 And welcome to the second episode of World of Books. I'm your host, Mihaila Stoops, and I'm streaming live from my home in Honoluluwa, Maui. I love reading books and I love talking about them. And I hope that this discussion today is gonna help you choose your next read. Today's book is Zuleika by Guzel Yakina, who is a contemporary Russian author that has received very many literary awards and a lot of international recognition. And my guest is my friend, Katya Newton. Katya has lived in the islands for about 11 years. She lives in West Maui, actually. She has a very successful career as a CPA and she runs the Maui Prep Book Club. I think that's how we met actually. Last but not least, Katya is of Russian descent. She immigrated to the US when she was in high school. Katya, thank you so much for joining me today for this discussion. I'm very happy to be here and I enjoyed the book. Okay, that's what I was about to start with. How did you like it? I connected with the book a lot, probably also because I'm from Eastern Europe, but you might have looked at it with different eyes that any other reader. Yeah, I should have read it in Russian but I didn't realize at first that it was originally written in Russian because it could be the author's name, could be several Eastern European nationalities. So I started listening in English, but maybe I should go and reread it in Russian. But yeah, it was extremely interesting. I think every family who originated in Russia had relatives who went through that period of time. My grandmother was born not too far from Kazan. She was from Mizny Novgorod, which also is a Southern Russian and it closed to the land. She was born in 1927 and her parents were moved from the original spot. And so I had heard a lot of stories about that. So I read the book in Romanian because it was gifted to me by one of my Romanian friends, Gabi. And I had to read the book again prior to our show, prepare for the show. And I realized that the title of the book in Romanian was different than the English version. In Romanian, it was translated as Zuleika Opens Her Eyes. And this sentence is repeated in the book four times, a key moment in Zuleika's life. So I guess let's introduce the audience to what Zuleika Opens Her Eyes do. And you kind of hinted to the timeframe and you also kind of hinted to the location. How, I mean, she's a young Tatar woman. I should mention this for the viewers. Are you familiar with that area, Russia, and... Yeah, it's actually, I think it's now Zuleika, like we'll have the Tatar state. And so it's Zuleika instead of Zuleika. But yeah, I mean, Russian has a lot of Muslim population. So she's been going through a difficult period of time where she was part of the revolution and the change of regime over there. But she was also a woman and she was also a Muslim woman. And that puts like three more difficult layers on her life at the time. So, which you could probably tell from the opening of the book, her living conditions were not exactly... So the book starts with, basically Zuleika and her husband are putting away food and grains because the Soviets are out and about and they are confiscating all the farm animals, houses, lands, and grains and so on. Under this process of de-collarization, probably one of the most difficult words to pronounce in this book, along with collectivization. And that's how it starts. And basically the two of them, particularly the husband, he opposes the whole process and he doesn't want to join the collective. And as a result, he is executed on the spot and she is sent to the gulad. Right. Yeah, so that happened a lot. You know, people who had a little more items to donate, they were visited and the call-posed organizations or collective farm organizations were kind of put together and a lot of people did not want to donate their private property but that's how they kind of tried to organize the farming. You know, it was difficult time. There's famine everywhere across the region. Some of those collective farms were successful but some, of course, were not. So I guess it's just dependent on the project management skills of whoever was running them. But yeah, I mean, people hear stuff everywhere. I think they were, you know, they butchered the cow and they were trying to hide it, the meat in the forest. And upon return, since they didn't bring the wood back, it seemed to be very suspicious to the soldiers when they were, you know, wandering around the woods without actually any purpose. And yeah, so I think that's when her husband gets murdered. But it turned out to be actually kind of an interesting turn of events for Zulehub because, you know, it completely changed her life and kind of put it on a different course that she could, you know, you're going to do the same with that episode didn't happen. She's definitely a strong woman to have gone through all of this. And she ends up in the Gulag at winter camps. This is in Siberia. Some of you may know that approximately 700,000 people were sent by Stalin to the Gulag. And a lot of them just died because of the super harsh conditions. So if there's anybody out there that likes survival stories, well, this book has it as well. So. Right, and even just the, you know, the journey there was very difficult as well. So just not very many people, actually a lot of people did make it there, but a lot there during the journey because it's really a large country. Travel by boat, travel, well, a train first they traveled them by boat. And when overpacked cars and overpacked boats, then I think it happens to a lot of migrants even during our times where they died even without getting to their destination. So, you know, in my years when I could still listen to my grandparents' stories, they kept on telling me about these people that were sent to the Gulag. And I think because of the fact that a lot of this was developing behind the Iron Curtain, these stories were not