Imperium Paperback – 3 Sept. 2007

This is the very best book to encourage any interest in the former USSR it is a truly truly amazing book. It starts in Pinsk, Poland in an area now called Belarus which was occupied by the Soviets during Ryziard's childhood and he describes the cruel deportation of 200 000 people to Siberia and how his family managed to avoid it, with his mother staying awake all night long to alert the children if necessary to go into hiding, moving and poignant. I nearly cried when he told of the time when his teacher said the sweet shop was closing and they were giving away free sweets. All the children queued all night in the wind and snow to wait for the shop to open only to be given the empty sweet jars - just one each.In his position as the only foreign correspondent in Poland he moves around to different parts of the USSR and there is always a great tale to tell about places most of us haven't heard of from the oil fields of Azerbejan to the desert of Turkmenestan. Snippets of information, stories, anecdotes, for example how Stalin in his madness, demolished the beautiful cathedral next to the Kremlin that had taken over 40 years to build, with a plan to build a skyscraper 5 times the size of the empire state building with a statue of Lenin atop. So bizarre, so interesting. Funny, sad, gripping and so true to life in descriptions of human nature. Do read this if you are even vaguely interested in the USSR, it is great. Permalink | Why no voting buttons?

Kapuscinski is the wisest and most humane travel writer I have ever read. His elegant, perceptive analysis has transported me through the many countries, revolts and repressions he has recorded. Whether he is writing about the poisoning and destruction of the Aral Sea, the beauty of snow capped mountains or the plight of one poor individual his accounts leave vivid pictures in your mind. A wonderful writer.

Not a mere travel document! but more a meditation on the story of the old Soviet empire. They were years of terror and tragedy for many of the peoples involved. Kapuscinski was a man of deep understanding and compassion, who had a compulsion to travel, search,talk to those people, and tell the story to the world.I confess I was startled by some remarkably prescient observations.I think anyone who is interested in their fellow human being would want to read this book.

This is the very best book to encourage any interest in the former USSR it is a truly truly amazing book. It starts in Pinsk, Poland in an area now called Belarus which was occupied by the Soviets during Ryziards childhood and he describes the cruel deportation of 200 000 people to Siberia and how his family avoided it, with his mother staying awake all night long to alert the children if necessary to go into hiding, moving and poignant. He then moves around to different parts of the USSR and there is always a great tale to tell about places most of us havent heard of from the oil fields of Azerbejan to the desert of Turkmenestan. Snippets of information, stories, anecdotes, for example how Stalin demolished the beautiful cathedral next to the Kremlin with a plan to build a skyscraper 5 times the size of the empire state building with a statue of Lenin atop. So bizarre, so interesting. Funny, sad, gripping and so true to life in desciptions of human nature. Do read this if you are even vaguely interested in the USSR, it is great.

An amazing evisceration of the Soviet Union. I love all the Kapuscinski reportage that I've read, especially Shadow Of The Sun, but he clearly had a lot to get off his chest when it came to the USSR. Lots of unloading here, but also lots of colourful reportage that gets under the skin of this utterly dysfunctional empire.

Imperium is an immense and wonderful book. Although it is an account of the old USSR empire it also has a very personal feel about it given that Russians intruded very early in Kapuscinski's life in his native Poland. Clearly he views them as blundering oaths in the main and so he therefore can understand why other subject people throughout the empire feel the same way. As with any Kapuscinski book you get an artfully crafted masterpiece.

All good

As always, Ryszard Kapuscinski manages to include such detail into his works that it's easy to be enveloped by the book's depth. A concise personal story of his own life and how the Soviet empire looked from the eyes of someone bound by the Iron Curtain. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject.

