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A young woman's heady encounter with the new Russia, as she and the country thrill to their first taste of freedom
It is September 1991 and the dismantling of the Soviet Union is under way. In Voronezh, a provincial town famous for its loamy black earth, a sense of lightheartedness-part fear, part exhilaration-pervades. The people conquer uncertainty, hunger, and -20 degree temperatures by drinking huge quantities of black-market vodka and reveling in their new-found sexual freedom.
Black Earth City is Charlotte Hobson's record of this tumultuous time. An irresistible guide, she brings us into the cramped, rundown Hostel no. 4, where international students and locals congregate. We meet Yakov, who blows half-a-million rubles on a taxi to see a girl in Minsk; Lola, who sleeps with her peers for a share of their dinner; Viktor, with his brutal memories of military service; and Mitya, Hobson's wild and optimistic lover whose gradual disillusion-and dissolution-mirrors his country's dramatic lurch from euphoria to despair.
At once loving and sharp-edged, tender and brave, Black Earth City reveals a world and a woman as they open up to life.
- Sales Rank: #1913746 in eBooks
- Published on: 2003-03-01
- Released on: 2003-03-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Charlotte Hobson arrived in the Russian city of Voronezh just in time to witness the Soviet Union careening toward its last day of existence. There she found a city exploding from 70 years of pent-up desire. In Hostel No. 4, her fellow students plunged into a sexual revolution ribald even by American standards. With sudden shortages and hyperinflation, Hobson and her mates lived on cheap vodka, the imperative to escape the tedium of the Soviet era, and the fever of a transition from an oppressive government to one full of risks, decadence, and the unknown. In this tender and poignant memoir, Hobson immerses herself in the beautiful, impenetrable, and dark lexicon of the Russians--the old superstitions, the brutal military service, the vibrant and tempestuous loves nurtured by minus-20-degree temperatures--and evokes a bittersweet passage full of excitement, mayhem, and despair. --Lesley Reed
From Publishers Weekly
When Hobson, a British-born descendant of White Russians, first planned the trip that forms the basis of this memoir, she thought she was traveling to the Soviet Union. But a month before her departure in 1991, a failed right-wing putsch in Moscow consigned that destination to the pages of history and ushered in the dawn of a "New Russia." Some 500 kilometers south of Moscow, in the provincial university town of Voronezh that is to be Hobson's home for the next year, a political and economic lethargy muffles the cataclysmic events of the capital. For most of the residents of Hostel No. 4, where the author takes up quarters, there is little novelty in the "new" Russia. Heavy drinking, escapist plots and extravagant romances are marks of the national psyche, as they have since well before the revolution (first and second). Yet for Hobson, even the time-honored tradition of drinking vodka on a commuter train is an adventure, and she treasures the details of an exotically mundane life. And while her title may nod to at least a modest political account, her well-groomed diary is unapologetically concerned more with Hobson and company's new independence than with Russia's. While many of the vignettes are amusing and the characters often charming, the narrative already feels dated after all, even sleepy Voronezh has abandoned the Soviet trappings that Hobson describes, if not the wild nights she remembers so fondly.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In 1991, shortly before the dismantling of the Soviet Union, Hobson, a freelance translator, enrolled in a one-year Russian language course at the University of Voronezh, a town situated 850 miles south of Moscow that is famous for its loamy black earth. This memoir is essentially a narrative portrait gallery of two generations: the shrewd, street-smart adolescents and twentysomethings who yearn for a Western lifestyle denied their parents but pursue self-destruction through a steady diet of vodka and drugs and an older generation who have bartered a life of privation for state-sponsored social security but who now experience abandonment and neglect within the New Order. Had Hobson's memoir been published closer to the post-perestroika watershed, it would have been more contextually evocative and relevant. A decade later, however, the erratic and irrational behavior of her Russian friends is poignant but not unfamiliarly wild. Furthermore, Russia in 1991-92 was hardly "running wild" compared with the Wild Frontier corruption, extortion, and murder that came later. Recommended for larger public libraries. Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Life in the back woods of the Soviet Union.
By Kevin M Quigg
Although there is little history or sociology in this book, I enjoyed it for the viewpoint of Soviet society in a changing era. Hobson was a student of the Russian language studying at a local university. She describes life in the student hostel she lived in, along with all the interactions with other foreigners and Russian students. She said very little about the university. This book details all the interactions with other Russian students, and life in the USSR during this transition. After the New Year came, she experienced life in the Russian Federation. Society's mores certainly changed during this time.
This book shows a personal experience of a society changing from Communist to Capitalist. It is interesting in how Soviet mores changed drastically during this time. The book had a good flow to it and reads easily.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Catapulted straight back to Russia
By A Customer
I spent an academic year in Russia, just as Charlotte did, only two years later. I found this book really riveting, and could barely put it down until I had quickly finished it. My congratulations to the author for capturing so well the atmosphere of magical Russia and its warm countrymen, along with a glimpse into the country's painful history and current problems. I am so pleased I had the opportunity to read this book.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting account of the new Russia outside Moscow
By Kindle Customer
This account of the author's year as a foreign student in Voronezh covers much of the same ground seen in othe memoirs of the new Russia (see, e.g., Casino Moscow). Unlike most other such books, though, the author is in the provinces, away from glitter and mob life in Moscow. Worth a read, although I wish it had been published sooner after the events described.
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