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Ο σοβιετικός κατάσκοπος Στίρλιτς αποδείχνεται και πάλι, όχι μόνο ένας επιδέξιος αγωνιστής και έμπειρος επαγγελματίας, αλλά και άνθρωπος με υψηλές ηθικές και ιδεολογικές αρχές. Μέσα απ' τη συνέχεια της δράσης του, στο αόρατο μέτωπο της πάλης των μυστικών υπηρεσιών ανάμεσα στον κομμουνισμό και το φασισμό, προβάλλουν ολοζώντανα οι πολιτικές και στρατιωτικές πλευρές αυτής της πάλης και το ιδεολογικό της περιεχόμενο.
Ένα ακόμα μυθιστόρημα του Γουλιάν Σεμιόνοφ που - όπως και το προηγούμενο που κυκλοφόρησε η "Σύγχρονη Εποχή", οι "17 στιγμές της Άνοιξης" - βρίσκεται τόσο κοντά στα πραγματικά γεγονότα ώστε δικαιολογημένα χαρακτηρίζεται και σαν πολιτικό χρονικό.
Ένα ακόμα μυθιστόρημα του Γουλιάν Σεμιόνοφ που - όπως και το προηγούμενο που κυκλοφόρησε η "Σύγχρονη Εποχή", οι "17 στιγμές της Άνοιξης" - βρίσκεται τόσο κοντά στα πραγματικά γεγονότα ώστε δικαιολογημένα χαρακτηρίζεται και σαν πολιτικό χρονικό.
428 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
5 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Yulian Semyonov
84 books32 followersYulian Semyonovich Semyonov (Russian: Юлиа́н Семёнович Семёнов, pen-name of Yulian Semyonovich Lyandres (Russian: Ля́ндрес) was a Soviet and Russian writer of spy fiction and detective fiction, also scriptwriter and poet.
The father of Semyonov was Jewish, the editor of the newspaper “Izvestia”, Semyon Alexandrovich Lyandres. In 1952 he was arrested as "an accomplice of the Bukharin counterrevolutionary conspiracy" and severely beaten during the interrogations; he became partially paralyzed as the result. His mother was Russian, Galina Nikolaevna Nozdrina, a history teacher.
His wife Ekaterina Sergeevna was a step-daughter of Sergey Vladimirovich Mikhalkov (the wedding took place on 12 April 1955). Though their family life was quite complicated, Ekaterina Sergeevna devotedly kept looking after her husband after the stroke which happened to him in 1990.
They had two daughters – Daria and Olga. The elder one, Daria, is an artist, and the younger, Olga Semyonova, is a journalist and a writer, an author of the autobiographical books about her father.
In 1953 Semyonov graduated from Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, the Middle-East department. Then he taught the Afghan language (Pashto) in Moscow State University and simultaneously studied there in the faculty of history.
After gaining a degree of an interpreter in the University, Semyonov had diplomatic business in East Asia countries, continuing at the same time his scientific studies in Moscow State University (specializing in Persian history and politics).
Since 1955 he started to try his hand in journalism: he was published in key Soviet newspapers and magazines of that time: “Ogoniok”, “Pravda”, “Literaturnaya Gazeta”, “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, “Smena” etc.
In 1960s – 1970s Semyonov worked abroad a lot as a reporter of the said editions (in France, Spain, Germany, Cuba, Japan, the USA, Latin America). His journalist activity was full of adventures, often dangerous ones – at the moment he was in the taiga with tiger hunters, or at the polar station, at the next he was at the Baikal-Amur Mainline construction and diamond pipe opening. He was constantly in the centre of the important politic events of those years – in Afghanistan, Francoist Spain, Chile, Cuba, Paraguay, tracing the Nazi, who sought cover from punishment, and Sicilian mafia leaders; taking part in the combatant operations of the Vietnamese and Laotian partisans.
Semyonov was one of the pioneers of “Investigative journalism” in the Soviet periodicals. Thus, in 1974 in Madrid he managed to interview a Nazi criminal, the favourite of Hitler Otto Skorzeny, who categorically refused to meet any journalist before. Then, being the “Literaturnaya Gazeta” newspaper correspondent in Germany, the writer succeeds in interviewing the reichsminister Albert Speer and one of the SS leaders Karl Wolff.
The conversations with such people, as well as holding the investigation regarding the searches for the Amber Room and other cultural values moved abroad from Russia during World War II were published by Semyonov in his documentary story “Face to Face” in 1983.
In 1986 Semyonov became the President of the International Association of Detective and Political Novel (Russian: МАДПР), which he himself initiated to create, and the editor-in-chief of the collected stories edition “Detective and Politics” (the edition was published by the said Association together with the Press Agency “Novosti” and played an important role in popularization of the detective genre in the USSR.