Já li muita coisa do Kapuscinski, principalmente sobre as andanças dele pela África. É considerado um dos maiores jornalistas do século passado, pai do jornalismo literário, e por outro lado criticado por ser “literário demais”, sendo vários os exemplos de distorção dos fatos para tornar a narrativa mais rica. Este livro, não tão bom quanto outros do mesmo autor, me pareceu indo um pouco demais pro lado literário e menos pro jornalístico ou histórico. É um conjunto de relatos e opiniões de vários lugares visitados pelo autor na URSS em diferentes anos, alguns aparentemente isolados e aleatórios. Ele tornou-se um forte anticomunista e deixa transparecer isso facilmente no texto. Tudo é cinza, tudo é absurdo, tudo é anormal, nada é como deveria ser no mundo soviético. Terminei o livro com a sensação que não aprendi nada sobre a URSS do ponto de vista histórico, só me restaram relatos de imensos absurdos, que embora reais, foram dramatizados.

Los recorridos de Kapuscinski por la antigua Unión Soviética y su regreso tras los grandes cambios de esa poderosa nación son una crónica del imperio.Leer este texto hoy nos puede dar una perspectiva más amplia sobre el presente y futuro de Rusia y las pretensiones de Putin de recuperar el poder perdido.

Extremely boring. Read The Shadow of the Sun and Another day of life instead. Two wonderful and fascinating books.

When I finished reading it, I felt sad: I wanted more. I wish Kapuscinski was still alive, writing about contemporary Russia and other nations of the ex USSR, with his unique stile and insights.

Great reading to delve into the Russian culture.

Knows the former Soviet Republic inside out. Fearless travel and intelligent writing.

ottimo libro un racconto preciso vivido efficace della Soviet Union incluso il suo sud islamico e la siberia dagli anni '50 al crollo da uno dei più grandi reporters del secolo scorsoinvio preciso e senza problemi grazie

Este libro explica la historia reciente de Rusia y las experiencias del autor de sus viajes a este país y las repúblicas ex-soviéticas.

Profondément humain et engagé dans son travail, Kapuscinski était une très grande figure du journalisme. Son livre est passionnant, son sujet fascinant. A lire!

A gathering of essays and impressions over the years (starting with a flashback to his early childhood in Polish speaking, Nazi-invaded Belorussia) and featuring Kapuscinski's two years of wanderings around the imploding republics in the early 90s. Perhaps the most fascinating insights are derived from his conversations about the peak Stalin years, and the innumerable blind gaffes (and knowingly perpetrated acts of icy bureaucratic inhumanity) which buffeted every region from the Baltic States to the Caucasus to Baikal to deep Siberia. At times it reads like a nightmare, at times like a surreal document from the 15th century, at times like letters home from the front. Indispensable to an understanding of modern Russia.

