Alexis Peri is Associate Professor of History at Boston University, where she received the Gerald and Deanne Gitner Family Prize in Undergraduate Teaching.
Synthesize[s] dozens of accounts to powerful and illuminating
effect...A fascinating, insightful, and nuanced work that
incorporates much fresh research. Particularly rewarding is the
close attention Peri pays to language. -- Anna Reid * Times
Literary Supplement *
[A] fascinating and perceptive book. -- Antony Beevor * New York
Review of Books *
A remarkable record of 125 unpublished diaries written by the
blokadniki who endured the 872-day siege of Leningrad from
1941-44... Much has been written about Leningrad's heroic
resistance. But the remarkable aspect of the Boston University
professor's book is that she tells a very different story:
recounting the internal struggles of ordinary people desperately
trying to survive and make sense of their fate. -- John Thornhill *
Financial Times *
Stand aside, Homer. I doubt whether even the author of the
Iliad could have matched Alexis Peri's account of the
872-day siege which Leningrad endured after Hitler's army encircled
the city in September 1941...[A] magnificent narrative. -- Jonathan
Mirsky * The Spectator *
The battle for Leningrad lasted 1,127 days; the city was under
siege for 900 of them. Between 1.6 million and two million Soviet
citizens died, 800,000 of them civilians-40 percent of the city's
prewar population. (As Peri points out, the overall death toll
approximates the total number of members of the U.S. military who
died in war between 1776 and 1975.) Leningrad residents of all
types-from factory foremen to teachers, party workers to
professional writers-kept diaries during the ordeal. Peri searches
through 125 of them to capture how the nightmare deconstructed the
writers' prior realities and altered their sense of humanity. Her
portrait is a sensitive, at times almost poetic examination of
their emotions and disordered mental states. It both contrasts with
and complements the equally accurate official Soviet portrait of a
stalwart population standing firm in the face of evil and in
defense of Soviet ideals. Peri makes plain that even though the
diarists endured the total transformation of their fundamental
sense of reality, their social relationships, and the nature of
their social order, most of them did not become alienated from the
values and basic outlook of the Soviet system. -- Robert Legvold *
Foreign Affairs *
A powerful book...In a groundbreaking history, Alexis Peri has
sifted through scores of previously unpublished diaries that have
lain largely forgotten for decades in Russian archives. As a
result, we now have a far fuller picture of the siege. It may make
disturbing reading, but these journals personalize the catastrophe
far better than any conventional history. -- Guy Walters * Daily
Mail *
[An] important new book...Peri's book is not a tale; it is arranged
thematically rather than chronologically, and it does not reprint
any diary in full. But oh, these voices from a frozen world of
starvation and fear! They will haunt you. It is time they were
heard. -- Laurie Hertzel * Star Tribune *
In devastating intimacy, the diaries [written during the siege of
Leningrad] disclose the private struggles of individuals to extract
meaning from unimaginably dire circumstances, as well as the
philosophical and psychological approaches they brought to bear on
their suddenly unrecognizable lives and their own disappearing
bodies...This is a People's History of the siege, realized at last,
and as such should be added to the short list of essential reading
on the subject. -- Debra Dean * Washington Independent Review of
Books *
In this fascinating analysis of the experience of average Soviet
citizens during the Siege of Leningrad, Peri investigates the
everyday experiences of the blokadniki, those who survived
for over 900 days during the German blockade of the city during WW
II. Using 125 unpublished diaries, [Peri] provides a unique
perspective on those who lived inside the 'ring' created by the
German siege. -- R. W. Lemmons * Choice *
From 1941 until 1944, the city of Leningrad was under siege from
Germany and Finland for a total of 872 days; almost one million
citizens perished during that time. Peri takes readers on a
terrifying journey of the turmoil faced by the residents of
Leningrad via reviewing and synthesizing 125 unpublished diaries
from those imprisoned in the city, the Blokadnik or Siege of
Leningrad survivors...Readers interested in the effects of a
military siege on individuals will find much to digest here.
Moreover, history buffs will learn new information about the people
of Leningrad during this terrible time. -- Jason L. Steagall *
Library Journal *
Vivid, true, and magnificently crafted. Peri has peeled away layer
after layer of the human record to its core-physical, mental,
spiritual. -- Nina Tumarkin, author of Lenin Lives!
By mining an extraordinarily rich treasure trove of unpublished
diaries, Peri moves beyond relating what happened during the
blockade and instead explains how Leningraders made sense of it.
Sophisticated, nuanced, and extremely well written, The War
Within is a major contribution to our understanding of the
mentality of Leningrad's civilians during the blockade and the role
that diaries played in Soviet history. -- Richard Bidlack, coauthor
of The Leningrad Blockade, 1941-1944: A New Documentary History
from the Soviet Archives
Diaries from the Stalin era tend to be analyzed in numbers too
small to provide more than a glimpse of everyday life. Here,
however, Peri has assembled over a hundred of these rare records,
which allows for unprecedented insight into the trials and
tribulations that ordinary people experienced during one of their
greatest ordeals: the 900-day siege of Leningrad. This is a truly
groundbreaking study. -- David Brandenberger, author of
Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and
Terror under Stalin, 1927-1941
In the winter of 1941-1942, civilians in blockaded Leningrad lived
on the very edge of death. Conveying their life stories and
struggles with great sensitivity, Peri draws on more than a hundred
largely unpublished diaries to explore how the external crisis
provoked an internal crisis that destabilized Leningraders'
fundamental understandings of themselves, the Soviet Union, and the
world. -- Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, author of The Legacy of the
Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments
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