Semyonov’s participation in searching for the famous Amber Room together with Georges Simenon, James Aldridge, baron von Falz-Fein and other famous members of the International Amber Room Searching Committee achieved wide renown.
Yulian Semyonov and his friends, Andrei Mironov (right) and Lev Durov (Crimea, date unknown)
Semyonov, together with baron Eduard von Falz-Fein, a Russian aristocrat and first wave émig
The father of Semyonov was Jewish, the editor of the newspaper “Izvestia”, Semyon Alexandrovich Lyandres. In 1952 he was arrested as "an accomplice of the Bukharin counterrevolutionary conspiracy" and severely beaten during the interrogations; he became partially paralyzed as the result. His mother was Russian, Galina Nikolaevna Nozdrina, a history teacher.
His wife Ekaterina Sergeevna was a step-daughter of Sergey Vladimirovich Mikhalkov (the wedding took place on 12 April 1955). Though their family life was quite complicated, Ekaterina Sergeevna devotedly kept looking after her husband after the stroke which happened to him in 1990.
They had two daughters – Daria and Olga. The elder one, Daria, is an artist, and the younger, Olga Semyonova, is a journalist and a writer, an author of the autobiographical books about her father.
In 1953 Semyonov graduated from Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, the Middle-East department. Then he taught the Afghan language (Pashto) in Moscow State University and simultaneously studied there in the faculty of history.
After gaining a degree of an interpreter in the University, Semyonov had diplomatic business in East Asia countries, continuing at the same time his scientific studies in Moscow State University (specializing in Persian history and politics).
Since 1955 he started to try his hand in journalism: he was published in key Soviet newspapers and magazines of that time: “Ogoniok”, “Pravda”, “Literaturnaya Gazeta”, “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, “Smena” etc.
In 1960s – 1970s Semyonov worked abroad a lot as a reporter of the said editions (in France, Spain, Germany, Cuba, Japan, the USA, Latin America). His journalist activity was full of adventures, often dangerous ones – at the moment he was in the taiga with tiger hunters, or at the polar station, at the next he was at the Baikal-Amur Mainline construction and diamond pipe opening. He was constantly in the centre of the important politic events of those years – in Afghanistan, Francoist Spain, Chile, Cuba, Paraguay, tracing the Nazi, who sought cover from punishment, and Sicilian mafia leaders; taking part in the combatant operations of the Vietnamese and Laotian partisans.
Semyonov was one of the pioneers of “Investigative journalism” in the Soviet periodicals. Thus, in 1974 in Madrid he managed to interview a Nazi criminal, the favourite of Hitler Otto Skorzeny, who categorically refused to meet any journalist before. Then, being the “Literaturnaya Gazeta” newspaper correspondent in Germany, the writer succeeds in interviewing the reichsminister Albert Speer and one of the SS leaders Karl Wolff.
The conversations with such people, as well as holding the investigation regarding the searches for the Amber Room and other cultural values moved abroad from Russia during World War II were published by Semyonov in his documentary story “Face to Face” in 1983.
In 1986 Semyonov became the President of the International Association of Detective and Political Novel (Russian: МАДПР), which he himself initiated to create, and the editor-in-chief of the collected stories edition “Detective and Politics” (the edition was published by the said Association together with the Press Agency “Novosti” and played an important role in popularization of the detective genre in the USSR.
Semyonov’s participation in searching for the famous Amber Room together with Georges Simenon, James Aldridge, baron von Falz-Fein and other famous members of the International Amber Room Searching Committee achieved wide renown.
Yulian Semyonov and his friends, Andrei Mironov (right) and Lev Durov (Crimea, date unknown)
Semyonov, together with baron Eduard von Falz-Fein, a Russian aristocrat and first wave émig
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 16, 2019
An impressive work.
I expected less from The Order to Survive, the direct sequel to Seventeen Moments of Spring - the latter is the quintessential Semyonov work after all, or at least the one being talked about most often - and yet I received infinitely more than I could hope for.
Semyonov once again presents history in its most cynical form, stripped off of any pretence, any spin doctoring, without montage or editing, without appeasing to either a political elite, cultural norms or a post mass-consumerised and culturally standardised audience: he is brutal and informative.
The story picks up where 17MS left us: the last days of the war. The rules have been long set, the game is in motion and players - like marionettes on strings - can only manoeuvre in limited freedom, restricted by invisible powers that are beyond everybody's grasp.