Reading Ryszard Kapuscinski is like sitting at the knee of a master storyteller! The tales he tells are amazing, horrific, informative, fabulous--all the things a great storyteller weaves into a tale. The only thing is that Kapuscinski does not make up his stories. He boarded (he is deceased) trains and planes for far-flung places--all in the name of news gathering. However, what Kapuscinski delivers then is not just news, but his dry-eyed observations of humans in all their glory, all their disgusting or disquieting ways, their cruelties, their passions, even their incredible, often feeble attempts just to survive, and amazingly, in this context, their jubilations, their small victories, and their powerful will to live. Kapusciski is a master all right: of human nature, of writing, of that rare ability to inform, entertain, and evaluate. He is a newsman extraordinaire.In "Imperium" Kapuscinski turns that extraordinary talent to---call it what you will---the U.S.S.R.---the Soviet Union---Russia and her satellites. He visits, in many cases, multiple times, every country that made/makes up the U.S.S.R. (He divides his book into three parts, each denoting his travels and findings. They are "First Encounters 1939-1967," detailing his own experiences as a Pole with Soviet power and rules. Then Part 2 concerns his observations from his extensive travels across the USSR from 1989-1991. Part 3 (1992-1993)is comprised of his astute commentaries, fascinating reading!) Back to the USSR: I was simply amazed at the extent of differences of each country, of the almost phenomenal ability of the Soviet ruling elite to hold such a disparate world together. But at what unconscionable cost?That's the horror of the story--the horror of mass exterminations that went far, far beyond whatever goals Hitler and his Nazis conceived and carried out. Six millions? A mere pittance in comparison! Kapuscinski's figures in support of the vulgar, despicable number of deaths carried out by Stalin and later Soviet powers are more than shocking! Here's just one figure concerning one circumstance out of dozens: "Stalin starved to death around ten million people" (285). His chapter about the Great Famine will make you absolutely weep that such a distorted and vile creature as Stalin was allowed to live. The reader truly learns the meaning of the words "totalitarian" and "tyrant."But there's also a creative passion. After the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, Kapuscinski tells the reader about a wondrous story in the making. In Belarussia, there are the ruins of a church, felled by German artillery fire during WWII, where someone discovered bits of colored fresco. Prof. Grekov made it his life's work--and his students--to put that shattered fresco back together. Imagine! (Is this tear from Mary at the loss of her son or from the Mary who discovered the resurrection? Is this bit of fire from the burning bush or the fire of hell?) And it is Grekov's imagination that Kapuscinski celebrates. This long quote will show that imagination, that spirit and tenacity of the people, and, most of all, Kapuscinski's magnificent ability to weave facts and observation into gossamer, but gossamer with tensile strength:"And thus observing how from thousands of particles, bits, and crumbs, from dust, molecules, and pebbles, the professor and his students have been for years piecing together portraits of saints, sinners, and legends, I feel as though I were a witness, in this cold and dusty underground, to the birth of the sky and of the earth, of all the colors and shapes, angels and kings, light and darkness, good and evil" (302).So it is with the reader in discovering Kapuscinski's own talents. My personal pick of his most profound talent is that of observation of human nature, which then provides the reader with astute commentary. His explanation of the Russian mafias is illuminating. When Russian mafia figures began showing up in news and then films, I was perplexed. Mafias in Russia? How was this possible in a world of the KGB and totalitarian government? The answer? Bezprizorny! Homeless children! Beginning with the deaths caused by World War I, then October 1917, then civil war and mass starvation resulting from weather and by tyrant--a new class of social strata was born, or hatched, or exploded like Athena from Zeus's head: A new class--the bezprizorny by the thousands. Their goals: find food, find shelter. With no adults to guide them (if there were adults, living conditions still would not be conducive to developing healthy children either physically or emotionally) these pitiful children lived however they could, becoming more and more dangerous as their numbers doubled, tripled.Eventually, they formed their own mafias and lived by mafia rules: stealing and squaring accounts. Today's Russian mafias are the grandchildren of this class. Each successive event in Russia--the second world war, postwar purges, accelerating corruption of government, disintegration of the USSR---all contributed to the huge numbers of homeless children who produced children and grandchildren, who make up today's powerful and horrifyingly violent mafias. In fact, there are three distinct mafias: the Russian Mafia (from Russia proper--a whole other story in his book), the Caucasian Mafia (all other ex-Soviet countries), and the Asiatic Mafia (those from Islam regions, a huge population in the former USSR).I could tell story after story from Kapuscinski's book-- (For example, the story of Turkmenistan, the country of the desert, a place of riches and freedom, but not by America's standard of riches and freedom! This story alone--its explanation of the power of the desert--is worth the price of the book) --so packed it is with horror and passion, but each time I relate a story, I know it is taken out of context. Kapuscinski's account is causally and historically driven. There is an order, a precise arrangement in relating the stories about the USSR and its dissolved union. The only real way to learn this information, this series of inspired scrutinies of days past and days future is to read the book. Whatever I write will never do this book justice. You will also discover that one reading is not enough to absorb the expanse of space and time that that fills Kapuscinski's book."Imperium" is not a book to miss, if you want to learn what the USSR really was. You must order it today! Two other books by this writer that I also highly recommend are "The Other" and "Travels with Herodotus."Thanks to GB who introduced me to Kapuscinski, currently my favorite writer.Note: I see in previewing what I wrote before I hit the publish button that I was totally correct. I did not do this book justice. It is so much more-much, much more-- than the few words I wrote.

