The Winter's Hero

The author of that magnificent Tolstoyan epic of 20th-century Russia, Generations of Winter, continues here the saga of the Gradov family as it endures the postwar privations, the increasingly manic suspicions of Stalin and the louche sexual brigandage of secret police chief Beria. Old Gradov, the surgeon, incurs Stalin's enmity when he tells him he must change his ways in the face of deteriorating health; when he also fails to condemn the Jewish doctors accused of trying to murder the dictator, his removal to a jail cell is inevitable. Meanwhile, his grandson Boris IV, typical of postwar Soviet youth, develops a passion for sports and becomes an ace motorcycle racer on an Air Force team led by Stalin's son, Sasha. When Beria kidnaps Boris's beautiful young cousin as a prelude to his customary ""courtship,"" that relationship comes in handy. Kirill, the politically ""safe"" member of the clan, is obviously destined to wind up in the (brilliantly evoked) penal colony of Kolyma, with his ever-loyal Stalinist wife Celia. As before, the tapestry is vast and richly colored, the personal and political skillfully blended, and the whole saga is suffused with a peculiar Russian blend of satire, heartfelt sentiment and surrealism. Like other contemporary Russian writers, Aksyonov seems compelled to try to penetrate into the souls of monsters like Stalin and Beria to see how and why they held his nation in thrall. Only the Dos Passos-like ""interludes"" of contemporary press reportage strike a too-easy sardonic note in this harrowing, transcendent panorama. (June)