One Night in Winter

Moscow Trilogy #3

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

If your children were forced to testify against you, what terrible secrets would they reveal?Moscow 1945. As Stalin and his courtiers celebrate victory over Hitler, shots ring out. On a nearby bridge, a teenage boy and girl lie dead.But this is no ordinary tragedy and these are no ordinary teenagers, but the children of Russia’s most important leaders who attend the most exclusive school in Moscow.Is it murder? A suicide pact? Or a conspiracy against the state?Directed by Stalin himself, an investigation begins as children are arrested and forced to testify against their friends - and their parents. This terrifying witch-hunt soon unveils illicit love affairs and family secrets in a hidden world where the smallest mistakes will be punished with death.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Russia, Historical, Mystery, War, Romance

456 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2013

About the author

Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of the global bestsellers 'The Romanovs' and 'Jerusalem: the Biography,' 'Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar' and Young Stalin and the novels Sashenka and One Night in Winter and "Red Sky at Noon." His books are published in 48 languages and are worldwide bestsellers. He has won prizes in both non-fiction and fiction. He read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he received his Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD).
'The Romanovs' is his latest history book. He has now completed his Moscow Trilogy of novels featuring Benya Golden and Comrade Satinov, Sashenka, Dashka and Fabiana.... and Stalin himself.


Buy in the UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Winter-...

"A thrilling work of fiction. Montefiore weaves a tight, satisfying plot, delivering surprises to the last page. Stalin's chilling charisma is brilliantly realised. The novel's theme is Love: family love, youthful romance, adulterous passion. One Night in Winter is full of redemptive love and inner freedom." Evening Standard

"Gripping and cleverly plotted. Doomed love at the heart of a violent society is the heart of Montefiore's One Night in Winter... depicting the Kafkaesque labyrinth into which the victims stumble." The Sunday Times

"Compulsively involving. Our fear for the children keeps up turning the pages... We follow the passions with sympathy... The knot of events tugs at a wide range of emotions rarely experienced outside an intimate tyranny." The Times

"The novel is hugely romantic. His ease with the setting and historical characters is masterly. The book maintains a tense pace. Uniquely terrifying. Heartrending. Engrossing. " The Scotsman

“Delicately plotted and buried within a layered, elliptical narrative, One Night in Winter is also a fidgety page-turner which adroitly weaves a huge cast of characters into an arcane world.” Time Out

“A novel full of passion, conspiracy, hope, despair, suffering and redemption, it transcends boundaries of genre, being at once thriller and political drama, horror and romance. His ability to paint Stalin in such a way to make the reader quake with fire is matched by talent for creating truly heartbreaking characters: the children who find themselves at the centre of a conspiracy, the parents…. A gripping read and must surely be one of the best novels of 2013. ” NY Journal of Books

"Not just a thumpingly good read, but also essentially a story of human fragility and passions, albeit taking place under the intimidating shadow of a massive Stalinist portico." The National

"Seriously good fun... the Soviet march on Berlin, nightmarish drinking games at Stalin's countryhouse, the magnificence of the Bolshoi, interrogations, snow, sex and exile... lust adultery and romance. Eminently readable and strangely affecting." Sunday Telegraph

" "Hopelessly romantic and hopelessly moving. A mix of lovestory thriller and historical fiction. Engrossing." The Observer

“Gripping. Montefiore’s characters snare our sympathy and we follow them avidly. This intricate at times disturbing, always absorbing novel entertains and disturbs and seethes with moral complexity. Characters real+fictitious ring strikingly true.It is to a large extent Tolstoyan …..” The Australian

“Enthralling. Montefiore writes brilliantly about Love - from teenage romance to the grand passion of adultery. Readers of Sebastian Faulks and Hilary Mantel will lap this up. A historical novel that builds into a nail-biting drama … a world that resembles… Edith Wharton with the death penalty.” Novel of

Reviews

[Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

beauty turns into terror

Beauty turns into terror, love into death.

❄️ The first quarter of the book is idyllic as a group of older teenagers (17 & 18) form a group around Pushkin’s poem Eugene Origen. We see a slice of life of the families of the Soviet elite in 1945, as well. However, when two of the teens are mysteriously shot and killed, SMERSH investigates and the story becomes something out of the Gulag and takes on a deadly Solzhenitsyn tone. Despite that, secret loves do occur, surreptitious and underground, yet they cannot and do not lead anywhere. The Soviet state obstructs, knowingly and unknowingly.

Stalin is a major player in this novel. Montefiore has written several books about the successor to Lenin and his knowledge of Stalin’s mind and ways is on display here. You wonder how anyone managed to survive a regime riddled with paranoia, torture, and murder like Stalin’s. Yet, after a few decades of being mothballed by the new tsars, he is back in favor as one of the greatest Russians who ever lived. Which tells you something about Putin and his new Soviet Union in the making.

Well-written, and alternately intriguing, frightening, and alluring. An exceptional read.

I came upon this while looking for Montefiore’s history of Jerusalem.

[Katie Scarlett O Hara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ja ovu knjigu nisam ispuštala iz ruku do poslednje strane. Ima nešto u načinu na koji Simon pripoveda, tako brutalno iskreno, a opet obavijeno velom romanse i nade. Sa lakoćom ulazi iz lika u lik, bio to desetogodišnji dečak ili montruozni pripadnik tajne policije. Fascinantan slučaj ruske istorije, o kojem svakako ne bih ni čula da nije ove knjige. Neprestano vas drži na ivici, napetim, jer ne znate, kao ni likovi u knjizi, u kome smeru bi vas odvela sledeća rečenica. Odavno nisam čitala ovako dobru knjigu.
Recenzija na mom blogu
http://thestuffdreamsaremadeof21.blog...

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russia 1945, Stalin and his regime is firmly entrenched. What starts out as a student's game, quickly turns into much more, two deaths and a possible conspiracy to overthrow Stalin, and many students, the youngest aged six are quickly imprisoned. What makes this case so special to the investigating officers is that these are all children of the elite, the top of Stalin's Politburo.

This is a very atmospheric novel, the reader becomes very familiar with the tension and suspicion that even the elite and their families had to live with daily. How Stalin loved to play games, using children to get at their parents, making sure no one ever felt safe. It is a story of sacrifice, of a beloved teacher of Pushkin, who confesses to something he did not do so that his students would be saved. A story of love, of a young Russian girl with an American diplomat and her eventual imprisonment in the Gulag. It is a time when no one was free to think or do what they wanted.

The beginning included a cast of characters and there are many in this book, but I soon had no trouble keeping track of most of them. Also includes an afterward, stating that much of this was based on a true story and what was changed for the sake of the story. I found in to be a wonderful story, and one I thoroughly enjoyed. Another new author for me, but one of which I plan to read much more.

ARC from publisher.

[Mike Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book. I think I chose it more on the authors unusual name rather than the content. But it was a good choice.

Set in 1945 Russia the story is based around the initial deaths of two youngsters. Suicide or murder? They are children of senior apparatchiks and so the secret service - Organs- are called into investigate.

The focus is on a group of 18 year olds at the elite School 801. They had formed a secret society - The Fatal Romantics Club - to enact Pushkin scenes from Eugene Onegin and romantic concepts of love and death.

It ramps up when a journal is found that is interpreted by the secret police as a call to overthrow the government.

The youngsters and other family children including a 6 and 10 year old are taken to Lubyanka prison for interrogation. Very disturbing scenes here. The images of the prison are described in the authors rich writing style:

‘The place stank of wee, poo, sweat, detergent, dampness. Repulsive. Repellent. Revolting. Rebarbative. Nauseating. Egregious. Emetic. The thesaurus of words comforted him …’

There is a list of characters at the start of the book that I found myself continually referring to initially. The author weaves a really complex picture of Stalinist Russia, Pushkin, love and family. First class reading. The epilogue tells us that the story is based on reality - this actually happened. Amazing.

I need to hunt out his other novels and his works on Stalin. And of course read some classic Russian authors.

Addendum

Ok so the quote below made me smile and think back to my pre-retirement life:

The moment he was outside he punched him in the face: ‘ This is far from solved and you’ve made a fool of me in front of Comrad Beria!’ …Stalin had once recommended Management by Punching.

[Margitte · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Night in Winter - Simon Sebag Montefiore

1945. Moscow, Russia.
Jubilance raged over the war-ravaged city. Hitler was defeated. New beginnings lay ahead for a nation with promises of greatness by Stalin. The hope for normalcy raised slowly from the ashes.

The young Andrei Kurbsky saw “crumbling buildings, their façades peppered with shrapnel, windows shattered, roads pockmarked with bomb craters. Everything – the walls, the houses, the cars – everything except the scarlet banners was drab, beige, peeling, khaki, grey. But faces of the passersby were rosy as if victory and sunlight almost made up for the lack of food, and the streets were crowded with pretty girls in skimpy dresses, soldiers, sailors and officers in white summer uniforms. Studebaker trucks, Willys jeeps and the Buicks of officials rumbled by – but there were also carriages pulled by horses, carts heaped with hay or bedding or turnips, right in the middle of this spired city with its gold domes. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes in the heat and the world went a soft orange, Andrei heard laughter and singing and he was sure he could hear the city itself healing in the sunshine.”
`
Life was starting over for everyone. The top officials in the Communist party were compensated with lavish lifestyle in the high-ceilinged apartments in the Granvosky building (otherwise known as the Fifth House of the Soviets), with dazzling corridors of capacious parquet floors and crystal chandeliers. Each official owned more than one chauffeur-driven car: open-topped Mercedes and -Packards, Dodge, Cadillacs, limousines, and Rolls Royces. It was also the home of Serafima Romashkina.

A new life was also starting for Andrei and his mother who just returned from exile in Stalinabad, “The Paris of Central Asia”, also known as “The Athens of Turkestan”. Everybody knew what that meant. “It was his tainted biography all over again.”

He remembered “that no one in the Soviet Union respected personal space. Everyone existed in a state of neurotic anxiety, but his mother always told him: The key to survival is to be calm and save yourself. Never ask anyone what they did before and what they’re doing next. Never speak your mind. And make friends wherever you can.”

He wanted badly to make friends in School 801, the finishing school for the next leaders of the Kremlin; the place where the Princes of the Communist regime sent their children to be trained as the young Barons of the Kremlin. He did not belong there, but needed to fit in. He wanted to join the literary movement: 'the Fatal Romantic’s Club', founded December 1944 by Nikolasha Blagov, with the mission statement reading:
1. We suffocate in a phillistine world of science and planning, ruled by the cold machine of history.
2. We live for love and romance.
3. If we cannot live with love, we choose death. This is why we conduct our secret rites; this is why we play the Game.

It was to be called ‘bourgeois sentimentalism’, a 'bourgeois heresy', by the Communists and regarded as un-Bolshevik.

Young, poor, optimistic, ambitious, inexperienced Andrei would meet Serafima.

24 June 1945. It was the day of Stalin's review of The Victory Parade.
The rain has stopped; “the air is packed with suffocating pollen, and Serafima loses sight of her friends as she is buffeted by the carousing crowds. The smell of vodka and blossom, the thunderous boom and the drifting smoke of a cannonade, a hundred impromptu street choirs singing wartime romances amidst the salvoes of that fifty-gun salute, surround and confuse her. Then two staccato gunshots, very close. Serafima knows something’s happened to her friends even before the sounds has finished ricocheting off the Kremlin walls....”

“... These shots will blast their lives and uncover secrets that would never otherwise have been found – hers (Serafima's) most of all ...”

After all, Stalin believed that killing was the quickest, most efficient way to accelerate the progress of history. 'We must never lose our sense of humour', said Josef Vissarionovich aka Stalin...

So many lives, so many losses; so much heartbreak, so much optimism. The background to the life in Moscow was so vividly illustrated that the reader might walk those streets and recognize all the people and places described in the tale without ever being there before. The death of the two children would unleash a series of events which were like dominoes tumbling from different directions falling everywhere.

The collective mistrust, back stabbing, fear, betrayal, secrets and self-serving objectives of the participants will be exposed until only time would bring acceptance and reconciliation with lives destroyed or revived. But many years filled with endless minutes would be needed to finally bring closure. And closure was only made possible by love and loyalty which never died.

'The party never makes mistakes. Better to kill a hundred innocents than miss one Enemy.'

In this tale not everything is lost, although nobody would walk out unscathed.

I am so between the devil and the deep blue sea on this one. It is a magnificent book to start off with: well written, extremely detailed, beautiful prose, spell-binding with no unfinished characters. However, my final impression, was that too much historical facts were included in the narrative, necessitating the creation of too many protagonists. The story is about a group of children and their families, every member, their teachers, and what happened to them, during the reign of Stalin. There were many love stories, too many, to be told. More emphasis needed to have been laid on the millions of people who collectively died under Stalin's reign of which the majority were non-Jewish, instead of only the Jewish victims.

I am going to settle for four stars. If there were less protagonists, more focus on less events, it would have deserved five brilliant flying stars. In fact, I might change my mind again!

[Pete Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost but not quite.

The historian leaned back in his chair and thought "I make a decent living from writing popular non-fiction, but I don't make nearly as many zloties as that Robert Harris, I think I'll try for a bit of what he's getting"

And he nearly, but not quite, makes it. What Sebag-Montefiore has produced here is a strangely uneven work, at times gripping, packed with presumably accurate period detail, but which is also rather disjointed and unsatisfying. Looked at through one lens there is some skilful story telling with multiple narratives all being tied together nicely at the end. From another perspective, the knots are too neat and small, the book lacks a sense of a crescendo, it burns out its energy well before the end and the resolution is almost a non-sequiteur from the rest of the book. The effort went into the journey rather than the destination. The author writes on an ambitious canvas, with a large cast of characters, both fictional and real, but then the reader never really gets to know any of them. Above all, despite the attempts to bring everything together at the end, this feels like at least three, possibly four wildly different books.

Act 1 - Harry Potter and the Goths of Stalin

The first section has many elements familiar to anyone who has read any form of school story. The new boy Andrei has to fit in with his seemingly glamorous classmates. In doing so he is confronted by the stern but ultimately kindly headmaster, the inspirational teacher, the malevolent Snape-like character and the arrogant bully. As this is set in Moscow at the time of the USSR's victory over Nazi Germany, the unsympathetic teacher is a bolshevik fanatic, the charismatic pedagogue is a victim of the Terror, and the bully is Stalin's son. In this first section, I rather got the impression that the writer of fiction hadn't quite escaped his original profession as 17 year olds occasionally think more like narrating historians than teenage boys.

The teenage pupils whom Andrei is keen to befriend are pale and interesting young men and women who meet in graveyards to reenact the life and works of Pushkin. They also happen to be the offspring of the Soviet leadership.

Things take a darker turn when a fake duel goes wrong on the day of the Russian WW II victory celebration and two of the school children lie dead.

Act 2 - Suffer the little children

The second section was for me the most problematic. Following the tragic events which bring the first act to a close, the secret police get involved in the investigation. The two adjectives which could lazily be used here would be Orwellian and Kafkaesque as the children are sucked into Stalin's cruel bureaucracy. My difficulty is that the two earlier writers produced brilliantly allegorical, political works which used fiction as a means of denouncing state terror and warning of the consequences of totalitarianism. This is not a political work, it is a work of popular entertainment, and yet we are explicitly presented with the psychological torture and suffering of six and ten year old children. I found that gratuitously upsetting.

Act 3 - Mills and Boon

After the darkness of the second act there is a drastic change of tone and we are suddenly presented with heaving breasts, aching loins, panting passion and not one but two prime candidates for the bad sex awards.

Acts 4 &5 - Fizzling out

The fourth section is where Sebag-montefiore brings everything to a conclusion but his story deflates rather than climaxing. In the notes at the end of the book he gives an account of the real events on which he bases his novel. I got the impression that he had decided that these were the stories that he was going to tell, but his interest was more in the world he was describing than in the fate of his characters. He brings his tale to an end somewhat unenthusiastically, and left this reader at least, feeling rather unengaged, especially as he quickly skates over huge events in his characters' lives by jumping 8 and 30 years into the future.

So, in summary, this is a reasonable book, aside from the unnecessary cruelty. I just found myself wondering what it is trying to achieve. Given the author's background it is based on a great deal of scholarly research, but it is also aimed squarely at the bestseller market. Is it trying to provide a warning from history, or is it just a slightly nasty rather exploitative work.

Finally one might surmise that the author has fallen into the biographer's trap. There is clearly a hatred of Stalin's inhumanities, but there is definitely a sense of admiration for the old tyrant in there too.

[Melanie Fraser · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was hard to put down. I was captivated by this extraordinary story within which some of the characters were actual historical figures. Looking over one's shoulder all the time for fear of being incarcerated, tortured, sent to the Gulags or killed for the slightest move in the wrong direction in the eyes of some must have been a terrifying ordeal.

I look forward to reading more of this author's work.

[Bettie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Kiwiflora · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of internet research shows up that Joseph Stalin, dictator leader of the Soviet Union from mind-1920s till his death in 1953, was responsible during this time for the deaths of 20 million Soviet people - his own people. Most died from starvation either due to state induced famine or in the infamous Gulags. By the way, this is in addition to what may be another 20 million who died as a direct result of WWII. His purges were so extensive and ruthless that come the German invasion of Russia in 1941, it is claimed that he did not have enough man power to prevent the invasion. Such was Stalin's paranoia and insecurity during all the years of his terror filled reign, that literally no one was safe. Including children. Even children of his own advisers and high ranking defence personnel.

This novel is based on the episode that became known as the Children's Case of 1943 when two children of high ranking Soviet officials died during a shooting. Amongst their papers, plans for a joke government were found which resulted in the friends of the two dead teenagers being imprisoned, interrogated, forced to sign a confession and then sent to central Asia for six months. The author spoke to survivors of the case as part of his research. This case forms the backbone to the novel, using both real people, for example Stalin and some of his generals, and fictionalising the children and their families. The novel is as much about Soviet Russia during this time as it is about the private lives of families, and how betrayal at this most private of levels was actively encouraged.

Stalin didn't believe in love of any kind except to himself and the glory of Russia. The one fly in this ointment was the poet and writer Alexander Pushkin whose works were reluctantly permitted as he simply couldn't get this man out of Russian mindset. In this novel, the author uses Pushkin as the base around which the teenagers build their Fatal Romantics' Club which Stalin felt so threatened by. The web of fear that was caused by the shooting of the two teenagers, is huge and complicated, with the reader fearing for the lives of most of the characters in the novel. This includes the children themselves, one as young as six, the parents, some of whom have to continue looking Stalin in the eye, knowing that Stalin hs personally directed the arrest and interrogation of their children.The school teachers at the prestigious state school the children attend are also under threat, surveillance and interrogation.

At the same time as all this is going on, one of the school girls is having an affair with someone she shouldn't be. This too is based on a true story of the period, whereby a translator at the British Embassy became engaged to a Russian girl. When she attempted to legitimately leave Russia and join him, she was poisoned, brought back to Moscow and tried for treason. The fictionalised version is slightly different, but no less terrifying than the original.

The tension and fear throughout this story is palpable from the opening sentence: "Just moments after the shots, as Serafima looks at the bodies of her school friends, a feathery whiteness is already frosting their blasted flesh". This very highly regarded author has written two non fiction books about Stalin, and another about Catherine the Great, as well as one other fiction book set during the time of Stalin's rule. He knows this period in history intimately, his knowledge and research shining through. We get a real taste for what daily life was like in communal living situations, the need for husbands and wives to have private whispered conversations in the bathroom with the taps running, the queues for food, the constant being on guard, the sudden disappearances of neighbours and then years later the random appearance of long lost friends and loved ones. We simply can't comprehend living under such fear and intimidation. And yet it is important that we know about what has gone on in our recent past.This is a compelling and frightening read, Stalin's use of children making you realise what an absolute monster this man was, and yet the power of love still managing to shine on through.

[Aleksandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nakon pročitane obje knjige, Sašenjka i Jedne zimske noći, drago mi je što sam konačno zaokružila ovaj serijal koji me je neopravdano predugo čekao na polici. Moram priznati da sam Sašenjki imala par zamjerki, previše površnu karakterizaciju glavnih likova, posebno naslovne junakinje, koja mi je zbog toga jednostavno nekako proletjela kroz roman, bez da sam se istinski uživjela u njenu sudbinu. S druge strane, historijski period dešavanja tog romana savršeno je rekonstruisan, opisi su predivni, vjerni, svaka riječ ima svoju težinu i vrijednost... Međutim, tih zamjerki za Jednu zimsku noć nemam, naprotiv. Montefiore je u ovom romanu uspješno smjestio izuzetno zanimljivu i potresnu životnu priču u burna politička zbivanja Staljinove Rusije nakon II svjetskog rata. Likovi su životni, jednostavno nemoguće je ne suosjećati, ne preživljavati s njima teror staljinizma, ne iščekivati željno kakva će im sudbina na kraju biti...Zapravo tek nakon pročitane obje knjige dobila sam zaokruženu sliku, jednu savršenu majstorski napisanu priču o sudbini čovjeka, bio on "običan" ili "visoko pozicioniran", u teškim vremenima gdje je teško ostati čovjek sa svim svojim manama, ali i strastima, gdje se ljubav teško rađa, a još teže sačuva...

[Deepika Sekar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this one on a whim and boy was this terrific.

It's really hard to write about it without giving away too much, but let me just say this -it reads like a political thriller but is really a meaty love story. And love in Stalin's Russia is about as dangerous as it could be. Quite fittingly, one character thinks her world is like Edith Wharton's with a death penalty. Now I haven't read The Age of Innocence, but I absolutely loved the wittiness of it.

And oh the descriptions of Moscow evenings are gorgeous!

[Anaarecarti · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte care, în ciuda atmosferei familiare pentru noi, cititorii din România, te sufocă, care te acoperă de secrete, care ţese în jurul tău o plasă de teroare din care m-am scuturat cu mare greutate ducându-mă direct la Internet ca să verific eventuale rădăcini ruseşti ale lui Montefiore, căci mi se pare aproape imposibil ca “un străin” să scrie cu atâta aplomb despre o lume pe care a cunoscut-o doar din cărţi.

Recenzia completa pe https://anaarecarti.ro/main/intr-o-no...

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a History teacher I was always looking for books as good as this with which I could get my students to empathise with the victims of totalitarian regimes like Stalin's and really get under the radar and live and breathe historical drama. Historical fiction is good as this is really "faction" vividly told stories based upon true events, thoroughly researched and well documented by historians. The Great Patriotic War is over but celebrations don't count for much as Stalin's obsessional paranoia soon sees that the triumph counts for little in such a a cold and sterile political climate.

Stalin's paranoia is well documented but less well known are events like "the Children's Case" which did really happen and shows how so many innocent bystanders were incriminated by false accusations and ridiculous suspicious ' jobs worth' bureaucrats.

The story hinges on the fortunes of a group of 18-year-olds at School 801, an exclusive academy frequented by children of the Ministers of State in the Politburo and counting Stalin's own children amongst its alumni. The father of Marina Dorova, ('Minka'), Genrikh is the Minister of State Control while her mother, Dashka, is Minister of Health. Nikolai Blagov's father is a diplomat, Vladimir Titorenko's is in charge of Soviet aircraft production and Rosa Shako is the daughter of a Soviet airforce commander, and George Satinov's father, Hercules Satinov was one of the original Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace in 1917 and Stalin's longstanding comrade-in-arms and a full member of the politburo. The beautiful Serafima Romashkina is daughter of Sophia Zeitlin, the voluptuous Soviet movie star and one of Stalin's favourite scriptwriters and it is her ravishing beauty, and her romantic inclinations, that unwittingly set off a chain reaction that envelops all her class mates in accusations of conspiracy and political intrigue.

A new boy, and son of a former 'enemy of the people', Andrei Kurbsky enrols for the new term, his fees paid by the school Principal, and although not from a privileged background he has genuine academic interests and a passionate love of Pushkin which he shares with his Russian Literature teacher. The teenagers form an intellectual elite within the school and form their own so-called Fatal Romantics Club with restricted access to their own inner circle of friends.

The highlight of the regular poetry recitals is the dressing up and taking turns at playing out the death scene of a re-enactment of the duel between Eugene Onegin and the poet Lensky. A tragedy ensues involving these Kremlin children and so immediately Beria and the NKVD is involved as the case transfers to the highest officials within the Lubyanka. Gradually under interrogation and torture all the parents and all the children are involved in the depressingly sinister enquiries that follow.

The petty corrupt officials and the insecure political leaders are now involved in a stand off with their children held in custody, as hostages to fortune as private and public loyalties are tested and shattered. But even in this bleak political landscape the author shows love could flourish and secret romances develop despite the informers' attentions.

[Stephen Goldenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn’t realised Simon Sebag Montefiore had written any fiction until I picked up this novel. As his starting point, he uses a real life incident of two teenagers being found shot dead on a bridge in Moscow just after the Second World War. But these are no ordinary teenagers but the son and daughter of high ranking Kremlin officials as are many of their friends.
These friends are rounded up, imprisoned and vigorously interrogated. It is soon clear that the Soviet authorities are less interested in how the teenagers died and more interested in investigating a possible plot by the secret society they had formed to topple Stalin and overthrow the communist state. The interrogations are particularly brutal as they are children who start to panic about the dangers of incriminating themselves or their friends or their high profile parents.

[Peter Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I almost never read historical fiction. I much prefer my history books to be non-fictional, and I do worry that my poor befuddled mind might end up conflating fact and fiction. However Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of my favourite historians and I found myself being sucked in to reading this, his most recent historical novel.

What particularly intrigued me was a recent newspaper piece by Montefiore which, though clearly a PR piece for this book, set out the original real historical background to the story. It detailed how two children of elite Soviet figures had ended up shooting each other and sparking a spiral of typically Stalinist paranoid investigation and quasi purge – but this time the terror fell first on a set of school children.

Without giving away too much of the plot of this book, almost every character finds themselves falling into very dark times and no one gets a perfectly happy ending.

Stalin comes across as by far the most convincing and rounded character as you would expect for a writer who has produced two of the best histories of the man. However the completely invented politburo member Hercules Satinov does transform quickly from a stock character into a very sympathetic figure who, by the end, is a much more interesting character than the intended heroine Serafima. Indeed I became much more worried about the fate of Satinov’s 6 year old daughter Mariko than I did about Serafima.

In summary not only did it manage to sneak past my doubts about historical fiction, it has made me want to go back and read properly Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Court of the Red Tsar again to remind myself of the facts of the original story this was based on. Normally I would not do so, but on this case I thoroughly recommend anyone to read both the factual and the fictional accounts of this tale.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know that I have a small obsession with trying to understand life under communism (and particularly life in Russia under Stalin), but I thought this book was extremely well done. Montefiore does and excellent job of blending historical figures and activities (i.e. interrogation of children) with excellent fictional characters. He also blends in the power of love - - - - quite an accomplishment. Most of the books that I rate 5 stars are serious literature, and this one is not. Nonetheless, I thought it was excellent!

[Otto Benz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fictional story set around the "top families" of those working for Stalin in 1945. Two privileged children die in what appears to be a suicide pact on a bridge in Moscow. Stalin uses the event to test, intimidate and torture those close to him to keep them in line, including children. While fictional, the plot pulls together a series of genuine events. The torture and tactics used by Stalin to control his minions are also real. It's a scary, paranoid world where the adults and children all talk in whispers and code, in which everyone has a secret life and only the secret life is real. Rivetting story-telling by SS-G.

[Helena (Renchi King) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roman je pisan na potki istinitog dagađaja koji se dogodio u Moskvi,u Kremlju,1945.g nakon Staljinovog trijumfa nad nacističkom Njemačkom.
Radi se o ubojstvo djevojke i mladića,osamnaestgodišnjaka,usred Crvenog trga,na dan Pobjede,za vrijeme veličanstvene parade.
Od tog trenutka bezbrižnost i romantika tajnog kluba obožavatelja Puškina prestaje,a zamjenjuje ju strašna komunistička tortura i manipulacija činjenicama.
Sudbine mladih i njihovih roditelja zauvijek će biti promijenjene.Neki će biti osuđeni na robiju u Gulagu,a neki i pogubljeni.
Sve će to biti izvedeno "u rukavicama" i sa smiješkom i neprikosnovenom vjerom u dobrobit Partije.
Staljin,Berija,Žukov neke su od povijesnih ličnosti i vodećih likova koji se spominju u romanu,a njihova karakterizacija je vrlo precizna.

"Zlatna mladež" izmišljena je skupina privilegiranih učenika elitne moskovske škole,zanesena svojim izmišljenim načelima i igrama koji se temelje na likovima iz Puškinovih djela.
Puno tih izmišljenih situacija isječci su iz stvarnih arhiva nečijih života poratne Rusije.
Bajkovita,a istodobno i željezna slika Rusije uobličena Montefiorovim izuzetnim prikazom,pravi je užitak za čitanje!

[Lιƈíɳια · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Romance histórico, thriller e história de amor. Um livro sobre intimidade e romantismo na Rússia de Estaline. De leitura compulsiva." THE GUARDIAN

The Guardian não enganou, é tudo isso e ainda mais. É um romance perturbador passado no pós-guerra em Junho de 1945, em que nós (os leitores) ficamos reféns de toda esta história que tem como protagonistas a elite moscovita e as altas patentes tão próximas ao Estaline. Uma época em que ninguém estava a salvo, nem as crianças, num ambiente de denúncias e traições em que há sempre espaço para grandes paixões que perduram por décadas...
Tudo começa com um duplo assassinato de Rosa e Nikolai. Estamos perante um crime? Um pacto suicida?
Ou uma conspiração?
E assim todo o círculo de amigos e familiares destes dois jovens se vêem envolvidos num pesadelo que pode ter consequências nefastas para todos.

[Maureen DeLuca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a lot of trouble with this. Mostly the way it was written... character development.... There are many, many good reviews- might be worth a shot for those who 'think' this may be the book for you.

[Candi · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

[João Sá Nogueira Rodrigues · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quando iniciei este livro confesso que foi um pouco a "medo"... Tinha já lido "Os Romanov", também escritos por Simon Sebag Montefiori,e gostei de tal maneira desses livros e da forma de escrita do autor que pensei que ia ficar desiludido com "Uma noite de inverno"!Mas não!Este livro é qualquer coisa de muito bom!Um romance histórico a sério,baseado numa grande quantidade de factos históricos onde depois é inserida uma história sinceramente bem imaginada,planeada, escrita e contada!E consegue ser impossível de parar a leitura e de nos deixar suspensos em certos pontos da história, querendo saber o que vai acontecer a seguir e também nos fazendo viver as personagens e com elas! Para acabar,e como refere o "The Guardian": "De leitura compulsiva"!

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two teenagers have been shot and killed in an incident following Moscow's Victory Parade, on June 24, 1945. Both students are children of high ranking officials and attended the elite School 801 in Moscow, the same school Stalin's children attended. An investigation into the incident seems at first a wild goose chase but an incredible amount of pressure is placed on the dead children's siblings and friends and every private thought and casual comment becomes worthy of suspicion and scrutiny, including those that the children have overheard their parents whispering to each other.

This novel offers a glimpse of what life was like in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. The set-up of the novel is good, there are several mysteries that are alluded to that hold the reader's attention and the stories that unfold within it are moving. Unfortunately there's a lag in pacing that may cause some readers to lose interest. There's also a minimum of character development in the first half of the book that may make it difficult to sympathize with the characters.

While the theme of trust no one is repeated over and over, at first the sentiment seems unnecessarily cautious, paranoid even, until the truth of the political climate is revealed. Once you understand what the characters have lived through and been forced to deal with the story takes on new meaning. These aren't just fictional characters these stories are based on incidents that really happened and describe how the Soviet people were terrorized for decades.

I admit I had a difficult time staying focused on this story, the lag in pacing that I mentioned earlier almost caused me to abandon this novel but I'm really glad I kept reading. The author redeems his characters in the second half of the book when he reveals their true depth. This was not the fast paced suspenseful novel that I anticipated it to be, but it was very well done and worthy of reading.

Thank you to Harper Collins publishers and the Amazon Vine program for an advance reader's copy of this book given in exchange for an honest review.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author's attempt at fiction based on his detailed knowledge of the real history doesn't quite cut it for me.
I found his non-fiction writing style very dense and difficult (Having given up on both Young Stalin and Jerusalem.) In my view both could have done with extensive editing and removing the endless repetitive detail which did not add significantly to the books.

Having turned his hand to fictional history, on a subject about which he is hugely knowledgeable, I was pleased to find it an easy read. He evoked the terror of living under Stalin's rule well, even for the highest members of the Politburo. I question whether the level of luxurious living and conspicuous consumption by the elite could have been possible in Moscow of January 1945. However I do accept it as a (poor) literary device to set the scene of privilege against the terror to come.

The story rattles along at a fair pace, Part 1 setting the scene before Part 2 really succeeds in creating the atmosphere of terror. His depiction of 10 year old Senka's presence of mind, intelligence and cunning when being interrogated in the Lubyanka is really not credible, even for the most precocious of 10 year olds.

The affair between the hardened, callous Politburo member and one of the other senior party apparatchiks reads like a Mills & Boon novel. An affair yes, ripped bodices and puppy dog obsession NO!

On balance my view is that Sebag Montefiore should stay away from fiction, but use some his fiction style in writing his history books to make them more readable.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent stuff (as expected) and loosely related to Sashenka as many characters appear there too including one of the main characters here

emotional, page turner and brutal in turn alternating the absurdities of communism with its tragedies; kids denouncing parents and 6 year old children (of Stalin's immediate collaborators) jailed and interrogated by the secret police, while a 10 year old threatened with being jailed until 12 when he legally could be executed (and as it happens pretty much of the book stuff is inspired by reality with all the previous happened including 11 year olds kept in jail until they turned 12 and could be given the 9 gram treatment - ie shot in the back of the head), while teenagers' poetic musings taken as conspiracies against the state etc etc


a more detailed review soon

[Dem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow.

[Cosmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aventură, suspans, povești de iubire, Rusia stalinistă... must read!

[Jelena Milenković · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russia, 1945.
At first sight it's a story about the end of WWII, communism, Stalin's regime.
But soon you realize it's more about the people. Their personalities, hopes and sacrifices. And about that "bourgeois sentimentalism", that thing you call love (how that was considered to be heresy, how it was mocked and almost forbidden - only to be talked about in secrecy).
It's Stalin's Russia, after all. And it's inspired by a true story. Some dates and names were changed for the sake of the story, but you've a note from the author at the end of the novel where he explains who was inspiration for each of his main characters, what was changed, and what happened with them in real life.
At the begginig the author tells us a story of a group of 18-year-olds at School 801, the exclusive academy, where Stalin's children were once educated too.
We learn about those Kremlin children, about their powerful families and their lives. At first we get to know Andrei Kurbsky, an autsider, a son of an enemy of the people, who is overwhelmed by all that - the school itself, his clasmates, their arrival in chauffeur-driven cars etc. He has no money and he fears how he'll pay that prestigious school only to find out that everything has already been paid.
He wins the respect of his classmates by quoting Pushkin in their literature class, and because of that (among other things) he is soon invited to join the secret so-called Fatal Romantics Club, and soon - to play a Game - a re-enactment of the fictitious duel between Eugene Onegin and Lensky (or the duel between Pushkin and Dantes, sometimes).
But, something went wrong during the Game, the replicas were in fact the real guns, and two students end up dead.
Because of their status, the secret police has been called.
What started like a seemingly innocent children game soon becoms something much more serious, something that has come to be known as "the Children's Case".
The story is so intense, you get a feeling that you live that fear-filled life where you could trust a few or, more likely, no one, where one word said in the wrong way or to the wrong person meant 9 grams in the back of your head or one way ticket to Gulag, and that's if you're lucky and "they" don't take your family too.
"After all, Stalin believed that killing was the quickest, most efficient way to accelerate the progress of history."
"The Party never makes mistakes. Better to kill a hundred innocents than miss one enemy."

Now, imagine love between a high profile Russian teenage girl and an American diplomat. Or forbidden love between a married man and a married woman, both on high positions (when the woman's husband was on high position also).
Do you feel the tension?

[Allan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I never really warmed to this novel, set in the aftermath of WW2, the characters coming from the upper echelons of Russia's Communist establishment of the time.

Many of the incidents that are documented within the pages did apparently occur, and are included in a book that is well enough written and pretty fast paced, but I just didn't couldn't identify with the romanticism of 'The Game' that the children play before the incident that causes their incarceration, not could I believe the secret love affairs between protagonists that become apparent as the book progresses.

Another issue I had was the size of the cast of characters-when I saw the four page list of characters and their mini biographies at the start I thought that things could get a little complicated, and I did find myself having to refer back to this too many times over the course of the reading.

All in all, this one wasn't for me.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love vacations! I read over half of this book in the last four days and probably enjoyed it more because of this. It's been awhile since I was so captured by a book and wanted to read on to find out what happens next. Thanks Jessica and Kate for encouraging me to read this one for book club.

I would consider parts of this book historical fiction in that it took place in Russia at the end of World War II and include some real characters, like Stalin and some of the people who worked for him. Through the story, the author describes what life was like living and working under Stalin at that time. How something so small I can quickly get out of hand and over exaggerate. I found the story to be suspenseful at times, unsure of what was going to happen next. I enjoyed that and the love stories throughout the book. Although I did find myself tearing up at the end of the book on the plane. I would definitely recommend this one.