cover image Red Odyssey: A Journey Through the Soviet Republics

Red Odyssey: A Journey Through the Soviet Republics

Marat Akchurin. HarperCollins Publishers, $25 (406pp) ISBN 978-0-06-018335-6

In the spring of 1990 Akchurin, a former Soviet publisher and journalist, set out from Moscow on a 10,000-mile automobile trip across the non-Russian republics. Both an engrossing adventure and a savvy political commentary, this pungent, revelatory odyssey records an eruption of violence, ethnic conflict and repression in the crumbling empire. Born in Uzbekistan and now living in California, the author profiles a diverse gallery of people, from polygamous Turkmenistan nomads to besieged Kirghiz squatters to an easygoing Tadzhik guitar player whose infatuation with rock music brought tragedy to his clan. Akchurin contends that under Gorbachev the Soviet state reduced its citizens to slaves. He blames the civil war between Azerbaijan and Armenia largely on the Kremlin, which, he argues, manipulated nationalistic tendencies. This travelogue acerbically depicts the surreal nightmare of ordinary people struggling to survive. (May)