Waking the Tempests: Ordinary Life in the New Russia

An enthralling portrait of how Russians are coping with new freedoms and perils, this report by Los Angeles Times national correspondent Randolph is based on her extensive travels in the former Soviet Union as Washington Post correspondent (1991-1993) and as an independent observer through 1995. Randolph toured unsanitary, under-equipped hospitals, visited a sex clinic and a privately run day-care center, attended a murder trial and interviewed struggling couples, gay activists, Russian Orthodox Christians and young people indifferent to the risks of AIDS and venereal disease. She depicts a schizoid society rapidly polarizing into rich and poor, where outmoded communal values are being replaced by opportunistic individualism. Women face increasing physical abuse at home, and in the workplace they endure pay discrimination and open hostility. Abysmally high numbers of Russian women die in childbirth, and get secret abortions-often without anesthetic. Medical care for the average person is haphazard. The former Soviet Union, in Randolph's affective mosaic, is a heavily polluted land roiling with crime, homelessness, corruption; rife with sexual ignorance and violent homophobic hatred; where a small entrepreneurial class of old communist bureaucrats, young go-getters and mafia thugs vie for control of an anarchic free market. (June)