Our protagonist, once the heroic omnipotent and all-knowing secret agent i.e. the ultimate spy, is seen in a desperate situation with no visible light at the end of the tunnel - in fact, all the tunnels have been shut down and sealed off and he is left helpless and weak, powerless to change his destiny, left at the mercy of the divine intervention that can be his only hope in the end.
However, often the fictional story of standartenführer Stierlitz plays second fiddle and leaves the prime light to the events unfolding all around: the monumental events in the last days of the Great War, a time of profound confusion and demolished borders between good and evil. Semyonov continues to write truthfully and presents all sides in as balanced way as possible, not sparing any criticism or omitting historic data that would blemish good reputations.
A no easy feat in any stretch of the imagination, but again masterfully completed.
"Society's memory is short, especially when the tools for mass communication every day and every hour throw new scandals, versions, gossip, jokes and horrors into the ever burning furnace of sensations."
Read in 2019 from a western perspective the novel feels brutal indeed, which is its greatest strength. Only after being exposed to literature - fiction or non-fiction - from the previous generation where politicised censorship in media production outlets was not as major of a thing (note: Semyonov wrote his books in the USA), only then can the reader truly grasp the stage we are at as a society now and experience how much information is being omitted or artistically altered nowadays - wether enforced or culturally-enforced (not that there is any difference).
And this is the truth: that neither of the three (or four?) major players in the war were anything different than unscrupulous tyrants with egocentric aspirations for greatness at the expense of human lives; that nobody cared about the people dying in the war, the people dying in the holocaust, the people dying in the gulag; that it was a man-eat-man war, a war of failed ideologies where a failed ideology won and set the status quo; a war of no heroes apart from the ordinary man fighting for his country or the woman dying in hunger or under a bomb protecting her children.
Everything was politics and a big game.
Semyonov presents a world where there is no good vs evil in the Great War. It is all gray and black, all sides are demagogically and thus demonically pursuing their interests at the expense of everybody else with no account for anything apart from power and control.
The only goodness comes in the face of the ordinary man - even the spy, the politician, the soldier, and the leader - with humanity seeping through the cracks of the broken regimes and peoples, through the ordinary faults and weakness that even the strongest individual shows.
The Order to Survive also excels at painting a vivid picture of the intricacies and the profound complexity of the last days of the war. The nature of the ties between the main players, the complicated, yet delicate entwine between all sides who are seemingly playing a different game and representing a different point of view, but yet are deeply interlinked with each other, are deeply disturbing: the communists in the CIA, the american bankers, entrepreneurs and political organisations linked with the nazis, the nazis helping certain jewish circles and vice versa, and so on - it isn't a game of angels vs devils or heroes vs enemies; it is a game of survival and a game of money. And money equals absolutism.
"You should not play the role of truth-seeker. All truth-seekers are hysterical. The people who love her [the truth] are born most often among the oppressed nations. Free people don't look for her, but validate themselves; the self is the highest form of existence."
The differences in execution between The Order to Survive and 17 Moments of Spring mainly revolve around two things:
The delicate balance and neutral approach which Semyonov took in 17MS in showing the despicable nature of all three sides of the war - as well as all the humane aspects of all parties - aspects often neglected in favour of a biased hero/enemy and black/white approach in mass media production since '45 - has had a very slight balance shift.
If the 33% western powers vs 33% axis vs 33% Soviet Union was present in 17MS, the balance now shifts to 33vs33vs34 - ever so slightly tilted in favour of the russians.
Not necessarily a problem, though.
The second aspect is the nature of the events themselves depicted in the novel. Events so tumultuous, that they leave the reader breathless at the master craftsmanship of the writer able to write with such ease as to create an easy and pleasant flow despite the vast amount of historic information present in the book.
While 17MS also possessed sheer amounts of data masterfully entwined within the storytelling, but the magnitude of the events is simply slightly less dramatic.
Again, not necessarily a minus, just a natural difference in feel.
This is what I call true and honest writing. Profoundly informative, tightly written, deeply observant and highly enriching.
A book of a time gone by, unfortunately, whereas such novels are a rather rare exception nowadays.
I expected less from The Order to Survive, the direct sequel to Seventeen Moments of Spring - the latter is the quintessential Semyonov work after all, or at least the one being talked about most often - and yet I received infinitely more than I could hope for.
Semyonov once again presents history in its most cynical form, stripped off of any pretence, any spin doctoring, without montage or editing, without appeasing to either a political elite, cultural norms or a post mass-consumerised and culturally standardised audience: he is brutal and informative.
The story picks up where 17MS left us: the last days of the war. The rules have been long set, the game is in motion and players - like marionettes on strings - can only manoeuvre in limited freedom, restricted by invisible powers that are beyond everybody's grasp.
