Monday, April 21, 2008

The Whisperers

I've just started a book called "The Whisperers" by Orlando Figes. Figes is a brilliant writer and a good historian. Those two do not always go hand in hand, sadly, so it is always a pleasure to read something that is 1) well researched 2)thoroughly analysed and coherently organised and 3) interestingly written.


From a historiograhpical point of view, it is a microhistory but then over a relatively long period of time (30 years) and collected from a very large amount of sources. So perhaps a "microhistoire totale", a history of the ordinary people on a large scale.


The topic itself is of course also very intriguing and very little researched in Western history-writing. There is plenty of work already completed on the topic of the life and mentality of ordinary people under a long-lasting totalitarian regime, but most of that has been done in the ex-soviet states. There are two issues with that: 1)Language 2)credibility/point of reference. These researches usually only consider the rather small scope of specific (nationality) groups and usually concentrate on a shorter period of time.

I'll write something longer once I've read it. Just thought to share some initial thoughts based on the first few chapters...