I read his book on Herodotus (actually, his reading of Herodotus while on his many travels) and liked it a lot. So I bought this book and am not disappointed.I've learned a lot about Russia and the former Soviet Union--for instance, how much of a Turkic empire the former central asian republics are. Most of those former "republics" are occupied by Turkic people who speak a common language and can readily understand one another.We are all now aware of the Stalinist brutality that existed. But this book really brings it home and just how hard and grueling life has been in the imperium and how much it continues to be so, especially in the outlying areas.The author notes that Russian demographers have estimated that between 1918 and 1953, between WWI and the Stalinist terror, between 55 and 110 million Russians died of unnatural causes. The full horror of the prison camps--in Siberia, for example, over one-third of those who entered died in prison--the forced starvation and murder of over 10 million Ukrainians, and the appalling harshness of life and environmental depradations that Bolshevism brought are revealed into full view in his writing.The author, who writes this book in the early 1990's and died a few years later, is hardly optimistic in his assessment of what lies in store for Russia and the former republics.The book is a real eye-opener about what is going on in Russia today.

The Soviet Empire remains a mystery but in this book, the Polish journalist and writer, Kapuscinski, attempts to get under the facade and reveal the inner terror, absurdity, incompetence, poverty, and cruelty of a political and economic system never meant to direct an empire. Often Kapuscinski put himself in very real danger to gather the stories that make up this book. A travel book like no other travel book.What a total disaster was the Soviet Empire in terms of murder of its own citizens and the destruction of creative human consciousness through fear, paranoia, imprisonment, and such incompetence it makes you cry. The destruction of the Ukrainian people by Stalin is tragic and senseless and millions of people were starved to death and forced into cannibalismUnregulated free markets and wild-west capitalism has its downfalls and traps but communism as practiced by the Soviet Union is a terror that capitalism will never reach. There are multiple examples given of central planning which resulted in tragic endings for people and the environment.The most penetrating insight of the book, a point that is made repeatedly, is that the Soviet Union was a republic of slave states, of non-Russian ethnic minorities, who longed to be free of the giant monster state. Democracy does not mean sending representatives to Moscow to these oppressed people, it means breaking away and freedom from the Russian dominance and exploitation and heavy handed oppression of mind, body, spirit.The book jumps around a bit, but this is because it reflects Kapuscinski's multiple interactions and trips within the Soviet Union over a long period of time. Kapuscinski is a keen observer with highly discriminating ears in regard to picking just the story or detail that conveys many years of oppression and slavery and fear of imprisonment. For the Soviet Union was in many ways one big prison.In addition to the careful story collecting of ordinary poor people, the book also includes keen political analysis on the downfall of the Soviet Union as a power structure. There is one chapter on the destruction of the Aral Sea that is worth the price of the whole book. It is tragic and yet has all the total absurdity of the writings of Kafka or Orwell.I found it hard to stop reading the book even though it is twice as long as Kapuscinski's class "The Emperor" book on Ethiopia. This book is highly recommended.

Beautiful, sad commentary as the monstrous life of the USSR comes to an end. The non-Russians in the old "Imperium" are happy to be free, except that in most cases they find they have merely traded one nightmare for another, that of rule by kleptocrats. The people pine for the lazy rule of the Soviet Union, when at least there was order in the streets.

A great, educational read. I downloaded it on my Kindle and loved the book. I ordered the hardbound copy for a gift for a friend, not realizing that it written in Polish. It cost $29.99 When it arrived, I discovered it is written in Polish, which I do not read. To return the book and get a refund, the postage to Poland was $22.25. that does not leave me much of a refund. If you want to read "Imperium", get the Kindle version or the paperback.