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COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association
Moscow, the Beautiful and the Damned: Life in Russia in Transition. By NICK HOLDSWORTH. London: Deutsch. 2003. xxiv+262 pp. 9.99 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-233-00998-1.
Nick Holdsworth's professed goal is to provide 'an insight into the human consequences of Russia's shift' (p. xxiii). The method he chooses is the vignette and the thumbnail sketch; we are introduced to a dozen or so real-life characters whom the author identifies as winners or losers in the new society that emerged from the turbulent 1990s.
It is a tried and tested technique (David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Random House, 1993) is the classic, and Charlotte Hobson's Black Earth City: A Year in the Heart of Russia (London: Granta, 2001) similarly brings to life an array of Russians whose lives illustrate the changes...
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