being made known to the West or to the world, it was not good PR obviously to tell what was happening in the Gulags and it was proof that the system didn't work. Did you as well grow up hearing these stories and knowing people maybe? Yeah, I didn't know anybody whose family was sent there but maybe because I grew up in Novgorod which is kind of close to St. Petersburg, to Finland border, most people who were sent to the Gulag eventually moved but they didn't move that far west. So that'd be more in central Russia. So in my region, whoever stayed there stayed there, they weren't sent anywhere. And you know, Russians don't like to move around very much. There are a lot of families, generations staying in the same area. So yeah, I didn't personally know anybody who went through that. I did, like I said, my grandmother was telling me stories about her mom when they were relocated and they had some livestock and the cows, they took the cows in their course and the cow was apparently that went to the collective farm, survived. But the horse, my grandmother had really liked that horse as a child and wasn't attached to it. And she said it was so sad because they couldn't take care of the horse and it would come and visit it and bring it home eventually to the side because they couldn't, you know, the collective farm wasn't taken as good care of it as they were. So I kind of, from a personal perspective, I'm familiar with the de-collectualization. Is that how you say it in English? I don't know if that word meant to be translated. Do you? I know, it's like, there's gotta be a better word, but I don't know what. I mean, it basically means nationalization of private property. And it's like a Russian word that has to do with like opening up a ticket, opening up a closed hand. It's supposedly holding something that others want. Yeah, so that part I was familiar with, the other part I don't really know anybody who went to Siberia, but I think to Siberia before it's not ideal living conditions for sure. That's what I'm saying. Well, the book seemed very, very authentic to me because of the description of the places and the stories and the characters. And I felt like it's a capsule of the Russian society at the time through those people, those characters that were part of the Gulag. You had the two commanders, that communist commanders, that would do anything to preserve their positions. And they just follow orders with no humanity, no reasoning. You would have the doctor that cannot practice anymore, he's sent to the Gulag as well and then he essentially helps all of them and becomes the healer of the area that everybody's coming to see. The painter for me is quite a guy. One of my favorite stories in the book is when he is asked to paint a mural and a portion of the mural is actually very detailed streets of Paris with restaurants and people and the same. And when the commanders come in and look at the mural is revealed, he tells them that these things are from Moscow. And, oh, by the way, there's also the Eiffel Tower that's painted. And he tells them that this is like the promissory at the heavy industry, whatever. And these commanders, they don't know any better. They're in a remote part of USSR. They've never made it to Moscow. So they believe it if they're given enough details. And there's so many stories of these situations where intelligent people figure it out that you can't take that intelligence from them. Right, you should have said it was the streets of St. Petersburg because St. Petersburg looks more like Paris than Moscow does. But that was his mistake. I would have said that. But yeah, the commanders, coming from a small, same bearing town, whatever their assignment, I think it's important to remember that they themselves, something goes wrong at their location and they're not capable of getting people to improve themselves through labor because that's what they're for. You have, they collected them and now it's the punishment is, they didn't believe in them just staying in jail. They're like, well, how do we improve you? We have to improve you through hard labor because that's how you become better. So something went wrong at their location. That would be probably executed probably more quickly than their prisoner. So I can certainly, I've seen a lot of parts of the book where they kind of describe their mood and they're kind of trying to pay attention to what's going on because it was also going on during the Stalin repressions where not only like farmers, I mean, I guess the doctor would be one of the examples that really is a part of the upper class in educated people were sent to the gulag that's best case scenario. And a lot of times they would be just killed. So actually making it to the gulag for a lot of people was not such bad of an option. Yeah, and it's interesting this reeducation process to teach these people to give up, I guess their political views and believe in socialism and communism. And one way of doing it was this educational art. I've never heard that term before. I realized I've lived with it in hindsight. The term was coined by the Soviets and it basically describes, I wouldn't call it art, be something that would entice people to believe in certain issues like communism, socialism, collectivization and so on. And they were just very basic posters of, I don't know, Stalin is our dear father. That's a typical one that I've seen in Romania or it's good to eat fish because there was no meat to eat actually or eat soy, that kind of stupid stuff. But that was art in their opinion. I'm sure you've seen your share of it as well. Yeah, I mean, it's primitive art. I mean, have you ever seen like pinup art or in American culture, like pinup girls? Oh, I haven't, no. Yeah, that was a popular thing in America too. Actually during World War II, if you see like, I know Sailor Jerry Tattoos and they have like pictures of roses and the cute girl, you know, Sailor. Like