Fed up with working for Time magazine in London; Steavenson moved to Georgia on a whim. Stories I Stole relates her time there in twenty vodka-fuelled episodes drawn from all over the country – tales of love; friendship and power cuts; of duelling (Georgian style); of horse races in the mountains; wars and refugees; broken hearts; fixed elections; drinking sessions and a room containing a thousand roses.Stories I Stole is a wonderful example of a writer tackling an unconventional subject with such wit; humanity and sheer literary verve that one is unable to imagine why one never learnt more about Georgia before. Stories I Stole is a magnificent first book: erudite; engaged; candid and blissfully poetic. PROLOGUE: The author visits a bizarre “Stalin theme park†culminating in the eery viewing of Stalin’s death maskSHASHLIK; TAMADA; SUPRAThe author visits Khaketi; where she is introduced to the tamada culture of “exaggerated hospitality; a point-of-honour hospitality.†During a marathon toasting session at dinner she realizes “It is a kind of aggression. When they did not know you well; they filled your glass and filled it again and carefully watched how you drank itÂ… This was the Georgian way; friend or enemy with nothing in between. History was lost in tradition; drinking a way of remembering and forgetting at the same time.â€SHUKIThe frustration of living with unpredictable power and water supplies during extremely cold winters; the heat and/or electricity is often turned off due to reasons ranging from sabotage; corruption; non-payment; theft; “black clan economics;†and incompetence. Nevertheless this leads to a particular happiness when the light does come on. The author discovers the heavenly comfort of public baths. “Times were difficult; people had very little money. A lot of men were unemployed and all the old good professional jobs; teachers; nurses; police; engineers; were state jobs and paid less than $50 a monthÂ… Half Tbilisi owed the other half money.â€ETHNIC CLEANSINGThe author visits Abkhazia; where a refugee has asked her to find the apartment that war caused him to flee. She finds a woman living there who is a refugee herself—after her own house was burned down; she discovered the fully furnished house in Abkhazia shortly after it was vacated; and has been living there ever since; proudly tending the garden of the previous occupant.WHO ARE THE ABKHAZOn the beach with Shalva; whom she suspects is “Abkhaz KGB.†He feeds her the party line about the Abkhaz occupation and she feels like screaming truths at him. “You won the war. You threw out all the Georgians. You have your homeland to yourselves (apart from the Armenian villages and the pockets of Russians) and what is this place? It’s a black hole. There are barely any cars; barely any petrol; no factories; nothing works; no private businesses; a curfew; no salaries; barely any pensions; a shell of a university; a terrible hospital; etc. etc.†But Shalva doubts that the West is paradise: “Here we have everything we need. The land is fertile.â€THE DUELThe story of Dato and Aleko—they get into a car wreck and Dato’s face is horribly scarred. Aleko steals Dato’s wife and Dato challenges him to a fight. When Aleko beats Dato up; Dato pulls a gun and shoots the man until he is almost paralyzed. Dato; meanwhile; lives the rest of his life with his mother; hooked on heroin. “Not really Pushkin is it?â€LARGE ABANDONED OBJECTSThe author drives to Abkhazia with several journalists to see incumbent Ardzinba win the presidential election (the journalists rename it the “presidential farce;†since Ardzinba is the only one running. The author marvels over the abandoned relics of the USSR she sees along the roadside—rusting tractors; bits of pipline; lines of coal cars shunted and left along a rail line; etc. For her birthday; the author goes to Gorbachev’s dacha; a palatial house he built but never got to inhabit because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The house is a metaphor for the USSR: “impressive only for its sheer size but actually full of empty space and tat.â€
#2348954 in Books Johns Hopkins University Press 2008-08-05Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x 1.02 x 6.00l; 1.20 #File Name: 080189073X296 pages
Review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Russian Eurasianism is often seen as an attempt to build ...By J. D MorrowRussian Eurasianism is often seen as an attempt to build a new Tsarist/Soviet empire. But it is more complex than that. Founded in the ashes of Tsarist thought; Russian Eurasianism became almost a utopian dream to obfuscate the failures of the Whites.Laruelle follows the three main Russian Eurasianist. The first two are from the Soviet era - Gumilev and Panarin. The last is the modern alt-Right Aleksandr Dugin. Each of these theorists have slightly different takes on what Eurasianism is and its purpose. It might be a civilization led by ethnic Russians or a civilization led by the Russian nationals or it might be a civilization with a common ethnos.Throughout; each of these (and the earlier therorists) appears to try to create a "non-European" ideal where Russia can reject both the Russia of the contemporary and the European ideals - whether Marxist or liberal.She finishes with a chapter on non-Russian Eurasianism. While interesting; I find it a tack on.12 of 13 people found the following review helpful. Excellent overview of post-Soviet "neo-Eurasianism"By Andreas UmlandThe present book is; perhaps; Laruelle's most important contribution among her many recent publications as she combines here deep knowledge of the precursors; representatives and followers of classical Eurasianism with an excellent understanding of post-Soviet politics and thought. The book first discusses the issue of whether Eurasianism is marginal or a mainstream phenomenon. It then deals with the early Eurasianists of the 1920s and 1930s before devoting special chapters to Lev Gumilev; Aleksandr Panarin and Aleksandr Dugin. Two further chapters deal with non-Russian neo-Eurasianism in Russia; Kazakhstan and Turkey. The conclusions interpret the evolution of Eurasianist ideas from hermeneutic and comparative viewpoints. This book will probably acquire the status of seminal reading with Russian nationalism studies. It displays the author's enormous factual knowledge and her firm grip of the peculiarities of current Russian discourse. I found every page of this monograph worth reading; and can recommend it whole-heartedly as a reliable and engaging introduction to the complicated issue of Eurasianist nationalism. Last but not least; it should be mentioned that the book is a translation from French and that it has greatly benefited from having Mischa Gabowitsch as its translator. As this text expresses well; Gabowitsch is not only a native-like speaker of both French and English; but himself a researcher of Russian nationalism with an exceptionally profound understanding of the substance of the Laruelle's argument.It is only against the back-ground of such expressive enthusiasm that I dare to make one critical remark concerning this and some previous interpretations of the Dugin phenomenon by Laruelle. Aleksandr Dugin is the currently most relevant representative of "neo-Eurasianism" among the various political thinkers and actors introduced by Laruelle here. He seems to have more or less far-reaching ties within both the Russian political elite; including the Presidential Administration; and civil society; not the least academia. In light of the increasing presence of Dugin in Russian public life; Laruelle might have been less determined when; for instance; at one point asserting that his ideas "cannot be equated with fascism if that is understood to designate the contemporary racist exreme right - a designation that is moreover; historically and conceptually incorrect" (p. 132). Here Laruelle enters a decades-long international debate about the nature of generic fascism; and; if one acknowledges the usefulness of that concept; the way it should be defined and interpreted. Laruelle seems neither familiar with that literature nor particularly interested in the; partly; heated debates around the issue of Dugin's fascism of students like Leonid Luks; Alexander Yanov; Stephen D. Shenfield; Alan Ingram; John B. Dunlop; Roger D. Griffin; Walter Laqueur; A. James Gregor; Anton Shekhovtsov or myself. Thus; it would have been preferable if she had either avoided the topic; or presented the relevant comparativists' arguments for and against a classification of Dugin as a fascist. With almost no reference to relevant explorations of generic fascism and without any discussion of its previous applications to Russia; Laruelle's various statements on that topic look empty; and are; at points; self-contradictory.
