The gates of November : chronicles of the Slepak family

Amazon.com Review Potok, well known for his novels of Jewish family life such as *The Chosen*, turns to nonfiction in *The Gates of November*, a wrenching family chronicle with a riveting historical undercurrent. The story of the family patriarch, Solomon Slepak, spans most of the book: ignoring his mother's wish that he become a rabbi, Slepak emigrated at 13 to America, became a Marxist in New York, returned to fight in the Russian Revolution, and rose to prominence within the Communist Party. But while Solomon remained a convinced Bolshevik, his son Volodya rejected socialism when anti-Semitism emerged during Stalin's era. Disowned by his father, Volodya was later exiled to Siberia as a dissident. The story of the Slepaks is simultaneously the story of Soviet Jewry and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. From Publishers Weekly Novelist Potok (The Chosen) presents here the history of a family of Soviet Jews centered on the relationship of father and son. Solomon Slepak was an old-guard Bolshevik who never lost his faith in the party?and survived the Stalinist purges miraculously and mysteriously (Stalin exterminated almost all old party members). His son, Volodya, grew up believing in the party but, as he married and started raising a family, came to question the Communist system and eventually became a refusenik, a dissident who protested openly against the regime. The author met Volodya and his wife, Masha, in 1985 while on a trip to Moscow. This compelling account, which is also a chronicle of the Soviet dissident movement, highlights the heroism, and sacrifice, of those who stand up to the power of a totalitarian state. (Nov.) FYI: The title comes from a line of poetry by Aleksandr Pushkin. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. SUMMARY: From the author of The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev comes an epic work of nonfiction chronicling the stormy lives of a Jewish father and son whose stories span the entire history of the Soviet Union. Solomon Slepak, an inflexible old-guard Bolshevik - military commander, diplomat, propagandist - not only miraculously survived the murderous purges of the thirties and late forties, despite his high visibility and his Jewish origins, but retained to the last his unwavering faith in the Communist Party. His son, Volodya, was raised as a true believer and easily entered the elite Moscow world of scientists and engineers - until, choosing the path of dissent, he became an internationally renowned "refusenik" hero. For eighteen years he and his wife, Masha, were the objects of government persecution for the "crime" of attempting to leave the Soviet Union - five of those years lost in Siberia as punishment for hanging a banner from the balcony of their Moscow apartment which read "Let us go to our son in Israel". The circumstances that shaped Solomon and Volodya Slepak - their personal and public histories and the clash of their ideologies - form the substance of this remarkable account of a family and a nation. Chaim Potok, who first met the younger Slepaks when they were still under siege in Moscow, tells their story with deep understanding and empathy. Fiction,Historical,Political Science,General,Biography & Autobiography,Historical - General,Jewish,Jews,20th century,History,Europe,Social Science,Family,Religion,History - General History,Political Ideologies,Soviet Union,Holocaust,Judaism,Dissenters,Russia & the Former Soviet Union,Jewish Studies,Slepak; Solomon - Family,Jewish communists - Soviet Union - Biography,Communism & Socialism,Jewish communists,Slepak; Vladimir,Slepak; Mariya,History Of Jews,Slepak; Solomon,Refuseniks - Biography,Jews - Soviet Union - Biography,Refuseniks,Slepak family "REMARKABLE . . . A WONDERFUL STORY."
--The Boston Globe

The father is a high-ranking Communist officer, a Jew who survived Stalin's purges. The son is a "refusenik," who risked his life and happiness to protest everything his father held dear. Now, Chaim Potok, beloved author of the award-winning novels The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev, unfolds the gripping true story of a father, a son, and a conflict that spans Soviet history. Drawing on taped interviews and his harrowing visits to Russia, Potok traces the public and privates lives of the Slepak family: Their passions and ideologies, their struggles to reconcile their identities as Russians and as Jews, their willingness to fight--and die--for diametrically opposed political beliefs.

"[A] vivid account . . . [Potok] brings a novelist's passion and eye for detail to a gripping story that possesses many of the elements of fiction--except that it's all too true."
--San Francisco Chronicle

Follows the experiences and conflicting ideologies of the Jewish Slepak family, focusing on the story of Solomon, who survived the purges of the 1930s in the Soviet Union, maintaining his loyalty to the Communist party, and of his son, Volodya, who spent five years in Siberia as punishment for his dissent Kroniek van een Russisch-joodse familie waarvan de vader nog communist is, maar de zoon dissident NL-ZmNBD