The Patriots: A Novel

I seldom give a book 5 stars....but this book well deserves it....The writing itself...the references to other literature....the research....I couldn't put it down. I dreamt of the characters, and I can't remember when last I had done that.

This multigenerational novel begins in the 1930's with the emigration of Florence Fein to Russia. She goes not because she is a card carrying Communist, but for the lust/love of a Soviet engineer and the "notion" that the "Soviet Union was a place where the future was already being lived." It did not take long for her to experience there the privations in food, housing and personal freedoms. Florie becomes the victim of both anti-semitism and anti-americanism. She can never be patriotic enough because who she is will make one suspect of what she does. She becomes paranoid of friends and neighbors and opts out of chances to escape. In the end, she pays the ultimate price of prison, internal exile and the betrayal of a fellow American. Florence's son Julian, born in Moscow, is forced to spend seven formative years of his childhood in a Russian orphanage. This experience scars him, but cannot stifle his intelligence. He earns a PhD in engineering, but is denied the degree because there is a quota on Jews receiving degrees. Feeling trapped by "the system", Julian seizes an opportunity for himself and his family (including Florence) to emigrate to the USA in 1977. There, he earns his degree and finds a lucrative profession as an engineer. Ironically, because of his Russian background, Julian is employed by an international petroleum firm and gets the opportunity to return to Russia. His youngest child, Lenny, has moved back to Russia with a plan of "making it big" in the emerging financial markets. Naive Lenny, like his beloved grandmother, gets caught in the web of Russian business "smoke and mirrors" and is imprisoned. Can Julian save his son?The Patriots is not a great piece of literature. It would benefit from editing to make the story shorter. Despite these failings, THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK TO READ AT THIS TIME IN USA HISTORY. The novel accurately chronicles seventy years of the lack of true intelligence information and the naivete of American policy makers toward the USSR. It chronicles the iron grip of the government on its people, the pecking order within the work place and society as a whole which breeds paranoia and suspicion. Even in the 21st century, government critics are imprisoned or murdered. This is not rule of law, but rule of fear where money and power may or may not hold sway. Lines from the work of Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, should stun the reader as to its current salience: " It is a place where every lunatic proposition is self-evident while universal truths are hauled in for questioning." It is up to the reader to decide for which nation this quote applies.

Once I started reading The Patriot by Sana Krasikov I couldn’t put it down. It is a story of how a young Jewish girl, Florence Fein, a graduate of Brooklyn College, made an impulsive and naive decision to immigrate to the Soviet Union in 1933 in search of her Soviet lover. This decision had tragic repercussions for Florence, her son, Julian, and her grandson, Lenny.Toggling between modern day Russia and the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1950s, this novel fully captures the day-to-day lives of Russians and Americans trapped in Stalin and Putin’s treacherous and unpredictable worlds. It also reveals how the United States State Department, the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies, and even the then president, FDR, conspired to prevent Americans trapped in the Soviet Union from returning to the USA. It rings true. I know because my aunt was trapped and perished there during the 1938 purges. The research I have done for a family memoir confirms it.Terrifying to me was Krasikov’s ability to slowly, scene by scene, tighten the noose around ordinary people; to show how during Stalin’s era friends, husbands, wives, and children were trapped into denouncing their friends and relatives; to bring alive the stifling fear they faced.Additionally and equally frightening are the chapters set in modern day Russia. Reverberations of the impact of deals between American oil companies and Russia left me shocked with parallels to our current crisisA quote cited in the book about Stalin’s era from Eric Hoffer’s book The True Believer (1951) is chillingly predictive of today’s world:All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world….It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence….Both as a compelling page-turner and as a warning about current events The Patriots is a must read.

Tracing three generations of an American family's involvement with Russia - from Florence's emigration in the 1930s, her son Julian's return to the USA in the 1970s, and his own son Lennie's professional involvement in modern Russia in 2008 - this explores issues of history, and the struggle for the personal in the face of the political.The three strands are not evenly balanced, and the emphasis is firmly on Florence - a young and somewhat foolish woman, yet an interesting vehicle through which the idealism and optimism of the communist experiment is shown to turn to tragedy and terror.This is a long book (560 pp.) but the material does justice to the length. Fluent and unobtrusive writing keeps the focus on the story being told - this might not be a book for readers who need to like a protagonist to enjoy a book as Florence is, frequently, foolish and very flawed, but this is a satisfying read with a subtle and nuanced evocation of Russia during the Stalinist era.

The Patriots is the story of Florence Fein and her move from the USA to Russia to pursue her dreams. Shaken by what she discovers about her new country, she is even more shocked to realise that her connection to the USA is not at all as binding as she thought it would be as well as the number of ideals she is prepared to compromise. The novel moves back and forth between Florence, her son Julian and her grandson Lenny and while I found it a bit of a weighty read in places, I liked the way Krasikov explored not only the complicated emotions required to survive in the moments of fear and trauma themselves but also the stories we must tell ourselves in order to justify our survival in the aftermath of it all. A sobering read.

SueKich wrote the definitive review, and I pretty much agree with her views, so I won't attempt to retread that ground. But what I loved about this excellent novel was the sense of living through the period of history that some of think we know about. We don't really. There is a difference between knowing about the insane brutality of the Soviet system and viscerally living its consequences. This novel takes you to those places as its stage, but it is fundamentally about an unfathomable, incompletely described female character. I agree with others who felt that leaves a void. But the historical detail and the sense of place and time that Ms Krasikov delivers make it an engrossing, worthwhile read.

A vivid and realistic account of life behind and the curtain and the consequences of a individuals choices and how overtime life wherever one lives has a way sorting out

I never read "Dr Zhivago" though there are similarities with the plot of the epic film. Not a cheerful, nor optimistic read, with shades of Solzhenitsyn "A Day in the Life of ...."