Young Heroes of the Soviet Union
A Memoir and a Reckoning
Hardcover
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Paperback (1/26/2021)
Description
In this “urgent and enthralling reckoning with family and history” (Andrew Solomon), an American writer returns to Russia to face a past that still haunts him.
NAMED ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS’ TOP BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Alex Halberstadt’s quest takes him across the troubled, enigmatic land of his birth, where decades of Soviet totalitarianism shaped and fractured three generations of his family. In Ukraine, he tracks down his paternal grandfather—most likely the last living bodyguard of Joseph Stalin. He revisits Lithuania, his Jewish mother’s home, to examine the legacy of the Holocaust and the pernicious anti-Semitism that remains largely unaccounted for. And he returns to his birthplace, Moscow, where his grandmother designed homespun couture for Soviet ministers’ wives, his mother consoled dissidents at a psychiatric hospital, and his father made a dangerous living by selling black-market American records. Halberstadt also explores his own story: that of an immigrant growing up in New York, another in a line of sons separated from their fathers by the tides of politics and history.
Young Heroes of the Soviet Union is a moving investigation into the fragile boundary between history and biography. As Halberstadt revisits the sites of his family’s formative traumas, he uncovers a multigenerational transmission of fear, suffering, and rage. And he comes to realize something more: Nations, like people, possess formative traumas that penetrate into the most private recesses of their citizens’ lives.
NAMED ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS’ TOP BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Alex Halberstadt’s quest takes him across the troubled, enigmatic land of his birth, where decades of Soviet totalitarianism shaped and fractured three generations of his family. In Ukraine, he tracks down his paternal grandfather—most likely the last living bodyguard of Joseph Stalin. He revisits Lithuania, his Jewish mother’s home, to examine the legacy of the Holocaust and the pernicious anti-Semitism that remains largely unaccounted for. And he returns to his birthplace, Moscow, where his grandmother designed homespun couture for Soviet ministers’ wives, his mother consoled dissidents at a psychiatric hospital, and his father made a dangerous living by selling black-market American records. Halberstadt also explores his own story: that of an immigrant growing up in New York, another in a line of sons separated from their fathers by the tides of politics and history.
Young Heroes of the Soviet Union is a moving investigation into the fragile boundary between history and biography. As Halberstadt revisits the sites of his family’s formative traumas, he uncovers a multigenerational transmission of fear, suffering, and rage. And he comes to realize something more: Nations, like people, possess formative traumas that penetrate into the most private recesses of their citizens’ lives.
Praise For Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning…
“One of the best accounts examining American humanitarian pursuits over the past fifty years . . . With still greater challenges on the horizon, we will need to find and empower more people like Bob Gersony—both idealistic and pragmatic—who can help make the world a more secure place.”—Daniel Runde, The Washington Post
“As a government official, I twice had the good fortune to meet Robert Paul Gersony, whose adventurous and consequential life is the subject of a remarkable biography by Robert Kaplan. . . Having seen firsthand how Mr. Gersony improved policy and saved lives, I am grateful that this book will make his example better known. May it become an inspiration for others.”—Paul Wolfowitz, The Wall Street Journal
“A book to remind us that America has been, and can be again, a force for good in the world. . . . Another important point concerns the importance of idealism in foreign policy. This is an unexpected message coming from an arch-realist such as Kaplan—and all the more powerful because of it. Time after time, he shows how doing good—curbing human rights abuses, aiding refugees, providing relief supplies—turned out to be in America’s interest.”—Max Boot, The Washington Post
“Whether the setting is Mozambique, Chad, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, El Salvador, or Nepal, Kaplan’s writing is unfailingly vivid. . . . The Good American appears at a time when U.S. intelligence agencies are under unprecedented scrutiny, and this broader import of his subject is never far from Kaplan’s mind.”—The Christian Science Monitor
“The book is more than just an account of one family’s ordeals: it is an engrossing account of dictatorship, war and genocide, and how the toxic legacy they left behind has etched itself into successive generations of Soviet citizens.”—The Guardian
“A deeply personal book, an engaging and subtle piece of nonfiction that’s full of history and [Halberstadt’s] own wit.”—The Paris Review
“Alex Halberstadt’s Young Heroes of the Soviet Union is a rich bone broth of flavors. . . . Part memoir, part journalistic foray, part historical investigation, part sociopolitical analysis, Young Heroes plumbs all-too-relevant modern Russian history through the lens of Halberstadt’s family history, written in Halberstadt’s trademark compelling style.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“It’s the unexpected specificity of Halberstadt’s observations that ultimately make this memoir as lush and moving as it is.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
“Not in my most hopeful imaginings could that book have turned out to be as surprising, sad, funny, and engrossing as the one he wrote. This is history as memoir, and vice versa.”—John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead
“As a government official, I twice had the good fortune to meet Robert Paul Gersony, whose adventurous and consequential life is the subject of a remarkable biography by Robert Kaplan. . . Having seen firsthand how Mr. Gersony improved policy and saved lives, I am grateful that this book will make his example better known. May it become an inspiration for others.”—Paul Wolfowitz, The Wall Street Journal
“A book to remind us that America has been, and can be again, a force for good in the world. . . . Another important point concerns the importance of idealism in foreign policy. This is an unexpected message coming from an arch-realist such as Kaplan—and all the more powerful because of it. Time after time, he shows how doing good—curbing human rights abuses, aiding refugees, providing relief supplies—turned out to be in America’s interest.”—Max Boot, The Washington Post
“Whether the setting is Mozambique, Chad, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, El Salvador, or Nepal, Kaplan’s writing is unfailingly vivid. . . . The Good American appears at a time when U.S. intelligence agencies are under unprecedented scrutiny, and this broader import of his subject is never far from Kaplan’s mind.”—The Christian Science Monitor
“The book is more than just an account of one family’s ordeals: it is an engrossing account of dictatorship, war and genocide, and how the toxic legacy they left behind has etched itself into successive generations of Soviet citizens.”—The Guardian
“A deeply personal book, an engaging and subtle piece of nonfiction that’s full of history and [Halberstadt’s] own wit.”—The Paris Review
“Alex Halberstadt’s Young Heroes of the Soviet Union is a rich bone broth of flavors. . . . Part memoir, part journalistic foray, part historical investigation, part sociopolitical analysis, Young Heroes plumbs all-too-relevant modern Russian history through the lens of Halberstadt’s family history, written in Halberstadt’s trademark compelling style.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“It’s the unexpected specificity of Halberstadt’s observations that ultimately make this memoir as lush and moving as it is.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
“Not in my most hopeful imaginings could that book have turned out to be as surprising, sad, funny, and engrossing as the one he wrote. This is history as memoir, and vice versa.”—John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead
Random House, 9781400067060, 320pp.
Publication Date: March 10, 2020
About the Author
Alex Halberstadt is the author of the award-winning Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Travel + Leisure, GQ, Saveur, and The Paris Review. He is a two-time James Beard Award nominee and a recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He was educated at Oberlin College and Columbia University, and works and lives in New York.