Product Description

Set against the backdrop of Moscow and Odessa in 1918 and 1919 these are the great anti-Bolshevik diaries of Ivan Bunin, the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Originally published in 1936 but banned during the Soviet period, these diaries are now translated into English for the first time by the distinguished Professor of Russian History at the University of Notre Dame, Thomas Gaiton Marullo. Bunin despised the Bolsheviks, whom he believed were ruining his beloved country. In these diaries he recreates the time of revolution and civil war with graphic and gripping immediacy. His uncompromising truths are jolting. His pain and suffering in watching the overthrow of his country by 'thugs' and the chaos of civil war, and his fears for the devastation of 'patriarchal' Russian culture, consumed his days and receive vivid expression in his diaries. An original and important contribution to our understanding of this tumultuous period by a master of prose and a perceptive social critic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #417649 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-17
• Original language: Russian
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

Bunin didn't call this book "Cursed Days" for nothing!
The previous customer review refers haughtily to the "hauteur" of Ivan Bunin, a "right-wing, upper class novelist." Say what? Bunin, a master of Russian prose, was understandably aghast as he watched the sudden, violent and senseless destruction of the glorious Russian culture. The reviewer sneers that "the folk, in Bunin's opinion, were ignorant, gullible, violent, dirty, and totally unfit to take a hand in government." Well, it sounds like Bunin got it just about right! Just look what the left-wing thugs ruling in the name of "the folk" did to Russia for the next 70 years.

Strangely, Soviet leaders decided that "Cursed Days" was unsuitable for consumption by "the folk." Hmmm... Talk about hauteur! Only in recent years was the publication of this amazing diary permitted in Bunin's homeland, and now - thanks to Thomas Gaiton Marullo's splendid translation - English-speaking readers can finally see that there were some people who weren't fooled in 1917. I just hope that modern readers will read Bunin's prophetic diary of those cursed days... and remember.

Neal McCabe

Picture of everyday confusion & fears of the 1917 revolution
This day-to-day diary of the confusion and fears that confronted those who lived through Russia's revolutions and their aftermaths in 1917-19 is well worth reading. However, it has its frustrations, especially a) the unremitting tone of hauteur by this right-wing, upper class novelist when confronted by the ascendant working class, and b) the editor's feeling that every rumor reported by Bunin, no matter how outlandish (St. Petersburg has fallen to the Germans; "The Red Army has been chased from Russia") requires his footnote assuring us that "The rumor was not true". Although both are very different in focus from this book, I much preferred Bulgakov's The White Guard, an autobiographically fictional account of his life during the same time period, with the same confusion, in Kiev, and Sukhanov's The Russian Revolution, 1917, an almost hour-by-hour description of the actual government takeovers in 1917.