Once Upon a Time in the Soviet Union

Title: Once Upon a Time in the Soviet Union

Author: Dominique Lapierre

Publisher: Full Circle, 2007 (First published 1957)

ISBN: 978-81-216-1247-0

Pages: 230

Dominique Lapierre is the well known author of many international best sellers like ‘Freedom at Midnight’, ‘The City of Joy’ and ‘It Was Five Past Midnight in Bhopal’. He also supports a major network of humanitarian actions in India and elsewhere. In recognition of his generous solidarity, he has been made ‘Citizen of Honour’ of Calcutta. This book is an account of a mysterious journey made by Lapierre and his colleague and photographer Jean-Pierre Pedrazzini and their wives to the erstwhile Soviet Union for three months in 1956. Though everyone was shocked at the idea when it was first presented to them, a little bit of influence at high places always greased the wheels in communist Russia. The author met and impressed Nikita Khrushchev into granting the team approval to make the tour. This was done in an SUV that travelled 13,000 km over tough Russian roads, challenging all odds. The author embarked on the journey on behalf of ‘Paris Match’, the periodical in which they worked as journalists.

What the readers get to know about the Soviet Union Lapierre and Pedrazzini saw is that the country was a vast prison house in which the dictatorial regime incarcerated its own citizens. Extensive barriers to personal movement, banning of foreign publications and media, unrelenting indoctrination of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism and wide-ranging surveillance by secret agencies numbed all shoots of creativity and enterprise among the people. The regime was not confident enough to let Lapierre and his friends roam the countryside unhindered. A guide, who was a Russian journalist and party member, accompanied them throughout, acting as interface between the author and the Russian Public with whom they interacted. Infrastructural wants were sorely visible everywhere they visited, but the public were on a steady indoctrination that their society was the happiest in the world. Lack of freedom was the gravest aspect. To mask the people about the lack of personal freedom, they were not allowed any foreign contact. Even those people the author interviewed were the privileged among the party. Then also, their living conditions were appalling. Even though the communists publicly decried any form of discrimination of man against man, such deprivations continued unabated in Soviet Union. Higher party and government functionaries, known as the Nomenklatura, were a privileged lot, akin to aristocracy, who had exclusive establishments open to them with public money while the ordinary citizens languished in interminable queues to obtain basic food stuffs.

Lapierre’s journey took place during the reign of Khrushchev, when Stalin’s inhuman tyranny was being exposed to the public eye. But the regime was as hard as ever. A pedestrian who kissed the small French flag pinned to the car was arrested, and sentenced to several years in a Siberian jail. The Russian guide who was a journalist was allowed to go to Paris at the final end of the journey, but his wife was held back in Russia, lest any impulse come over them to seek asylum in France! When Lapierre’s paper published his accounts of the travels, predictably the Russian authorities were offended at the poor treatment they obtained. And what did they do? Arrest the guide as if all of it was his fault and jail him for three years! If this was the atmosphere in Khrushchev’s era, one can only wonder how harsh and pathetic the situation was under Stalin, one of the most heinous mass murderers in modern history.

Having said all this, it must not be denied that Lapierre and his friends had no interest other than the sensational value associated with such a journey. Never for a moment had they turned out a flattering portrait of the Russian vastness they were traversing. As a journalist, what the author wanted from the whole episode was a scoop, and he got it aplenty. What better piece would get news value other than sending your guide to prison for no other crime than accompanying you? Even before his travel, the world knew about the repressive measures of the Soviet administration. Lapierre got permission to go on his fantastic trip from Khrushchev himself. So, in the end, the reader may reach the conclusion that the author had somewhat abused the hospitality provided by Russia. He must have been well aware of what might happen to his guide when his revealing essays hit newsstands, but he stayed the course. A good journalist, but a poor friend and companion!

The narrative is mediocre and interesting only for the exclusivity of the project. The author’s detachment from the adventures is clearly evident. Only when the party is detained by the military police does any emotion comes to the fore. The book contains brief glimpses of five families the team selected supposedly at random. Even the number is quite arbitrary and chosen to impart a semblance of originality. As is common with all of Lapierre’s narratives, the depth of research is only skin deep. The book also contains voluble appeals to donate to the charity works undertaken by the author. Altogether, it looks like a marketing initiative.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star