One Night in Winter: A Novel (P.S. (Paperback))

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s monster biography, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, is one of the best that I’ve ever read. When I saw that he published a Russian-themed novel, I decided to read One Night in Winter. This multi-layered historical epic showcases the trials, the rewards, the fears and the tragedies of living in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. It’s also about secret loves and lost innocence.

One Night in Winter opens in June 1945. The war in Europe is over and people in Moscow are rejoicing. Big plans are being made for a victory parade. The children of Joseph Stalin Commune School 801 are the main characters in this drama, along with their parents. With the exception of one boy, all the students are the children of the Soviet Union’s elite. They live in luxurious apartments, have country dachas, and cars with drivers. Many of them are in Stalin’s inner circle. But a small group of these teens form a secret club called the Fatal Romantics. They admire the writings of Alexander Pushkin and especially, his Eugene Onegin. They play a “Game” where they reenact the duel-scene from the novel. Things go terribly wrong when instead of fake dueling pistols, someone swaps them out for a real gun and two of the teens are killed.

The killings set off a big Soviet-style investigation and children as small as six years old are arrested, jailed, and grilled for information. Instead of a children’s game, Soviet investigators see the Fatal Romantics as a plot to overthrow the government. But it seems like the real objective is to find out all their parents’ secrets. In this way, One Night plays out much like a mystery.

One Night is an amazing window on the world of Stalin’s Soviet Union—especially on a personal level. The children start their school days by singing Thank you Comrade Stalin for Our Happy Childhood. Parents live in fear of their houses being bugged. They only speak of sensitive subjects in hushed tones in their bathrooms. A promotion could mean the beginning of the end, and people could be arrested at any time on trumped-up charges. The large cast of characters was easier to keep track of than I anticipated. But I did find the bouncing around in time a little disconcerting. I am also a little jaded when an author puts thoughts and/or words in the mouths of real characters. Montefiore has Stalin pondering “He remembered his wives, his many girlfriends. If only there had been more love in my life, he thought despondently, but we Bolsheviks are a military-religious order like the Knights Templar. The Revolution always came first. I was no husband and now I’m alone.” Did Stalin really feel that way? I’m not sure. But I am sure that I enjoyed Montefiore’s writing in One Night in Winter, which had a special meaning for me in that I recently saw the adaptation of Eugene Onegin as an opera by Tchaikovsky. Reading more about Pushkin’s work was a special treat.

The horrors that were visited upon the Russian people by an increasingly paranoid Josef Stalin before and after WWII were so brutal that they defy understanding. Simon Sebag Montefiore is well acquainted with the appalling realities and has written very successful accounts, fiction and non fiction, to expose what happened. This time he has built a powerful story around a real event which saw the reach of the security apparatus extending right into the homes and families of the Soviet nomenklatura. The accused were the children of people Stalin knew well and interacted with frequently. None of this protected the children from the most bizarre charges of treason and counter revolutionary plots. "One night in winter" makes very unsettling reading.

Nikolai and Rosa are both killed when a play turns deadly. The students re-enact a scene from Pushkin’s famous poem, “Eugene Onegin,” which features a duel with pistols. The pair are members of the Fatal Romantics Club, a secret club set up by Nikolai, a boy who loves romance and theater. The participants all think the shooting is pretend, until the guns that are used shoot real bullets. Then the question becomes: Was it an accident, a suicide pact, or murder?

The story takes place in 1945 Moscow, just after Stalin has defeated the Nazis. The war isn’t over, but the people of Russia are celebrating this major victory. On the night of the shooting, the streets are crowded as people line the road for the Victory Parade. When the shots ring out, no one can say for sure who shot who.

Thus, an investigation is started. Nikolai kept a notebook, covered in red velvet, in which he wrote things about his favorite poet, Pushkin, as well as about the Club. He included plans for a “secret” government takeover, in which the members of the club would participate. It was all written in jest, but after Nikolai and Rosa die and the notebook is discovered, the deaths become grounds for Stalin to investigate for possible treachery or treason.

