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theamericansSo, fellow Americans fans, I am hoping some of you have also found yourself doing dorky research as a result of this show. :) The people who work on The Americans have clearly done shedloads, and I suspect I am not alone in finding some of the history and surrounding context a bit overwhelming at times. (Even as someone who really liked Russia before watching!) Plus, for fanfic purposes there's always more research that can be done. And so...
I was hoping we could pool resources. Do you have a favourite history book, documentary, fictional work, or other media that you think community members would enjoy as shedding light on the world of the show?
My contribution, which inspired this post because I love it so much, is Francis Spufford's book, Red Plenty. It's a bit hard to describe - it's both fiction and non-fiction, and it's trying to do something I've not seen any other book doing - but it's super readable.
The idea of Red Plenty is that it's an account of an idea: the idea that a planned economy is possible. It doesn't describe that idea in a dry, analytical way, though: instead it's talked about directly through fiction. It has fiction sections followed by clarification and analysis and references, and those fiction sections are there to give an idea how the idea worked as people thought it, felt it, experienced it.
And even though the USSR collapses, this book is written from the point of view of people who didn't know that, the view that things could have been different. That was actually what made me think of the show even more, because the show treats history the same sort of way. It sympathises with the Soviets in the same kind of way too. It's not saying the Soviets were right, and it's certainly not saying that the atrocities committed in the name of the Soviet ideal were okay, but it does a really good job of showing that the USSR was inhabited by people, and giving some idea what that means. It gives a good idea of why people might be fighting for that ideal.
It's also a really good description of it as an ideal. I don't know about anywhere else, but in England at least, the schools and regular media told me absolutely zip about Communist ideals. I'm a literal card-carrying leftie with some close Russian friends, and I still found this book really helpful in clarifying how I see the Russian characters and how they approach the world.
So, yeah, I basically think everyone in this community would probably like this book, haha. Have any of you read it? What did you think?
(Just for the record: I ran this by the mods and they said yes, so, thankyou Jae and Treon, for letting me ramble. :) )
I was hoping we could pool resources. Do you have a favourite history book, documentary, fictional work, or other media that you think community members would enjoy as shedding light on the world of the show?
My contribution, which inspired this post because I love it so much, is Francis Spufford's book, Red Plenty. It's a bit hard to describe - it's both fiction and non-fiction, and it's trying to do something I've not seen any other book doing - but it's super readable.
The idea of Red Plenty is that it's an account of an idea: the idea that a planned economy is possible. It doesn't describe that idea in a dry, analytical way, though: instead it's talked about directly through fiction. It has fiction sections followed by clarification and analysis and references, and those fiction sections are there to give an idea how the idea worked as people thought it, felt it, experienced it.
And even though the USSR collapses, this book is written from the point of view of people who didn't know that, the view that things could have been different. That was actually what made me think of the show even more, because the show treats history the same sort of way. It sympathises with the Soviets in the same kind of way too. It's not saying the Soviets were right, and it's certainly not saying that the atrocities committed in the name of the Soviet ideal were okay, but it does a really good job of showing that the USSR was inhabited by people, and giving some idea what that means. It gives a good idea of why people might be fighting for that ideal.
It's also a really good description of it as an ideal. I don't know about anywhere else, but in England at least, the schools and regular media told me absolutely zip about Communist ideals. I'm a literal card-carrying leftie with some close Russian friends, and I still found this book really helpful in clarifying how I see the Russian characters and how they approach the world.
So, yeah, I basically think everyone in this community would probably like this book, haha. Have any of you read it? What did you think?
(Just for the record: I ran this by the mods and they said yes, so, thankyou Jae and Treon, for letting me ramble. :) )
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Date: 2014-02-04 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-05 02:28 pm (UTC)I've read kind of a ridiculous number of books since becoming a fan of this show, myself, but most of it has been for a particular fannish writing purpose (e.g. stuff about KGB illegals training, stuff about spycraft, stuff about the U.S. civil rights movement, etc. etc.), so I don't know how interesting/useful any of it would be to anyone else. But I do think there are two more general ones that I can recommend (both academic books, but at least reasonably readable in both cases):
1. Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation by historian Donald Raleigh. I wouldn't recommend reading this from start to finish because it's kind of ridiculously long and pretty repetitive (as academic stuff often is), but it's a real treasure trove of different perspectives on what it was like to grow up in the Soviet Union. The interviewees in Raleigh's study are slightly younger than Philip and Elizabeth would be, but it's not hard to extrapolate from things they say about their parents or older siblings.
2. Russia's Carnival: The Smells, Sights, and Sounds of Transition. This is...a surprisingly wonderful little book, actually. It was written about 20 years ago and talks about the way the five human senses experienced the Soviet period differently from the post-Soviet period in the early 90s. I think it's especially useful for fanfiction writers because it can help you get at how different the U.S. would feel for someone like Philip or Elizabeth, but it's just kind of really enjoyable to read, too. I ended up buying a copy, I liked it so much.
-J
no subject
Date: 2014-02-05 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-05 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-06 06:24 pm (UTC)-J
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 02:36 pm (UTC)What I can give you, though, is a complete list of all the stuff I've read precisely enough to take notes on, plus the stuff I didn't take notes on but bought copies of. That's this list (plus the two I mentioned earlier):
Andrew, Christopher and Mitrokhin, Vasili. 1999. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB.
Lewis, Paul and Evans, Rob. 2013. Undercover: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police.
Kalugin, Oleg. 1994. The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West.
Kouzminov, Alexander. 2005. Biological espionage: special operations of the Soviet and Russian foreign intelligence services in the West.
Kuzichkin, Vladimir. 1990. Inside the KGB: Myth and Reality.
Ralph, James R. Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement.
West, Nigel. 1993. The Illegals: The Double Lives of the Cold War’s Most Secret Agents
Sorry it's not more!
-J
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 05:04 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 2014-02-09 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 09:34 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 2014-02-09 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 10:21 pm (UTC)-J
no subject
Date: 2014-02-05 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-05 09:00 pm (UTC)(And I love your icon. Scully ftw.)
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Date: 2014-02-05 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-06 11:26 pm (UTC)For some of the rest I go with 'being old enough to remember the 80s' :)
no subject
Date: 2014-02-12 11:22 pm (UTC)For a good basic overview of Russian/Soviet culture, The Russian's World by Generva Gerhart
Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes is a substantial sized book of culture/history that's regularly assigned for Russian culture classes/the Russian Studies capstone course at my university.
To understand Nina's fears of being discovered early in Season 1, Till My Tale is Told is an anthology of short anecdotes of the time in gulags by women.
I'd definitely recommend The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It was -the- cult book of the USSR and it is BRILLIANT. (Try to get the Burgin/O'Connor translation, it's not only in a better font, but it's a really good translation with notes at the end.)
This site has a lot on Stalingrad: http://www.stalingrad-info.com/ (When Claudia says that she fought in Stalingrad, it was pretty eye opening to her character because of how brutal the battle at Stalingrad was.)
You guys already have a fair amount on the KGB, but I wish I could suggest a bio on Brezhnev and then ones on Andropov and Chernenko since Brezhnev will likely die in season 2 (he died in November of 1982), sadly I have mostly biographies of Khrushchev and Gorbachev. However, a good fiction book recently released is "You Are One of Them" by Elliott Holt based on a letter written to Andropov by an American girl (Samantha Smith) and then her invitation and journey to the USSR. Andropov was a KGB agent - the chairman in fact. I'm anxious to see how they handle this and maybe the Samantha Smith letter.
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Date: 2014-02-20 12:42 am (UTC)-J
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Date: 2014-02-20 09:02 am (UTC)Also, anyone who wants to read about the gulags should read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I've only read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, but it's brilliant and horrifying. I am told Gulag Archipelago has a wider scope but is just as brilliant.
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Date: 2015-05-12 04:19 am (UTC)