Memories of the Times We Left Behind!

 “Stalin’s Ghost”by Martin Cruz Smith, 2007

Arkady Renko perseveres through threats, injuries, official irritation, jealousy and Russian corruption in order to bring to justice two ex-military thugs.  They were part of a “Black Berets” unit in Chechnya which functioned as a death squad and later started liquidating their own members and anyone who knew of their activities.  All the while the Second World War, ghostly appearances of Joseph Stalin, memories of his own father and the Soviet period haunt the present. 

Like fervent Catholics who see the figure of Christ in a tortilla, elderly babushkas and hoaxers claim a living Stalin appeared in an underground train station in Moscow. This is part of a political stunt to aid a Patriot’s Party campaign, a stunt which has irritated the city police and power structure, the actual Communist Party and anyone who believes in factuality.  Arkady gets the assignment to track down the hoaxers and comes upon something else – a group of ex-Black Berets, one of whom is running for office under the Patriot Party banner, and who is also a detective in the Moscow police. 

The ‘ghostliness’ in the title refers to the continuing influence and nostalgia for the Soviet and Stalinist period in contemporary Russia.  This starts with Arkady’s own father, who was a ruthless Soviet Army general under Stalin and lives in Arkady’s memory.  His father’s funniest remark is how “Cossack Budyonny was the stupidest general in the Red Army.”  Arkady took away a distaste for firearms from his time with his father, though as a police inspector he is in dangerous situations all the time – and even seems to court them.

This scent of brutality hangs over everything, like many noir detective novels.  The Second World War, in which the Soviet Army basically crushed the Nazi war machine, is still the most resonant moment in the political climate.  One of the unique scenes in the book is of ‘diggers’ around Tver finding bodies from WWII in old battlefields. They dig them up and re-bury the Soviet soldiers properly, while others sell artifacts from the bodies.  German bones and bodies are discarded when found.  However, in this particular site, according to a forensic expert, the bodies are of Poles… perhaps executed by Russians. This is a problem for the Russian Patriots, who promoted these digs.

The threat of officially ignored ‘modern’ bodies is also present.  Accidents, drunkenness, falls and slips get the blame and quickly close the cases, as the detectives on those cases are suspiciously associated with the Black Berets too. Arkady however has a different, wider theory.

The book contrasts the glitzy, sushi-ridden capital of Moscow, overloaded with fancy cars and casinos, with the rundown smaller Russian villages and towns living in poverty and isolation.  Tver itself was once a holiday spa for the randy Catherine the Great, so the older past continues to impress itself upon locals. Chess is a continuing fascination in Russia for an elderly Communist grandmaster living in a basement warren and an odd sort of adopted son of Arkady’s.  It provides a theme throughout the book – perhaps because detective work is sometimes like chess.

All in all a moody, bloody, nostalgic picture of Russia in 2007.  

And I got it at the Library!

Prior blog reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Gorky Park” and “Polar Star” (both by Cruz Smith) or the words ‘detective,’ ‘Moscow’ or ‘Stalin.’

Kultur Kommissar / July 16, 2024