Friederike Knabe's Reviews > Requiem for a Lost Empire

With Requiem for a Lost Empire Andreï Makine has created a panoramic novel of eight decades of Soviet/Russian history starting in 1917. It is a story of extraordinary emotional intensity. For anybody like me with interest in the Russian "condition humaine", this was a must read. While written as fiction, it depicts realities and truths of lives lived during Soviet times and since. Makine, born and brought up in Russia, emigrated to France in 1987 and writes his novels in French. He has found an excellent translator in Geoffrey Strachan.

Requiem is anchored in the narrator, the last of three generations of one family. Makine weaves the description of the father's and grandfather's lives into the son's narrative. It is a story within and told as conveyed to him by a third party. This technique establishes a lens singling out or highlighting specific details and events. At the same time the method creates a certain emotional distance for both the protagonist and the reader from the vicious excesses of the Soviet regime and the horrors of war. In stark contrast to the depiction of devastation, scorched earth and expanding killing fields, is the description of nature and landscapes in all their beauty and harmony. There is something nostalgic and even surreal in the soothing power that the land and rural life has over the father and grandfather. It is a refuge sought from the fighting that restores and gives life. It is the dream that sustains the soldier and keeps him alive against all odds. Happiness and love, even if short-lived are possible and experienced here.

The unnamed narrator was severed from this nourishing power, his sense of identity lost since early childhood, his "own memories falsified from birth". Rescued by an enigmatic family friend just prior to the killing of his parents, he grows up as an orphan. The sense of being an outsider never leaves him. Working as a medical doctor in African countries he moves from crisis to crisis. An offer to join the KGB comes almost as relief; changing identities as required for his life as a spy is the easiest part. He is thrown back into the African quagmire, caught between the Cold War's competing fronts. With a few brush strokes, Makine captures the essence of the increasingly perilous political games being played out in developing countries. The "game of espionage" brings the agent and his female partner closer together. While his feelings for her grow deeper, his outlook on life is put to the test: "To be able to tell the truth one day." This is her wish to which he responds by telling her his family's story as conveyed to him by the old friend years ago.

The story of Nikolai, the grandfather, and his son Pavel portrays two generations of soldiers caught up in the brutalities of the two major wars and the rise of Stalin. The growing violence of the Soviet regime is illustrated through specific episodes and incidents. The narrative of the fighting, the loss of comrades and Pavel's endurance is harrowing in its vivid detail. Most haunting is the image of an attempt to free a concentration camp with German snipers still hiding between the barracks. Pavel survives the war only to find "home" destroyed...

Makine has an extraordinary talent to create a dramatic framework for his story while directing the reader toward concrete specific events. For example, having returned to the village and observed what happened to his neighbours, Nikolai turns the rationale upside down. His farm tools and his old horse are in such poor condition, he argues, that handing them over to the kolkhoz would be equal to sabotage. For Pavel the chances of survival were counted in days, maximum months: the "distance that lay between him and death could be measured in the numbers killed". There was no point in sharing one's name as the probability of staying alive to the next day was almost nil.

The continuation of Pavel's story is the narrator's own story of survival, physically and emotionally. The end of the Cold War and the subsequent "disappearance of the Empire" leave him confused and challenge him to establish a new life. The Parisian society crowd that he joins in his quest, speaks mockingly of the Soviet army and of his country, calling it a "phantom country". He should react, explain, or contradict the views presented. Yet, he feels unable to intervene, an outside observer, not able to fit in whether it is Moscow or Paris. Ultimately, his search for answers, his truth and for his peace of mind ends unexpectedly.

Makine has created a powerful and profoundly moving portrait of one Russian family set against the dramatic backdrop of the complex realities of the Soviet era and its collapse. His characters embody real people, individuals with deep emotions showing vigour and endurance in adverse circumstances and surviving on the strength of their roots and connection to their land. The stories of their lives will linger in the reader's mind for a long time.