The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street: A Russian Adventure

Novelist and journalist Waterdrinker (The Rat of Amsterdam) interweaves memoir and history in this impressionistic account of Russia from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the present day. After helping to smuggle thousands of Cyrillic Bibles into Russia in 1988, Waterdrinker stayed in the country and found work as a tour guide before marrying a Russian woman and settling in an apartment on Tchaikovsky Street in St. Petersburg. Interspersed with his colorful profiles of ordinary Russians, including his in-laws, are sketches of the 1905 uprising that served as a “prelude” to the 1917 revolution and the bloody civil war that engulfed the country after the abdication of Nicholas II. Waterdrinker also profiles historical figures who lived on Tchaikovsky Street, including poet Zinaida Gippius (1869–1945), and recounts the Red Army’s massacre of anti-communist protestors in Tbilisi, Georgia, in April 1989. Though he wanders far afield—into the indignities of the writer’s life and the health of his cats, among other topics—Waterdrinker incisively captures the beauty and terror of his adopted country. Russophiles will savor this iconoclastic portrait of modern Russia. (Apr.)