ORLANDO

Private Life in Stalin’s Russia: family stories and archives.

Talk by Orlando Figes 31^st January 2005

At 7-25 I looked at my watch. The hall was almost full, and people were crowding at the door. A slight man wandered in clutching a bottle of coke, and I thought, “The yobs are here!” This however, turned out to be our speaker, who moved over to the lectern, and gestured to the crowds, most of whom looked like teenagers, but turned out to be undergraduates, to occupy the floor by his side. He seemed to revel in the crush. Marion was isolated at the door, desperately trying to stem the tide. Those of us who had come early grinned smugly at each other. (Figes, by the way, has an ‘i’ pronounced like the ‘y’ in ‘fly’, and the ‘g’ is like the ‘j’ in jukebox. The ‘es’ is phonetic, not French!)

We need not have been anxious. Orlando took total control, and we all slipped into rapt attention mode. He reassured us that our bums were not going to be over-stressed, that he would stop after about half an hour and take questions.

The talk was to be about what Stalinism meant at the level of ordinary people. This was to be history from below – quite the opposite of what a recent Conservative spokesman has recently been demanding of our schools. Not the dates of the Five Year Plans, the stories of great men, nor the five hour speeches at party Congresses, or even the Sovietologist analyses of such, but the testimonies of ordinary people, subjects, or victims if you like, of Stalinist policies. This was not a generalised conspectus, but a piecemeal examination of the history of named persons with photographs to match, households, family structures, in all, the detail of their loyalties, in all, the detail of damages, wrought by historical forces. He analysed, in particular, the different kinds of silences, which have kept many of these stories untold. Working in conjunction with the Russian society “Memorial”, his team has been, and still is, gathering material of the most basic kind.

It was a quite passionate delivery, and he ran over his deadline a little, but handled the subsequent questioning with grace and skill. Mostly the discussions were constructive and complemented the talk admirably. One questioner was more challenging and asked how long ago Orlando was last in Russia. “Last week”, was the reply. But having dug his hole the questioner went on digging, and it became clear that he could not have heard much of the lecture, since answers to his queries had been part of the lecture itself. Another cautious mumble was overheard to the effect that, yes it was fascinating, but was it history?

Well for most of us, defining the academic status of the lecture was not of the essence. We understood that there will be a book from all this. What we enjoyed last Monday was a thrilling preview of it. We can all look forward to its publication, and dare to hope perhaps, for a further live performance, in perhaps more commodious premises.

Richard Cook