An intellectual in the Soviet gulag who kept his spirit – and his faith in Stalin

[The Patriot]

An intellectual in the Soviet gulag who kept his spirit – and his faith in Stalin

01-13-2018 07:17 AM

To understand Stalin, you need Shakespeare, and Rolin invokes Macbeth's conception of life as but "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." He calls on an ensemble of writers, poets, witnesses and visionaries – Anton Chekhov, Vasily Grossman, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam – to ground the story.


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