A Russian Journal Luisterboek Tooltip Luisterboeken beluister je met de bol.com Kobo app.

Geschreven bij A Russian Journal

A Russian Journal revisited

In 1947 John Steinbeck and Robert Capa made a journey through Russia – Moscow, Stalingrad, now Volgograd, Kiev and Tbilisi/ Tiflis and again Moscow – just in the time the 'Iron Curtain' closes.

Their quest is to discover 'the great other side' and show 'the private life of the Russian people' as they say themselves 'to set down what we saw and heard without editorial comment'. So they report about their trip in A Russian Journal, not The Russian Journal.

To John Steinbeck this trip and journal come at an interesting point in his carrier, after he has written his masterpiece 'The Grapes of Wrath' (1939) and before his most personal and experimental novel 'East of Eden' (1952).

In A Russian Journal John Steinbeck and Robert Capa capture a few of those individual Russian souls who endured in a system ready to smother all creativity. They capture those portraits with intelligence, compassion, humor and eye for detail.

If we look at the actuality of Poetin's Russia in 2014 we see a drawback to the times the 'Iron Curtain' closed. With people on both sides, east and west, having such different views. Would it not be very interesting to make the journey John Steinbeck and Robert Capa made over again. With the same quest to discover 'the great other side'.

As John Steinbeck puts it 'I believe one job of a writer is to set down his time nearly as he can understand it'.

Note the photo's I uploaded on this page are some of the beautiful pictures Robert Cape made during this trip.