. Home-town love interest Varya Ivanova, who sowed numerous wild oats in "Children of the Arbat," has become a plaster saint in "Fear," really too good to be true. NKVD agent Yuri Sharok is a plaster villian: you can see the black hat on his head all the time. But several of the other lesser characters are excellently drawn, particularly some of Sasha's comrades in exile and in post-exile wandering. One is tempted to write that the character of Stalin is overdrawn -- that is, until one remembers that the hell of the 1930s purges really did happen. Rybakov does a fantastic, and thoroughly chilling, job of getting into the mind of the mad despot. I'm sure that for full value this book should be read in Russian -- while not fluent, I do know enough of that expressive language to spot many of the clunkers. But even in English, this book stands alone in bringing to life the reality and horror of the Purges.