Experimental Blog #24

Comments on 2 books

"A Mountain of Crumbs" - A Memoir by Elena Gorokhova

Elena Gorokhova's book comes recommended by 10 accomplished authors{counting Sergei Krushchev}. It provides many, both first and second hand, vivid and often charming descriptions of Russian-Soviet life. I also found the extensive comments, or reviews, of Russian classical authors to be very educational.
Although I could not really believe the author remembered her own childhood and young adult dreams of long ago as well as she describes, it didn't seem to matter very much.
The title, "A Mountain of Crumbs", comes from a second hand description of coping with the extreme scarcity of food in the early years of the Soviet Union, but it seems that Elena Gorokhova uses it to describe her own experience and opinion of the artificiality and pretending of official Soviet life. But how basically different was that life, or society, from other similar places or times?


"The Relentless Revolution - A History of Capitalism" by Joyce Appleby

This book is described as "a crowning achievement" and a "capstone to a distinguished career" and in other glowing terms by some of the author's equally distinguished colleagues. It certainly was very educational and clarifying on many pages, but on other pages the language and style seemed, perhaps, supercilious or obfuscating or, at least somewhat "trendy" or "closed to outsiders".
Since "Capitalism" is not really a creed as "Communism" or "Marxism" are, or were, perhaps even the basic thesis is debatable. That is, does "Capitalism" really have a history? Or, at least, what kind of history can "Capitalism" have outside the minds of a historically recent "specialized few"?
At least many people, both liberals and conservatives, apparently agree that since the end of the Soviet Union{if not actually several years earlier} we are living in a "new", or different era.