“Archangel”, by Robert Harris

 

373 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0679428886

Archangel is the second Robert Harris novel I have reviewed (the other being Fatherland, reviewed on January 3^rd, 2024), and involves more speculative history, although of a different sort. British historian Christopher “Fluke” Kelso is met by an old man named Papu Rapava while attending a conference in Moscow; the old man claims to have been present at the death of Joseph Stalin and further states that, immediately after Stalin’s death, Lavrenty Beria – chief of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) – supposedly took measures to secure a certain black notebook which is believed to be Stalin’s secret diary. When Rapava wouldn’t divulge the location of the book, he was exiled to the Kolyma region of the USSR, but has steadfastly refused to reveal the book’s location, fearing that shadowy agents are still watching him in case he goes near the MacGuffin. From there it is a chase after the mysterious lost diary and its shrouded contents, and what all of it could mean for the fate of modern Russia and the world.

Overall, Archangel was a serviceable thriller with some interesting information on Stalinist Russia and those would-be Stalinists who still revere the sonovabitch. The prose is serviceable, the structure, plotting and characters were professionally and skillfully wrought and I was interested in the whole from beginning to end. I even learned a couple of Russian words, like taiga (a boreal forest) and verst (a unit of measurement equaling 3500 feet), along with some colloquial sayings, such as “We are born on a clear plain and die in a dark forest” or “Gratitude is a dog’s disease”, attributed to Stalin himself (figures). But perhaps its greatest achievement is to show how differently two of history’s greatest monsters – Hitler and Stalin – are perceived in their home countries: in Germany Hitler is rightly shunned and despised, while in Russia Stalin is inexplicably honored and praised (indeed, seeing how this novel exposes the Russian desire for a Strong Man to bring order and make everything right, Putin’s popularity should come as no surprise).

So while Archangel is technically a work of speculative fiction, in today’s cultural and political climate – especially in Russia – it is all too terrifyingly plausible.