Death And Memory In Russia
During the 20th century Russia, Ukraine and other territories of the former Soviet Union experienced more violent deaths than anywhere else on earth. World War I, the atrocious civil war of 1918-23, the state-created famine of the early 1930s, the great purges and the vast sacrifice of the war against Hitler: these are only the most significant chapters in an epic of destruction.
How did Russians cope with loss and bereavement on such a vast scale? How does such a society mourn, and how does it treat its dead? 'Night Of Stone' is a history of how Russians remembered their dead, and a history of modern Russia from a strange and disturbing angle, weaving a history of the larger society into a narrative of mourning.
Above all, this is the history of a silence. Untold millions of Russians were forbidden to mourn their loved ones: it was dangerous to express sorrow for enemies of the people, kulaks, prisoners of war or vanished victims of the purges. The intensely personal memories of those left behind, the bereaved and the persecuted, give new insights into how people lived and died in the violent world of the Soviet Russian empire.
