I can't

begin to imagine what life was like in Soviet Russia, it's like a cold dark nightmare come true, a humanitarian disaster that lasted for decades.

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Staggering exposure if psychotic evil

Figes takes you on an incredible and incredibly disturbing, even sickening, tour of Soviet society from before the Russian Revolution, through Lenin’s and Stalin’s purges, to Glasnost and the 1990s. He reveals the horror of totalitarianism and of Stalin’s psychotic paranoia and their effects on ordinary people who were generally innocent of the charges laid against them. Many were murdered, shot as punishment for innocence. Many were denounced by family, friends, neighbours out of spite or jealousy or desire to claim someone else’s property—aspects of the human condition that Marx had completely failed to take into account.

These were the effects of the implementation of Marxism in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, of the initial demands that all thought of family were anti-social, against the good if the state, which was to be the only goal, the only love.

The number of people murdered by the state in the name of the state will never be known because, unlike the Nazis, the Soviets did not keep accurate records, but that number was anything from 20 million to perhaps something like 40 million. (If a person who was sent to a gulag dies of cold, disease, exhaustion, or starvation, is that death to be recorded as ‘natural causes’ or as murder?

People should be encouraged to read ‘The Whisperers’, so that they learn and understand the evils of Soviet-Marxist totalitarianism.

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Harrowing stories from Stalin's reign

This book evokes less emotions than A People's Tragedy but the stories of individual people are horrible. Hundreds of thousands of people were ruined by Stalin's system and the survivors suffered for the rest of their lives.

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Fascinating and sobering

A comprehensive social history of the Soviet system, exhaustive in its detail. I found the book to be compelling in places offering a real insight into the effects of Stalin’s terror. Perhaps just a little over long And repetitive in detail, however it would be difficult to edit given the fact that the brutality of this paranoid system of power affected ordinary people with terrible consequences All of which demand our attention.

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Hugely imporant book.

Don't be put off by some of the reviews. They appear to be by people who don't understand that this is a social history of the Soviet Union. It is broader than just the Stalin period and covers parts of the Lenin period and post Stalin. These reviewers are obviously looking for a history of the period. This is a history of how people lived during these tumultuous events and under the tyranny.

This book is particularly relevant today. In one of the chapters, Figes discusses how people in the USSR would wear a mask of self censorship, completely screening what they really thought from all but the most trusted. Those interviewed and quoted say that it was this self censorship that was particularly egregious. Well, we appear to be hell bent on recreating this in the West at the moment! The road to hell is paved by good intentions indeed.

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Good listen

well worth a read
an insight imto now vanished USSR and time of Stalin and the terror

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Great book

Wonderfully narrated amazing book. Thanks Orlando Figes and John Telfer. And ofcourse Audible. Enjoyable experience.

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Very interesting and well read.

This is interesting,because it’s tales from, and about, the regular people of Russia.
The narrator is good, and manage to keep it interesting.

5 stars-for a well written and interesting book.

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Skip first 20 hours... yes, really

The first 20 hours are incredibly repetitive. After that the final 9 hours and 23 minutes aren’t so bad. I don’t know how I didn’t go crazy hearing the same stories told in different ways over those 20 hours.

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Very repetitive and skips Stalin's worst crimes

Given that the book almost entirely consists of people giving personal recounts of their experiences, with several being given in parallel per chapter in many cases, it's not surprising that it gets very repetitive. The words and phrases used get very annoying to hear over and over, I can't tell you how many times I heard "spoilt biography" but it was far too many times.

The reason I've given the story a 2 star rating is that there are basically no accounts from the victims of the famine-genocides in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which I feel are Stalin's worst crimes. I have no idea why the author chose not to include the testimonies of the victims of these crimes, especially since he did a good job at conveying the horrors of the famine in 1921 and pinned the blame on Lenin's policies. Maybe the author thought it would require its own book but I would be extremely disappointed if this author felt that the topic was too touchy or controversial, given that many still deny the ethnic motivations behind the terror famines.

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