Once Upon a Time in The Soviet Union
Dominique Lapierre
Full Circle, 2007, pp 233, Rs 295.


In this breezy travelogue, French journalist Lapierre tells us the story of a journey through the Soviet Union, made half a century ago in 1956. Released then, this account of life behind the erstwhile Iron Curtain would have been an expose; today it appears curiously anachronistic.

Still it reads well. Lapierre, best known for classic non-fiction like Freedom at Midnight and Is Paris Burning?— treads lightly with this one. The detail is just enough to keep us cheerfully engaged.

In chatty style Lapierre tells us how the trip was conceived. Fired by tales of great motoring adventures— Lapierre, on a flight back to Paris with photographer Jean Pierre, mooted the idea of overland travel across China or Russia, along with their wives. From this conception, we read of the difficulties of set-up and then of their lucky break as Nikita Khrushchev gives them an unheard of authorisation to motor across the Soviet Union.

The couple’s road trip through the Soviet Union begins in July 1956 in a Marly car. The car, painted yellow and black, had the names of the two sponsoring magazines ‘Paris Match’ and ‘Marie Claire’, and was loaded with souvenir perfume bottles and miniature Eiffel Towers.

Lapierre and Jean Pierre were also assigned a companion/chaperon for the trip— a Russian journalist called Slava, a “tall, nice looking fellow with chubby cheeks, and fine, blond disorderly curls. He chain-smoked papirossi, the long Russian cigarettes with their interminable cardboard tips.”

The party journeyed from Brest-Litvosk on the Polish border through Minsk, to Moscow and through Kiev in the Ukraine to Tiflis in Georgia. Lapierre tells of 4 individuals he selects to study. There’s the Minsk railway worker Victor Sicheiko and the Tiflis surgeon. Also Moscow sales assistant Genia Gregorieva, whose “pay slips would have made the humblest salesgirl at Bazar del’hotel de Ville in Paris pale with compassion. After deduction of all taxes ... she was left with six hundred and five roubles for a forty-six hour working week, the price of a pair of court shoes or a summer dress”. 

Earlier we’ve met Ukrainian peasant Gregori Klivtchouk and his wife, a “courageous, open and likable couple who knew neither the magic of television nor the advantages of household appliances”. Each description is rendered with sympathy and a sense of amazement that these characters could be so meekly accepting of so depriving a system as the socialist one. Even fellow journalist Slava’s indoctrination in the system seems complete, as Lapierre’s questions and economic arguments (“By suppressing private ownership your system has killed individual initiative and the competitive spirit”) lead nowhere.

The book ends somewhat sadly; also a trifle abruptly. And while it’s an easy read, unburdened by densities of description, it doesn’t ever give one a gritty sense of time and place. Lapierre records his superficial impressions fluently and also includes some interesting pictures of people. But there’s little if any grappling with Soviet history, geography or even culture in any of this. Pleasant enough then, but hardly path-breaking.