Both victims attended the well-known Commune School 801, where Stalin’s children had been students. One of them is an acquaintance of Stalin’s son, Vasily. With the exception of one boy, the children’s parents are all wealthy, high-ranking officials in Stalin’s regime.

Because this is a time of rampant paranoia for all involved in Stalin’s regime, a full-scale investigation is launched to uncover the “secret” plot to overthrow him and his government. Friends of the victims are taken to the infamous Lubyanka Prison for questioning. First, only a couple of students are involved, but then the net is cast wider, and more and more are brought in, the youngest of whom is only six years old. The investigation eventually expands to include teachers at the school. As accusations are thrown around, and threats are made to the students and their families, the children begin to “tell the truth,” and seemingly harmless secrets are misconstrued as something much more. Stalin suspects a real conspiracy against him, engineered by the pupils, their teachers and their parents. Even though there is no conspiracy, the secrets and their consequences change the lives of the students and their families forever.

ONE NIGHT IN WINTER is fictional, but based on an actual case that involved children of high-ranking Soviet officials. Simon Sebag Montefiore does an exceptional job of recreating the time period, using real-life historical figures as characters, such as Stalin and some of his officers. It’s a tale of love and passion, friendship and betrayal, wealth and privilege, mistrust, rumor, paranoia, Communism and “the truth,” told in a riveting manner that grips readers until the very end.

Reviewed by Christine M. Irvin.

"One Night in Winter," set in 1945 during World War II and the Stalinist dictatorship of Russia, describes what happens when a romantic triangle among some high school students, ending in a murder-suicide, has catastrophic consequences for the teens who befriended the dead students and their parents.

For the dead teens are not ordinary youth -- they are the children of vicious dictator Joseph Stalin's courtiers -- his top bureaucrats and generals -- in a closed totalitarian society where any crime, love affair or other unusual behavior among the Communist Party elite's children can be used to ruin them and their parents, leading to job loss and imprisonment.

I was captured by the plight of the surviving students and their parents from the moment the book opened, and raced through it to see what would become of them as they were imprisoned and questioned by Stalin's secret police.

This is the rare adult novel that might appeal to a young adult demographic as well.

Author Simon Sebag Montefiore is a respected biographer of mid-20th century Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin. Since completing his two volume biography of Stalin, Montefiore has written two novels about the private lives of Stalin's elite -- "Sashenka" and "One Night in Winter." They are stand-alone novels -- you do not need to read both to enjoy "One Night in Winter" -- but "One Night in Winter" does contain a major character from "Sashenka," whose fate is finally revealed.

As with many other early readers, I gave the novel a shot because of the author's extensive writing about the Soviets, and particularly Stalin. In effect, the story serves as the plot for another take on Stalin and his inner circle, with a dose of Soviet life for a certain class. We of course see the expected characteristics of Stalin, with perhaps a bit of a more human touch here and there instead of spending all his time sending folks to the gulag.

The core event and its investigation seemed at about the limits of poetic license for me, and perhaps that's a common sentiment, as the author added an unusual explanation at the end about why some key fictional elements of the story were someone possible, inspired by similar events and people. Don't underestimate the willingness of the Soviet state to turn nothing into a catastrophe for the unlucky, and the author showed his research into too many interrogations and intimidations.

I can call out a few items that were a bit off, such as the kid at the beginning who somehow got into the elite school and was soon meeting bigwigs, or the adult romance in the second half, which seemed a bit over the top. Even so, the historical background and characters were enough to keep me engaged.

This book is a fictionalization of a real event: the shooting of two teens in the middle of a crowded square and how the prolonged investigation affects the community. Even early on, the actual incident stops being that important and the book becomes more about the difficulties of life, even for the most loyal, under such a harsh dictatorship. There is only a vague Russian "flavor" to this book from the cold weather, the characters' names, and the literary influence of Russian writers.

Unfortunately, there are so many characters that many of them remain underdeveloped and uninteresting, or at least non-distinct. It is hard to tell some of them apart, and most of them remain fairly one-dimensional. The most interesting character by far, to me, was that of Stalin, whose whims and preferences make him come to life. Everyone else was rather generic.

