Partings

by Leonid Borodin, David Floyd

English, Russian (translation)

Genres: Fiction

221 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1987

About the author

Leonid Ivanovich Borodin (Russian: Леони́д Ива́нович Бороди́н) (14 April 1938 – 25 November 2011) was a Russian novelist and journalist.

Born in Irkutsk, Borodin was a Christian and a Soviet dissident. In the 1960s he belonged to the anti-Communist All-Russian Social-Christian Union. He was arrested and imprisoned in the 'strict regime' Camp 17 in 1967, and went on hunger strike there with Yuli Daniel and Aleksandr Ginzburg in 1969. After his release in 1973, Borodin’s works were smuggled out of the Soviet Union. The publication in English translation of The Story of a Strange Time led to his arrest in 1982 on charges of 'anti-Soviet propaganda'. He was sentenced to 10 years' hard labour in Perm-36 Maximum Security Camp (ITK-6), as well as five years' internal exile. Released after four years, in the perestroika era, Borodin was allowed to visit the west with his wife.

A winner of many literary prizes, including the 2002 Solzhenitsyn Prize, Borodin was editor-in-chief of Moskva, a popular literary magazine.

Reviews

[Kriegslok · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It would seem that these people had a cause, courage, and camaraderie. All that, somehow, was alien to me. I had no need of the rights they were making such a fuss about. I had nothing to say, nowhere to emigrate to, and as for the right to spout my head off - would that help me start a new life?"

'Partings' is a great piece of Soviet literature. The author Leonid Borodin had a somewhat uneasy relationship with the Soviet leadership and was imprisoned for anti-Soviet activities and membership of an anti-Communist, Russian-Orthodox organisation in the 1960s and 1980s. Like a number of Soviet dissidents he seems neither to have been an enthusiast for the USSR or the West.
'Partings' follows the lives and activities of what are presented as the privileged elite dissidents of the metropolis, "Every true Moscovite is sure, or at least hopes, that his telephone is being tapped - otherwise it would mean he would not be a person of any importance!". Gennadi, the narrator, comes from a divided family. His father a respectable Soviet academic, his mother and sister socialite dissidents. Gennadi just wants to marry his betrothed and get on with life. To someone not versed in Soviet society, or the mind of the censor, you could be forgiven for wondering what the problem was with such a novel. On the face of it the dissidents are presented as spoilt people playing politics and freedom. Meanwhile, life for the masses goes on as in any system. People have lives to lead and lead them according to the spaces that are open to them. Running through the text are Gennadi's own problems, personal problems of relationships, work and subsistence. For some life is comfortable and there is no need to rock the boat, for others it can be fun to rock the boat but no need to overturn it, while others fall out and are forced to deal with the reality in which they then find themselves. Gennadi gravitates between his Siberian betrothed and the philosophical world of his soon to be father-in-law, an Orthodox priest, and the hectic self-importance of his metropolitan family and former girlfriend caught up in the world of dissidence. On the side Gennadi is writing the biography of a hero of the Great Patriotic War, a story that itself weaves an' uncomfortable thread into the modern trendy world of the 60s Moscovite.
This remains a fresh and fast paced tale which is at heart Russian and about Russia. It's clever satire and subversive ambiguity make it quite a gem.

"I admit I regret not having lived in Stalin's time. To survive then you really had to make an effort, use your head and be on your toes every minute of the day. But nowadays? Sometimes I get fed up, and even start to hate it."