My Amazon Review of Amor Towles' "A Gentleman in Moscow"

 

Soviet Life in the Eyes of a Count and a Grand Hotel

 

As I write this there are nearly 26,000 reviews of this book so I obviously do not have much to add. Nevertheless, here is my brief take. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, a man of impeccable tastes, is placed under house arrest in 1922 at the very grand Hotel Metropol. We follow his life over the next three decades through the eyes of an off-screen narrator. Amor Towles tells his story with grace, sympathy, and humor as he witnesses the emergence of the Soviet state, albeit from the vantage point of a luxury hotel, not the famine fields of Ukraine, the great purge of 1937-38 and the devastation of World War II. Near the end of the book the whole Politburo, including Khrushchev, play a role.

The count works as a waiter at the Boyarsky restaurant and there he befriends the chef, maître di and other waiters. Beyond the friendships the novel is about romance and the love of a father for a daughter. Early on he befriends Nina, a precocious six-year-old who know all the inner passages of the hotel and possesses a pass key.  Later, that key will be of great importance.

The count has a long running affair with a Lauren Bacall-type willowy actress. Her description is no accident in that Humphrey Bogart and the movie “Casablanca” plays more than a casual role in the novel. The count watches 1930’s and 1940’s movies with an OGPU (later KGB) colonel who is seeking greater understanding of America through its movies. Their conversations are a joy to listen in on.

In sum, Towles has written a truly enjoyable novel and I highly recommend it.

For the full Amazon URL see: Soviet Life in the Eyes of a Count and a Grand Hotel (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Joshua Rubenstein's "Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life"

The Permanent Revolutionary

Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in 1879 of Jewish parents, Russian revolutionary, leader of the 1905 Petrograd Soviet, skilled polemicist, Marxist theoretician, womanizer, coleader of the October Revolution with Lenin, founder of the Red Army, outmaneuvered by Stalin, exiled and assassinated in Mexico by an OGPU agent in 1940. He had quite a life and Joshua Rubenstein tells his story in a brief and succinct biography of only 215 pages.

Rubenstein’s Trotsky comes across as a brilliant egomaniac. Whether he was right or wrong he was never in doubt as he steered a course in opposition to Lenin and as a key ally. He was a great number two to Lenin, but it seems that in the struggle to succeed Lenin, he wanted power on a plate. He didn’t know how to fight for it as he was outfoxed by the wily Stalin. He should not have been surprised because he wrote well before the revolution that that Lenin’s party in power would inevitably lead to a one man dictatorship.

In exile he became Stalin’s leading opponent where presciently noted that there was very little difference between Hitlerism and Stalinism. However he remained loyal to the revolution to the end. This was his failure because Stalin was not an aberration, but rather the logical successor to Lenin. If Trotsky had won the power struggle he would have been little different from Stalin. His brutality during the Russian Civil War demonstrated that.

Because this book is part of the Yale Jewish Lives series I have to note that Trotsky was not really different from today’s Left with respect to Zionism. Trotsky was a universalist, while Zionism is particularistic. He cared more for the working class than his own people. 

Rubenstein touches all of the bases and highly recommend this very readable book on the life of Trotsky. He doesn’t get into the weeds and for this he should be commended.

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R30O1N3R1MKA8N/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv