WHAT YOU DID NOT TELL : a russian past and the journey home

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018 NEW STATESMAN AND EVENING STANDARD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 'Brilliant ... a staggering story' Robert Fox, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 'Fascinating, vast and rich ... a dramatic family memoir' Guardian Uncovering his family's remarkable and moving stories, Mark Mazower recounts the sacrifices and silences that marked a generation and their descendants. It was a family that fate drove into the siege of Stalingrad, the Vilna ghetto, occupied Paris, and even into the ranks of the Wehrmacht . His British father was the lucky one, the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who settled in London after escaping the civil war and revolution. Max, the grandfather, had started out as a socialist and manned the barricades against tsarist troops, but never spoke of it. His wife, Frouma, came from a family ravaged by the Great Terror yet somehow making their way in Soviet society. In the centenary of the Russian Revolution, What You Did Not Tell recounts a brand of socialism erased from memory - humanistic, impassioned, and broad-ranging in its sympathies. But it also explores the unexpected happiness that may await history's losers, the power of friendship, and the love of place that allowed Max and Frouma's son to call England home. "Some years before Mark Mazower's father died, he sat with him and recorded his stories of the things he liked to talk about most: the war, his childhood, history, Russia. This is the remarkable story he uncovered of a family, and the sacrifices and silences that marked a generation and their descendants. It was a family that fate drove into the siege of Stalingrad, the Vilna ghetto, occupied Paris, and even into the ranks of the Wehrmacht. Mark's British father was the lucky one, the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who settled in London after escaping the civil war and revolution. Max, his taciturn grandfather, had started out as a revolutionary socialist and manned the barricades against tsarist troops, but never spoke of it. Max's affectionate and sensitive wife, Frouma, came from a family ravaged by the Great Terror, yet who somehow managed to make its way in Soviet society"--Inside dust jacket "In a tribute to his late father, British historian Mark Mazower traces his family's story from the end of the nineteenth century to today, beginning with his grandfather Mordkhel Mazower's birth in the town of Grodno, part of the Pale of Settlement to which the majority of the Russian Empire's Jews were confined. An activist and member of the Communist Bund, Mordkhel--who later assumed the more European name 'Max'--Travelled widely in the years surrounding the Revolution before ultimately settling in England, where his son would live his entire life"--