it was, I think it was, I think that's where Russia took it actually probably to become America. Like that reminds me like kind of peanut posters in America, except they have nothing to do with politics. Maybe they did that, I don't know. Obviously they completely expanded it. But yeah, it's something that you can drew just something very quickly and it catches your eye. It certainly doesn't need a lot of evaluation. It's very clear from the poster it doesn't require a lot of analysis of what needs to be delivered. Yeah, it was everywhere. Actually, I don't know. I have a lot of friends in America in New York who collected now and they think it's the best thing ever. Well, and I think it was called agitational art because it was supposed to agitate the mind and inspire people to exchange ideas. But of course, all these ideas were centered on how great communism is. It wasn't to agitate the mind to oppose it but to support it. But yeah, it's definitely propaganda material for sure. Yeah, that's the best word actually, propaganda. One thing that seems to be recurring in this book is this conflict between love and duty. And this is Zuleika's story, but Ignato being a member that essentially is responsible for these hundred people to be sent to Siberia. And then he's responsible for them once they set up camp. Obviously in the process, he follows his orders and he does what he's supposed to do. But in the end, he does show some humanity. And he's the one that goes out and hunts for all of them. And it helps them survive the long winters. He's the one that in the end put his name on Zuleika's son's birth certificate so he can escape from the camp. So I keep wondering if he has a tone for his theme since did he do enough to compensate for all the bad that he did? What do you think? No, he's just a bad guy and that's it. I don't know, I mean, he was just playing a role. I don't know how you could be a good guy in his shoes. Sometimes it's just that's what the cards are on the table. And obviously you could have done something differently at the camp, but that's how they were run. And in the end, I think he does prove himself to be a better person than we originally saw him in the beginning of the book. But it's, I think it's hard. Like I never judge people in those kind of situations because they're part of that system. And if they don't do what they're supposed to do, I mean, they have no other choice left time. Which is the scary part about creating those kinds of systems because then individuals have a very hard time fighting them. Like you have, you cannot have that kind of process in place because there's just not one individual with nobody. There've been any public punishment, but something similar in the USSR after the fall of communism for these people that may have truly committed crimes by executing others and sentencing them to death. Not that I'm aware of. No, because we never had like, like have the members, or over the Nazi Germany. I don't think Russia ever prosecuted their own people for any of the crimes. Yeah, I don't think so. And Stalin arguably killed more of his own population than Hitler did. But I don't think anybody ever was prosecuted for that. And it's going on right now. I mean, how many people are dying? How many thousands of people dying daily? And I don't think, I don't know if ever anybody will be responsible for it at that level because this is gonna eventually come to the negotiation table and it's gonna be brushed under the carpet to be like, okay, well, we're on to the new day today. Well, I can see why they couldn't do it before because the whole system was a continuation of what Stalin had set up. But you couldn't now say, okay, this was wrong. He did something wrong. On the contrary, you had to stay with... I can tell you the court system in Russia doesn't work very well in general, but in particular when it involves a really large-scale scenario. So yeah, I have no good expectations for that. Why did you like this book? What did you find interesting about it? You're obviously more familiar with a lot of the issues. What did you like about it? I liked the narrative because it was from kind of from Zuley's point of view. And she just appeared to be a person with a good sense of humor and her observations and just little comments I just liked the first one. Because you can see the historical events through the story of a young woman. That's all we've been seeing. Yeah, you know what? When I'm trying to describe this book, it sounds like, oh yeah, that's terribly sad. This happened, her husband gets killed and she goes to the club and she's trying to survive. And her son wants to leave her there and go on with his life. But there are all these little moments of victory and you're right, there's her sarcasm. They come in the book so clearly that it's a fun book to read actually. Yeah, I agree. It's pretty entertaining. I liked her description of different people starting with her mother-in-law in the beginning of the book. Right, right. And I just like you, I love the writing. It feels like the classic Russian novel but it's written by somebody that's our age. So that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. I enjoyed it as well. I would recommend it. Well, Katya, thank you so, so much for joining me today. This was a wonderful discussion and I hope our readers are gonna go and read the book. It's totally worth it. And before our, thank you, Katya. For our next episode, we're kind of staying in the same region and we're going to discuss the book, The Spy and the Trader, and by Ben McIntyre. And this is the most extravagant spy story, the true story, and it takes place during the Cold War. So join me, I think it's July 13th at the same time, 3 p.m., to talk about spy crap. Until then, read, read, read, read it all. We hope. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. 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