Steinbeck and Capa’s account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing.
Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune. This rare opportunity took the famous travelers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad – now Volgograd – but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. Hailed by the New York Times as "superb" when it first appeared in 1948, A Russian Journal is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document.
What they saw and movingly recorded in words and on film was what Steinbeck called "the great other side there … the private life of the Russian people." Unlike other Western reporting about Russia at the time, A Russian Journal is free of ideological obsessions. Rather, Steinbeck and Capa recorded the grim realities of factory workers, government clerks, and peasants, as they emerged from the rubble of World War II—represented here in Capa’s stirring photographs alongside Steinbeck’s masterful prose. Through it all, we are given intimate glimpses of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle. This edition features an introduction by Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw.
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“For a human picture of what life is like in Russia, as reported by a good observer and a perceptive photographer, A Russian Journal will help Americans know the Russians as people like themselves. Steinbeck has the gift of seeing and sharing what he sees. This is a very simple, straightforward book, without political implications. It is a personal experience book, with some of the hardships and problems but with almost nothing of censorship, except as indirectly applied by difficulties sometimes put in the way. They went, in the main, where they wanted to go; saw the things they wanted to see; talked to the people—rather than the mouthpieces of government. They liked the Russians—they ate and drank too much—they saw the ravages of war and were convinced the Russians wanted peace. The text of the book is about double the text that appeared in syndicated columns, but the deletions were for space not policy.”
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Kirkus Reviews (April 16, 1948)