Our protagonist, once the heroic omnipotent and all-knowing secret agent i.e. the ultimate spy, is seen in a desperate situation with no visible light at the end of the tunnel - in fact, all the tunnels have been shut down and sealed off and he is left helpless and weak, powerless to change his destiny, left at the mercy of the divine intervention that can be his only hope in the end.
However, often the fictional story of standartenführer Stierlitz plays second fiddle and leaves the prime light to the events unfolding all around: the monumental events in the last days of the Great War, a time of profound confusion and demolished borders between good and evil. Semyonov continues to write truthfully and presents all sides in as balanced way as possible, not sparing any criticism or omitting historic data that would blemish good reputations.
A no easy feat in any stretch of the imagination, but again masterfully completed.
"Society's memory is short, especially when the tools for mass communication every day and every hour throw new scandals, versions, gossip, jokes and horrors into the ever burning furnace of sensations."
Read in 2019 from a western perspective the novel feels brutal indeed, which is its greatest strength. Only after being exposed to literature - fiction or non-fiction - from the previous generation where politicised censorship in media production outlets was not as major of a thing (note: Semyonov wrote his books in the USA), only then can the reader truly grasp the stage we are at as a society now and experience how much information is being omitted or artistically altered nowadays - wether enforced or culturally-enforced (not that there is any difference).
And this is the truth: that neither of the three (or four?) major players in the war were anything different than unscrupulous tyrants with egocentric aspirations for greatness at the expense of human lives; that nobody cared about the people dying in the war, the people dying in the holocaust, the people dying in the gulag; that it was a man-eat-man war, a war of failed ideologies where a failed ideology won and set the status quo; a war of no heroes apart from the ordinary man fighting for his country or the woman dying in hunger or under a bomb protecting her children.
Everything was politics and a big game.
Semyonov presents a world where there is no good vs evil in the Great War. It is all gray and black, all sides are demagogically and thus demonically pursuing their interests at the expense of everybody else with no account for anything apart from power and control.
The only goodness comes in the face of the ordinary man - even the spy, the politician, the soldier, and the leader - with humanity seeping through the cracks of the broken regimes and peoples, through the ordinary faults and weakness that even the strongest individual shows.
The Order to Survive also excels at painting a vivid picture of the intricacies and the profound complexity of the last days of the war. The nature of the ties between the main players, the complicated, yet delicate entwine between all sides who are seemingly playing a different game and representing a different point of view, but yet are deeply interlinked with each other, are deeply disturbing: the communists in the CIA, the american bankers, entrepreneurs and political organisations linked with the nazis, the nazis helping certain jewish circles and vice versa, and so on - it isn't a game of angels vs devils or heroes vs enemies; it is a game of survival and a game of money. And money equals absolutism.
"You should not play the role of truth-seeker. All truth-seekers are hysterical. The people who love her [the truth] are born most often among the oppressed nations. Free people don't look for her, but validate themselves; the self is the highest form of existence."
The differences in execution between The Order to Survive and 17 Moments of Spring mainly revolve around two things:
The delicate balance and neutral approach which Semyonov took in 17MS in showing the despicable nature of all three sides of the war - as well as all the humane aspects of all parties - aspects often neglected in favour of a biased hero/enemy and black/white approach in mass media production since '45 - has had a very slight balance shift.
If the 33% western powers vs 33% axis vs 33% Soviet Union was present in 17MS, the balance now shifts to 33vs33vs34 - ever so slightly tilted in favour of the russians.
Not necessarily a problem, though.
The second aspect is the nature of the events themselves depicted in the novel. Events so tumultuous, that they leave the reader breathless at the master craftsmanship of the writer able to write with such ease as to create an easy and pleasant flow despite the vast amount of historic information present in the book.
While 17MS also possessed sheer amounts of data masterfully entwined within the storytelling, but the magnitude of the events is simply slightly less dramatic.
Again, not necessarily a minus, just a natural difference in feel.
This is what I call true and honest writing. Profoundly informative, tightly written, deeply observant and highly enriching.
A book of a time gone by, unfortunately, whereas such novels are a rather rare exception nowadays.
October 2, 2018
Книга читабельная, но её сильно портят две вещи: во-первых, примерно треть книги занимает достаточно утомительный вывод американцев на сцену в качестве будущих главных злодеев. И хоть пишет это всё лауреат КГБ СССР в области искусства, ну никак не получается поставить между ними и нацистами знак равенства, как хотелось бы автору, даже в его собственной версии истории концы не сходятся с концами. И, во-вторых, из всех возможных развязок противостояния Штирлица и Мюллера Сёменов выбрал самую нелепую.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews