Redemption

Russian Library

by Friedrich Gorenstein, Andrew Bromfield (Translator), Emil Draitser (Introduction)

It is New Year's Eve 1945 in a small Soviet town not long liberated from German occupation. Sashenka, a headstrong and self-centered teenage girl, resents her mother for taking a lover after her father's death in the war, and denounces her to the authorities for the petty theft that keeps them from going hungry. When she meets a Jewish lieutenant who has returned to bury his family, betrayed and murdered by their neighbors during the occupation, both must come to terms with the trauma that surrounds them as their relationship deepens.

Friedrich Gorenstein's Redemption is a stark and powerful portrait of humanity caught up in Stalin's police state in the aftermath of the war and the Holocaust. In this short novel, written in 1967 but unpublished for many years, Gorenstein effortlessly combines the concrete details of daily life in this devastated society with witness testimonies to the mass murder of Jews. He gives a realistic account of postwar Soviet suffering though nuanced psychological portraits of people confronted with harsh choices and a coming-of-age story underscored by the deep involvement of sexuality and violence. Interspersed are flights of philosophical consideration of the relationship between Christians and Jews, love and suffering, justice and forgiveness. A major addition to the canon of literature bearing witness to the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, Redemption is an important reckoning with anti-Semitism and Stalinist repression from a significant Soviet Jewish voice.

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Historical Fiction, Russian Literature, Classics, Historical, World War II

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Friedrich Naumovich Gorenstein (Russian: Фридрих Наумович Горенштейн), or Fridrikh Gorenshtein (1932–2002) was a Russian author and screenwriter. His works primarily deal with Stalinism, anti-Semitism, and the philosophical-religious view of a peaceful coexistence between Jews and Christians.
Gorenstein was born in 1932 to Jewish intellectuals in an orphanage. His father, a political economist, died under Stalinist anti-Semitic cleansings, maintained by the intelligence State Political Directorate (GPU). He was arrested and exiled to a gulag, where he was shot down in 1935 after trying to escape. His mother, an educator, died of tuberculosis in 1943 in a hospital in Orenburg. After her death, Gorenstein was raised by relatives in Ukraine who brought him with them to the Caucasus during the war.
Following World War II, Gorenstein struggled as an unskilled worker, until Nikita Krushchev's De-Stalinization allowed him to return to Kiev. He studied mining in Dnipropetrovsk in the 1950s and worked as a miner and mining engineer in the Ural Mountains and Ukraine.
Gorenstein moved to Moscow in 1962 to complete his scenarist course at the State Film University. He began writing screenplays to support himself. Most of his adaptions were censored, but he managed to finish his works, including writing the script for the 1972 science fiction film Solaris, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. He also wrote books, but none were published except "Дом с башенкой" (The House with the Tower) (1964).
In 1977 Gorenstein released his works through foreign emigration presses to bypass censorship. That and his membership in the forbidden writers union and Almanach Metropol by Vasily Aksyonov got him in trouble with the Soviet government. He received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service and emigrated to Berlin in 1979, working there as a writer until his death in 2002. His novel Place was nominated for the 1992 Russian Booker Prize.
In 1995 he was a member of the jury at the 19th Moscow International Film Festival.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poverty and hunger… It’s the first New Year after the war… She is so young… Her natural desires are awakening… She wants love…

Sashenka put her hands on her thighs and squeezed them with her fingers, feeling a sweet, ticklish sensation. Then she ran her palms under her armpits, touched her erect, springy nipples and quietly laughed at the sudden surge of happiness. She put on a pink silk bra and lacy panties, took a cool, sleek slip that smelled of perfume and held it against her face, then dived into the slip, shuddering at the tender touches of the silk against her skin, glanced at her little shoulder with a little sky-blue ribbon stretched over it, and rubbed her cheek against the ribbon. All these clothes had once belonged to her mother, but now they fitted Sashenka perfectly.

She is so inexperienced… She dislikes the world she lives in… She hates people surrounding her… She wishes justice… So she cruelly betrays her mother…
Redemption is a gloomy story… It is very disturbing and at times even frightening… It is a book of many dire betrayals…

The desire to be loved is inherent in everyone, but there are strong, high-strung, sensitive natures, in whom the longing for someone else’s love is so great that they lose the ability to love anyone themselves, and in order to constantly feel the strength of the other person’s love for them, they make that loving person suffer. These unfortunates don’t become like this in a single instant, all of a sudden – one vivid example of such a character is Judas, the Hebrew youth who was misunderstood or maligned by the four evangelists – Christ’s most handsome, most passionate, and most beloved disciple.

But the day of reckoning comes… And everyone must pay… And many pay in full measure…

What happens to people, why they act one way and not another toward someone else, is still hard to understand after all, no matter how well it might all have been studied, how primitively easy it is to explain and how thoroughly the answer has been learned. There is always a little “but” about liking and disliking, running throughout that infinitely unclear world that is called human relationships, in a world full of fleeting mirages and chain reactions, in a world where living organs – blood, lymph, nerve fibers, seminal fluid, bile – interact in a mysterious sequence with the phenomena of the earth’s magnetism, the sun’s emanations, and the phases of the moon. The human ocean is the most amazing, fathomless, and unknowable.

Life is hard and full of sorrows but it goes on and there is hope.

[Tania Lukyniuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Искупление» - невероятно жестокая книга. Жестокая не потому, что послевоенное время, голод, рвань. Жестокая не потому, что о страшных бессмысленных поступках людей рядом с нами. Жестокая потому, что без экивоков, эвфемизмов, без дымки приличия и загадочности оголена перед нами женская душа.

Она представлена в образе Сашеньки – очаровательной и отвратительной, злобной и сочувствующей, беспощадной и милосердной. С 180-градусными разворотами настроения, звериной ненавистью, глухотой ко всему кроме себя, фальшивостью и бесспорной привлекательностью. Она любит, она предаёт, она вызывает отвращение и, одновременно, узнавание, страшное по своей сути.

Горенштейн – мастер детали, трогательного нюанса, сильной эмоции. Выжать слезу, добиться сочувствия, возненавидеть – на 200 страницах книги ему удается несколько раз. От Бунина до Достоевского один шаг или, в случае «Искупления» - одна страница.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is an incredible cultural gap between this book and an American reader. The raw, desperate existence of Russian civilians attempting to heal and create some sort of a new life post-WWII is the most poignant and graspable element. The long philosophical passages are cerebral and often dry. I suspect that, in the original Russian text, there may be a more fluid connection between these passages and the overall climate of the story in the spots where they occur. In English, they aren’t terribly effective.

Overall, Redemption is at least a reminder to an American reader that for many, the War didn’t end with ticker tape parades and a newfound time of prosperity and high national morale. I can see this book in college and university classrooms and libraries as well as on the home shelves of historians and World Literature collectors. For a specific strata of the reading community, it is certainly a worthwhile read.

[Laetitia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find it very hard to rate this one, and I think I might have to revisit the book sometime. There was a lot of good stuff; the portrayal of the grim, cold poverty of the small postwar town, of Sashenka's (unhinged, helpless) anger, the conflict(s). I particularly liked the first few chapters, their juxtaposition of the grey, dull, harsh reality, and Sashenka's feelings of sexual awakening. The latter, taking into account that Gorenshteyn is a male author, was partly well-written and convincing (not only teenage boys feel lust!), and partly... not sure (recurring 'slightly tense nipples' - like, I get it, but yeah I don't know). Some major elements of the story - Sashenka's betrayal and its somewhat random unfolding - seemed a bit flat, might have been worked out more. But mainly, I just felt like a lot of important parts just went over my head; especially the second part contains some philosophical dialogues and reflections that I felt were of importance for another, more universal or 'macro-level', layer in the story, but I just couldn't focus on (understanding) them. And I'm not overly enthusiastic about the ending. But I do consider this an interesting and valuable read; it touches upon the ways WWII, and the Holocaust in particular, played out differently in this part of Europe, and how the aftermath of the war wasn't light and liberating; on the contrary. Enough to think about anyway.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Friedrich Gorenstein was a Soviet Jewish writer who fell foul of the Soviet censors for his refusal to toe the party line, and eventually fled to Berlin where he could at last publish his novels. This new translation of Redemption into English comes 50 years after it was written and opens up a particular time and place in the Ukraine. The book opens on New Years’ Eve 1946. The war is over and the Germans have at last been ousted from the small Ukrainian town which they had occupied. But conditions are still harsh, with food and accommodation scarce, and oppression and persecution from the Soviet authorities in full swing. Sashenka is an angry and resentful 16-year-old, who attacks her mother for forging a new relationship instead of being faithful to her husband’s memory for his service to the motherland in the war. In a fit of pique she denounces her mother for stealing leftover food from where she works – even though this food was for Sashenka herself. The parallels with the case of Pavel Morozov would be obvious to any Russian. In 1932 Morozov, a 13-year-old boy, denounced his father and thus became a Soviet hero. But Sashenka doesn’t denounce her mother for ideological reasons – she acts out of teenage spite. She’s a particularly unpleasant girl, but seems to be approaching some sort of redemption when she falls in love with a Jewish officer who has been tasked with disinterring the bodies of his family, killed by their neighbours, in order to give them a decent burial. The novel’s particular historical interest lies in its exploration of the collaboration between the Ukrainian and the Nazis and their willingness to help with the rounding-up and slaughter of the local Jews – apparently without any real motive. It’s a look into the heart of darkness and the evil, Gorenstein suggests, that is inherent in the human psyche. There are many biblical references and some lengthy and discursive philosophical passages in the book (shades of Dostoevsky) that slow down the narrative and for me added nothing, but I was invested in the novel overall and eager to find out how it all works out. Perhaps the philosophical passages needed more attention than I felt inclined to give them. It’s a disturbing and bleak book, with very little hope, although Gorenstein might be suggesting there is some by his ending (which I won’t reveal). I found the atmosphere of this immediate post-war period evocatively and vividly portrayed, and how the consequences of the wartime atrocities are going to linger for a long time particularly depressing. This is a book for anyone interested in Russian literature, but perhaps not so much the general reader. The excellent introduction I found very helpful and pretty essential reading. Anyone coming cold to the book would probably find it problematic on many levels. I’m very happy to have discovered it, though, and grateful, yet again, to NetGalley.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Redemption by Friedrich Gorenstein and translated by Andrew Bromfield is a novel of life after the WWII in the soviet Union. Gorenstein was born in Kiev, was a Soviet Jewish writer and screenwriter who collaborated with Andrei Tarkovsky on Solaris (1972), among other works. His father was arrested during Stalin’s purges and later shot. Unable to publish in the Soviet Union, Gorenstein emigrated to Berlin, where he lived until his death. Bromfield is an acclaimed translator of contemporary Russian writers such as Victor Pelevin and Boris Akunin. He has also translated Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

This is a book where the introduction is important to understanding the the story. Granted, many people know about the Famine in 1946, but there is more going on the book. There play on Stalin's name and the Soviet denial or rather ignorance of the holocaust. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact commonly called the Nazi-Soviet Pact aligned the Soviets with the and their Nazi's death camps. The Soviet government chose to ignore the reality of their actions. Also, the pact caused the Soviet Union to be caught off guard for the German invasion. The advancing Germans showed no mercy to Soviet Jews in their path.

Sashenka is not a very likable character. She is selfish and vengeful (against her mother). The war most certainly took a toll on her but she lets her vanity guide her. Her father was killed in the war and she mentions that often seemingly more for others to feel sorry for her loss. She shows no loyalty to the Soviet government but only to herself. So, it is not a story by a misguided patriot. The war is over and things are tough for everyone and now there is grisly work to be done. An interesting book that for obvious reasons was not published in the Soviet Union even after Khrushchev denounced Stalin. A well written and haunting book that reflects the feelings in Soviet Union after the war and life under Stalin's rule.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Via my book blog at https://cavebookreviews.blogspot.com/

Mostly, I think about the Holocaust as it affected German and Polish people who died because of their religion, their profession as intellectuals or their refusal to pay homage to Hitler. Redemption is a novel that educated my general knowledge of what happened in Stalinist Russia after the war when the Germans left.

Life continued to be a challenge without any organized government administration, a lack of food, no jobs, and people maintaining distrust of Jews and in general, each other. The lead character of this novel written in 1967, by Friedrich Gorenstein a Soviet Jew who eventually lived in exile in Berlin is Sashenko. Sasha is resentful of everyone, especially her mother. She bitterly resents anyone who has one morsel more of a better life than she. Sasha's hatred symbolizes the continuing misery of life in Stalin's Russia.

The poverty described is heartbreaking as is the lack of medical care and any authority who can help a person even buy a train ticket to exit from the hell the population continues to endure. Redemption is an essential novel for all time, and perhaps, particularly striking in today's world of lack of tolerance for anyone different than ourselves.

I received an advanced copy of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Friedrich Gorenstein was a Russian screenwriter who emigrated to Berlin during the Cold War era, and wrote the screenplay for Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. Gorenstein was also a novelist, and considered fiction his most important work although he didn't seek publication until late in life for political reasons. 'Redemption' begins in 1945, when a small Ukrainian town is liberated from Nazi occupation. Sashenka, the novel's protagonist, has lost her father to war and blames her mother, reporting her to the authorities for stealing food. Bitter and resentful, Sashenka is an unlikely heroine; but amid so much poverty and suffering, how could she be otherwise? When Sashenka falls in love with a Jewish lieutenant whose entire family has been slain by a neighbourhood killer, she begins her own path to redemption. Gorenstein's lengthy diatribes on the nature of good and evil are reminiscent of Dostoevsky. At turns magical, dreamlike and horrific, this is a difficult novel to follow, although for many Russians who lived through World War II - Gorenstein among them - the narrative may be all too real.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Tr. Andrew Bromfield. Parts of this I really loved, other parts (luckily the minority) I found myself almost skimming. The base storyline of Sashenka is hugely readable (as horrific teens go she is up there), and the setting and context incredibly interesting for anyone with an interest in the USSR. Where it lost me was in the long tracts of philosophy, including one in which the sixteen year old Sashenka manages to have an intense philosophical conversation with a university lecturer (I think) in one of her dreams.. It was highly reminiscent of eighteenth century authors like Dostoevsky but, although I’m sure it has plenty of merit, sadly I don’t have too much inclination towards spending the time needed to understand it these days! However even if you are happy to be superficial like me and skip the philosophical parts it’s still a intriguing, well written and thought provoking story and well worth a read.

[Anatoly Bezrukov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Тяжелая проза, не имевшая шансов быть опубликованной в СССР: про до- и послевоенные годы в Украине, про неприглядный быт, про коллаборационизм, про репрессии и Холокост.

"Искупление" - история про 16-летнюю Сашку, живущую с ненавидимой нищей матерью, ворующей еду в столовй и приютившей у себя двух нищих. Отец погиб на фронте. Вокруг первая послевоенная зима в городке (видимо, Бердичеве), пережившем оккупацию. И все ужасы, бывшие и оставшиеся, могут быть искуплены лишь любовью, рождающей новую жизнь.

"Попутчики" - повесть о жизни некоего Чубинца, случайно встреченного автором в поезде. Коллективизация и Голодомор, жизнь под немцами и после них.

Написано хорошо, но очень уж беспросветно.
"Дом с башенкой" - первый рассказ Горенштейна, и единственный - опубликованный в СССР (в оттепельной "Юности"). Мальчик, едущий с матерью в поезде, внезапно оказывается один - мать умирает в дороге.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in immediate post-WW2 Soviet Union Ukraine, this work is full of references that Soviet authorities would not have wanted known, so it is no surprise that this work (like most of Gorenstein's works) was never published in the Soviet Union. His characters reflect collaboration with Nazi authorities, the Holodomor, killings of Jews and Romani/Sinti by their neighbors, "anti-social" behavior, the ease and selfish reasons to denounce someone, and so on--making this book striking in its content. Quite readable, other than the occasional philosophic musings toward the end.

[Eithan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gorenstein has portrayed the world of a very egoistic teenage girl who he only calls by the 'pet name' Sashenka. That little self centered girl only cares about herself, managed to completely absorb the death of her father in the war so everyone now owes her something because of it etc etc.
Though the writing is well done the annoying theme and the lack of culmination or some summary damages the book greatly. Other authors wrote about the same issues way better,

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a fucking mess of a book: half novel, half ponderous and inscrutable philosophical treatise. That could be a description of most of the books I read and love, but the two halves refuse to blend into a cohesive whole, the characters are impenetrable and fly into hysterics over the smallest thing, none of it works.

[❄️BooksofRadiance❄️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half was fantastic. The second half is where it utterly lost me.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Redemption" focuses on the aftermath of WWII in Russia. While I was intrigued by the premise and some of the themes, the writing style just wasn't for me and the characters didn't really seem to get any relatable growth.

[Tatjana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Горенштейн - очень хороший писатель, да. И, к сожалению, не очень известный широкой публике. Спасибо "Артдокфесту" и "Новой газете" за показ фильма о нем.
"Искупление" - это еще одна книга о тоталитаризме, об обыкновенности зла. Темы подросткового эгоизма, пробуждения сексуальности и сексуальность, такие узнаваемые и понятные, деформируются под воздействием внешних факторов. В какой-то момент приходит понимание, что все повествование на самом деле "не о том", и главное в этой достоевщине - вопрос жертв и палачей, любви и страдания.
И еще, несмотря на определенную типизацию рассказа о советском послевоенном бытии, "Искупление" непривычно этнично. Личностная попытка объяснить существование зла в мире отсылает читателя к Библии, но является талмудисткой по своей сути. Возможно, именно это несколько чужеродное для повествования философствование, да и толстовщина финальной сцены материнства объясняет мою оценку этой замечательной книги.

[Zach]

"Great grief, like great love, should be like a dream...A man disappears together with his life, andwhat's left is the most terrible mockery of him: the dead body...Remember what it says in one of the wise books: 'Leave the dead to bury their dead.'"

A masterful novel that draws a straight line from the 17th Century Russia with no literature or art to Dostoevsky to Soviet Russia to Putin's Russia. The constant refrain from the novel's central character--a scared and very angry teenager called Sashenka--"My father died for the motherland...he fought...he gave his life" goes to the heart of the novel's main question: what can be done when so much has been lost and the avenues for redemption are all closed off by the nightmares of bureaucracy and the endless parade of people left behind by the dead?

Brings to mind the best of Dostoevsky.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to read, even if you consider yourself braced for historical fiction based on the Holocaust. This book sheds light on a subject many avoid: just because the war ended in September 1945, all wasn’t fair, humane, or documented for years to come in many of the countries affected by the war.
Russia was one of these countries. It suffered greatly under Stalin’s police state after the war. Food, shelter and human rights were no more honored than during the height of the Jewish extermination of previous years. In power until his death in 1953, there are volumes of horror stories of those who endured the anti-Semitic dictatorship and major famine throughout.
Redemption tells the story of Sashenka, a spoiled, self-centered teenage girl who, during a fit of anger, reports her mother for stealing morsels of food, even though her mother was doing this for Sashenka’s own health and sake. Surrounded by cruelty, evil, sadness, and desperation, Sashenka must face her own demons while trying to understand how to feel care, love and devotion in a world where none exists. Somewhat difficult to read, this book exposes the emotions of those who survive war and healing. Similar to the emotions of the child who dissected the frog in school: cruel, hypnotic, engrossing, challenging, and now, pointless. That’s a pretty crappy comparison, but I’ve lived a comfortable life in comparison to this author and the people he brings back to life in his works.
This book could easily be based on fact and actual events, and in many ways, I feel sure that it is. Redemption was written in 1967 but never published. Friedrich Gorenstein had to immigrate to Berlin before his works could be published. He knew firsthand the horrors of the Stalinist dictatorship, having lost his father to execution ordered and conducted under Stalin’s leadership.
(I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you to Columbia University Press for making it available.)