I found this novel to be intriguing especially because it was set in Moscow during the days after World War II. An investigation becomes known as the Children's Case where youth across the city are arrested and forced to testify against their friends and their parents. This mentality of not being able to trust anyone and the betrayals of family, friends and neighbors because of the government has always fascinated me. Here, the author excels in his narrative exposing the fear and terror during the reign of Stalin.

While this isn't the most elegantly written novel I've ever read, "One Night in Winter" is a compelling story of love and privilege in Stalin's USSR.

Inspired by a real incident Sebag Montefiore discovered while researching "Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar," "One Night in Winter" deals with a tragic event among the children of Stalin's inner circle. In a system where there are no accidents and no coincidences, this tragedy leads to arrests and accusations. People try to stay loyal. Some try to save themselves by betraying others.

While this may not be as good as "Children of the Arbat," I did find that the story held my interest. I got caught up in the betrayals, emotional as well as political, of the characters and felt that Sebag Montifiore had gotten to the heart of the era he was writing about.

. . . this novel!

"One Night in Winter" was inspired by an actual event which took place during WWII in Stalin's Soviet Union. This being said, the novel is entirely a work of fiction which uses the names and positions of some real historical people.

The setting is a school for the children of the super-elite: those individuals closest to, and most trusted by, Stalin. I found that many of the characters were quite well-developed; the interpersonal relationships were well thought out and believable, and, sadly, the atrocities for which Stalin and his regime were known were accurately presented.

There was quite a bit of pathos toward the end of the book (which one would expect in a novel about Russia!) and the epilogue was quite satisfactory.

I enjoyed this book very much.

Recommended.

No, that sentence is not the winning entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for worst opening sentence of a novel. It's an actual sentence from "One Night in Winter."

Montefiore knows his history (he's a historian) and has told a great story about life in Stalin-era Russia. Unfortunately, the story -- as good as it is -- is poorly told and, as a result, never sucks you in.

The plot revolves around an apparently harmless teenage club of "fatal romantics," who -- under the tutelage of an inspiring teacher (ala Robin Williams' character in "The Dead Poet's Society" -- study and reenact the works of Alexander Pushkin. But when two of the teenagers end up dead during one of their games, the police see a conspiracy that reaches all the way up to an increasingly paranoid Stalin.

I hate giving a negative review to someone who has spent so much time studying the history of a time and place and creating a cast of characters we are meant to care about. But the characters are never made fully believable and tend toward cookie-cutter templates: the glamorous actress, the sultry doctor and her colorless Bolshevik husband, the well-read 10-year old who wants to marry his mother (really???).

The dialogue is equally unrealistic, with none of the characters having a distinct voice. This -- along with the Russian names -- made it hard to keep track of them. I found myself having to refer frequently to the list of characters in the front of the book and still being confused.

Then there’s that writing. Shifts from past to present tense for no apparent reason; grammatical errors any number of people should have caught, e.g., "It fitted my grandmother and it fits you."

I can't help but compare this book to the far superior "The Orphan Master's Son," which paints a portrait of oppressive life in N. Korea with a similar cast of characters (the glamorous actress, prisoners, guards, a paranoid leader, the government elite, etc.).

But where that book was believable, with characters that felt like real people from the innocents to the perpetrators of evils, "One Night in Winter" works overly hard to hit all the right historical notes, while somehow missing on the personal level.

Three stars for making us care, but not quite as much as we ought to.

"One Night In Winter" is probably the best novel I have read this year. I prefer not to make a definitive judgement until a bit more time has passed, but it is quite an absorbing read... a book I shall not forget.

Like most people, I tend to avoid books where bad things happen to children; so the blurb on the back cover of the book..."Youth across the city are arrested and forced to testify against their friends and their parents..." did not entice me; but I had read good things about the author so I decided to give the book a try.

