Russka
Edward Rutherfurd, 1991
Random House
945 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345479358
Summary
The author of the phenomenally successful Sarum: The Novel of England now turns his remarkably vast talents to an even larger canvas.
Spanning 1800 years of Russia's history, people, politics, and culture, this grand saga is as multifaceted as the country itself, as it chronicles the lives of four families who are divided by ethnicity but united in shaping the destiny of their land. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Where—Salisbury, England, UK
• Education—Cambridge University and Stanford University.
• Currently—lives in the USA and Europe
Edward Rutherfurd is primarily known as a writer of epic historical novels. His debut novel Sarum set the pattern for his work with a ten-thousand year storyline.
Educated locally and at the universities of Cambridge and Stanford, he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing. After numerous attempts to write books and plays, he finally abandoned his career in the book trade in 1983, and returned to his childhood home to write Sarum, a historical novel with a ten-thousand year story, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge and Salisbury. Four years later, when the book was published, it became an instant international bestseller, remaining 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.
Since then he has written five more bestsellers: Russka, a novel of Russia; London; The Forest, set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum, and two novels, Dublin: Foundation (The Princes of Ireland) and Ireland: Awakening (The Rebels of Ireland), which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century. His books have been translated into twenty languages. Rutherfurd settled near Dublin, Ireland in the early 1990s, but currently divides his time between Europe and North America.
Rutherfurd’s novels chronicle the history of settlements through their development up to modern day, mixing fictional characters and families with real people and events—a kind of historical fiction pioneered by James Michener.
Known as a James Michener disciple, Rutherfurd invents four to six fictional families and tells the stories of their descendants. Using this framework, he weaves them in and out of historical situations, having them interact not only with each other, but also with significant historical figures. Rutherfurd's novels are generally at least 500 pages and sometimes even over 1,000. Divided into a number of parts, each chapter represents a different era in the area of the novel's history. There is always an extensive family tree in the introduction, and each generational line matches with the corresponding chapters. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Spanning 1800 years of Russia's history, people, poltics, and culture, Edward Rurtherford, author of the phenomenally successful Sarum: The Novel of England, tells a grand saga that is as multifaceted as Russia itself. Here is a story of a great civilization made human, played out through the lives of four families who are divided by ethnicity but united in shaping the destiny of their land. Rutherford's Russka succeeds....[He] can take his place among an elite cadre of chroniclers such as Harold Lamb, Maurice Hindus and Henri Troyat.
San Francisco Chronicle
Sarum, to the rich foreign soil of Russia. Though the structure and style mirror that of his first saga, Rutherfurd's close observation of Russia's religious and ethnic diversity give this epic a distinctive flavor. Focusing on the changing fortunes of the small town of Russka and its controlling families, Rutherfurd moves from the tribes of the steppes in the second century A.D. through Cossacks, Tatars, Tsars, revolution and Stalin to touch on a contemporary Russian emigre community near New York City. He weaves an expansive tapestry of Russian lore with a vivid exploration of the historical influences on the modern Russian psyche. Though thoroughly researched, the novel is diminished by occasional soap-opera twists in the narrative thread and present-day phrasing ("pin money," "red tape," "heads or tails") used in distracting asides to the reader.
Publishers Weekly
In his newest novel, Rutherfurd does for Russia what his last novel, Sarum, did for England. Focusing on a small farming community in the Russian heartland between the Dnieper and the Don at the edge of the steppes, he traces its growth through its inhabitants from the first Tatar raid on the Slavs through the Cossacks, aristocrats, and an emigre's recent return. These interconnected lives present a vast panoramic portrait of Russia and its history. However, abundance of historic detail, fascinating though it is, intrudes and overwhelms. Transitions from intertwined stories of succeeding generations are abrupt and the reader longs for more character and plot development. Recommended for devotees of James Michener and Sarum.
