Review: Russia Brought to Life in Vivid Colors
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 4, 2013
From the moment Moscow Dreams opens, the life of a teenager in Moscow in the early 1990s reveals a life different from any I ever imagined about growing up in the Soviet Union in the Twentieth Century. Ms. Gousseva takes the life of Marina, in her last two years of high school, and turns it into more than just a coming of age book. The novel begins in 1991 as Boris Yeltsin makes his bid for power against the first elected Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev.No one is more confused than Marina about the changes that occur in the next four months as the communist leader Gorbachev is routed out of his role by Yeltsin. Soon communism and party affiliations are banned and the young people in Ms. Gousseva's novel must suddenly switch alliances to make good for their college applications. The state-owned sources of food disappear and suddenly the customs, tastes, and habits of the western world appear on the streets of Moscow. Capitalism has come to this country, and while the choices are exhilarating at first, soon the people realize their wages do not rise with the increase in food costs.Through it all, the life of Marina and her family and friends endure the changes and still manage to find hope. It's through Marina's parents and her babushka that the reader learns of why change is feared and why the government is seldom to be trusted.Through the personal stories, I learned about the very personal nature of the different faces of the Soviet Union and Russia. While in the United States, our political leaders may change every four years, we've never known what it was like to suddenly wake up one morning only to be told everything we ever believed and known, never really existed in the first place. Unlike books such as Orwell's 1984 where a cold impersonal view of Communism is impressed upon the reader and where the characters never seemed quite real to me, Dreams of Moscow, presents very real teenagers who are different in what they want from life, but similar in their tastes for love and excitement.I'm very happy I found this author and her work. I found myself transported to Moscow, the Black Sea, and Leningrad through Ms. Gousseva's vivid descriptions. It's a view of Russia I enjoyed. And that is perhaps the greatest thing about this novel. The gray view I've held of Russia all my life thanks to the Cold War of my youth, disappeared into bright and clear views of another place with people not so much different from me as I'd once been taught.