The author, Joseph Douillet, is a Belgian citizen who spent thirty five years living in Russia—first as Belgian consul when the tsar was still in power, then with humanitarian organizations that set up in the USSR to help alleviate the effects of the economic problems and famine caused by increasing nationalization of the factories and farms after the October Revolution. The timing of his career, the positions he held, his fluency and familiarity with the Russian language and culture put him in a perfect position to observe the transition from tsarist to Soviet Russia and to draw comparisons between the two. If there was any historical event that proved that not all change is for the better (to put it mildly), this is it.
It is a very well organized book that details the effects Communism had on different aspects of life. He starts off with how the USSR presents itself to foreigners, which is like a type of theater. Then he moves on to discussing Communism’s effects on the working and living conditions of peasants and factory workers: the level of their earnings, prices and availability of necessities, use of taxes to disadvantage disfavored groups, the educational system, the disintegration of marriage and family, illegitimacy, crime rates, treatment of people at the beginning and at the end of life, treatment of religious people, confiscation of church property, and the omnipresent surveillance of the secret police, whose power surpassed even that of the Politburo. He even spent 9 months in KGB custody at the Loubianka prison in Moscow prior to being deported to Latvia in 1925, so the later chapters are about his experiences in that jail, the effects of torture and interrogations on fellow inmates, their various fates--often deportation to gulags in Siberia or Solovetzky Island, or execution in the prison compound itself. The last chapter is about the Comintern, the Party’s foreign outreach and propaganda arm, whose aim was to spread the movement in Europe.
My edition is dated 1928, so this was written soon after being expelled from the USSR. There does not seem to be an English translation, so this book is only accessible to French speakers. Great read for those interested in Russian and Cold War history. I’m surprised at how early this book appeared (just 11 years after the October Revolution), as I had the impression that information about the real conditions inside the USSR took longer to become known in the West.
It is a very well organized book that details the effects Communism had on different aspects of life. He starts off with how the USSR presents itself to foreigners, which is like a type of theater. Then he moves on to discussing Communism’s effects on the working and living conditions of peasants and factory workers: the level of their earnings, prices and availability of necessities, use of taxes to disadvantage disfavored groups, the educational system, the disintegration of marriage and family, illegitimacy, crime rates, treatment of people at the beginning and at the end of life, treatment of religious people, confiscation of church property, and the omnipresent surveillance of the secret police, whose power surpassed even that of the Politburo. He even spent 9 months in KGB custody at the Loubianka prison in Moscow prior to being deported to Latvia in 1925, so the later chapters are about his experiences in that jail, the effects of torture and interrogations on fellow inmates, their various fates--often deportation to gulags in Siberia or Solovetzky Island, or execution in the prison compound itself. The last chapter is about the Comintern, the Party’s foreign outreach and propaganda arm, whose aim was to spread the movement in Europe.
My edition is dated 1928, so this was written soon after being expelled from the USSR. There does not seem to be an English translation, so this book is only accessible to French speakers. Great read for those interested in Russian and Cold War history. I’m surprised at how early this book appeared (just 11 years after the October Revolution), as I had the impression that information about the real conditions inside the USSR took longer to become known in the West.
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