Library Journal
A well-written, episodic, dense, at times infuriatingly complex historical saga of Russia by the author of the similarly massive Sarum, which tries—often quite successfully—to re-create the evolution of a mysterious and backward nation riddled with war, political confusion, and religious upheaval. Crammed with exhaustive and obviously well-researched historical, geographical, and cultural detail, this epic novel traces Russia's quest for freedom and identity from A.D. 180 to the present. The primary storyline that finally emerges depicts three rival families who have ties in the quintessential village of Russka: the Bobrovs, gentried noblemen who ultimately lose their precious land to the very serfs they once owned; the cunning Suvorins who amass great wealth as merchants and industrialists; and their distant relations the Romanovs, peasant farmers-cum-revolutionaries. Through the intricacies of marriage, accidents of birth, and other twists and turns of fate, the ancestors and descendants of these proud people move from one century to the next, turning up as warring Alans, barbarous Tatars, bloodthirsty Cossacks, and eventually the more familiar Socialists, Bolsheviks, and Marxists. Rutherfurd's immense canvas allows a fictional cast in the hundreds to populate the same world as Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Pushkin, Lenin, Stalin, Shevchenko, Rasputin, etc., as they grapple with catastrophic events—such as ritual self-immolation, torture by knouting, cholera, and the pogroms. Despite the preponderance of names that repeat themselves from one generation to the next (the plot is littered with very old or very young Arinas and Maryushkas, for example)—a circumstance that may befuddle the casual reader—Rutherfurd's opus extraordinaire may captivate readers of the genre as well as serious history buffs.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Russka:
1. Do you feel more knowledgeable about Russian history as a result of reading Rutherfurd's book? Did you come away with a deeper understanding of what makes Russia unique, particularly its violent and brutal history?
2. Rutherfurd uses stories of three families—the Bobrovs, the Suvorins and the Romanovs—to bring history to life. Did you find his characters compelling or fully developed as complex individuals? Were you able to follow the tangled family lineage through 1800 years? Did you find yourself referring frequently to the family tree diagram at the front of the book?
3. Were there particular characters with whom you identified more than others? Any who fascinated you more than others?
4. Which era(s) in Russia's history did you find most interesting or engaging? The era of the nomadic tribes? The rise of Moscow? The reign of Ivan the Terrible or Catherine the Great?
5. Some readers have complained about the number of pages devoted to historical events. Others felt that the historical writing is what makes the book so rich. What do you think? And are 945 pages too long...or just long enough?
6. Many have commented on the fact that Rutherfurd stops his novel after the revolution in 1917. Do you wish he had continued, covering Russia's horrific losses in World War II...or the cold war years and eventual fall of the Berlin Wall? Or was that not Rutherfurd's purpose? Why do you think he ended the book when he did? Did he just...peter out?
7. In this book, how does Rutherfurd develop the three major strains of Russian culture—orthodoxy, authoritarianism, and mysticism. What role does each of those influences play in the unfolding of Russian history?
8. Talk about the Old Believer peasants and their martyrdom during the reign of Peter the Great. What gave them strength?
9. The Russian people and their history have been described as backward and slow developing. The book shows Russian women, for instance, swinging their sickles from the 2nd century into the 20th. In what other ways has Russia been slow to develop?. And what factors kept the country from developing as rapidly as the cultures and nation states of Europe?
10. Talk about Russia's particularly violent history—the warring Alans, Tatars, and Cossacks; as well as self-immolation, torture and pograms. How have those events shaped Russia's identity?
11. What role does fate play in history, according to Rutherfurd's novel? Do individuals act upon events...or do events act upon individuals? Who or what shapes history?
12. What thematic and symbolic meaning might the opening chapter have with little Kiy's wandering through the forest searching for the bear cub his uncle promised him?
13. Did you enjoy this book? Does it deliver as a novel in terms of engaging its readers and a creating a level of suspense? Did it keep you turning pages? Was the ending satisfying?
14. Rutherfurd is frequently compared to James Michener. If you've read any of Michener's books, do you find a similarity, or not.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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