Bad things do happen to the children, but these are not the kinds of bad things that are beyond the pale: for the most part they do not involve physical abuse. There is much mental anguish visited upon the "children," and they are given poor food and are unable to communicate with friends and family but they will survive.

And although they are called "children," these young people (with two exceptions) are eighteen years old...not what we usually think of as children. Also, for the most part they are spoiled brats... offspring of movie stars or children of Stalin's Politburo elite. They are chauffeured to school each day by their parents and they sing a song each day in school thanking Stalin for their "childhood," and the author constantly refers to them a "children" and they are certainly immature, but it is as if the author is force-feeding the reader on the concept that these eighteen year-olds are "children," and it just doesn't stick. At least not with this reader.

I am not saying that the "children's" run-in with the secret police was a good thing for them, but it was a reality check which, of course, always has good points as well as bad points. And one of the young people does suffer terrible consequences, but we don't learn about this till near the end of the book.

The main character in the book, in my opinion, is the Russian system of government under Josef Stalin. If you want to get a real understanding of what life was like during Stalin's reign you should read this novel. I had some general knowledge of the times and the people involved...Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrenti Beria, etc., and I remember my parents talking about "purges" and "five year plans," etc. when I was a child, but this novel really captures what was going on in Russia in those years. For instance, although I knew of Beria, I had no idea that Beria had raped thousands of women and young girls over the years and that Stalin and the others knew about this but were not particularly concerned. Life went on. No action need be taken.

The focal event of the story is the shooting of two young people at a festival in Moscow celebrating victory over the Nazi war machine. The young people are Nicolasha Blagov and Rosa Shako: students at school 801 which is where Stalin sent his own children to be educated. Nicolasha was the leader of a literary-minded club he had formed called "The Fatal Romantics' Club." The members all loved Pushkin, and they had a secret ceremony in which they reenacted the duel between Onegin and Lensky in Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin." They usually performed this ceremony in a graveyard. This time, however, Nicolasha decided the ceremony would be performed amongst the crowd gathered to celebrate the victory over Hitler.

(SPOILER WARNING)

The pistols used in the duel in this ceremony are usually actors' props, borrowed from a theatre troupe but this time one of the pistols is real and the two students are killed. This is not a perfect book, and herein is one of the imperfections. This double-murder (or whatever it is) is just too neat. I don't want to tell you who kills whom; but the odds against this happening (two pistol shots and two deaths) with the weapons being used by youngsters who are not familiar with guns, in a crowd of pushing and shoving Victory celebrants, are very high.

Furthermore, although there is an extensive investigation into the facts, we never find answers to important questions arising from the event. For instance, swapping a real pistol for a fake pistol was a really stupid thing to do. Nicolasha may have had motive for taking his own life, because his father was about to be transferred out of the country and Nicolasha would have to go with his father and leave his true love (Serafima) behind, but he certainly didn't intend for Rosa Shako to die, and shooting off pistols during a crowded victory celebration could easily have harmed innocent bystanders...something a romantic such as Nicolasha would never consider doing. So why did Nicolasha do this? We never find out.

(END OF SPOILER WARNING)

The epilogue is one of the high points of the book. Here we have the historian talking and not the novelist. The author claims in the epilogue that the book is really about love. Well, okay.

It's beginning to sound as if I didn't like the book, whereas actually I liked it very much. The rest of the epilogue is excellent and tells us much of the reality of the time under Stalin. Love? Sure, there's love. There's plenty of sex. There's great character development. I'll never forget Benya Golden (Pushkin instructor at school 801) or Satinov, or Senka, a 10-year old who is smarter than all the rest, including the adults, and who is generally known as "the little professor," and many others...but I found the "love" strange at times. We find people in their forties blinded by their passion for each other while their children are suffering in prison. What kind of love is that? A young guy meets a young girl at the ballet and they hem and haw and the next thing you know they need to be together for the rest of their lives. Is that what love is?

Listen, for all it's faults, "One Night In Winter" is a terrific read. Don't miss it. I intend to read the author's other books on Stalin.

I bought this book largely on the recommendation of the BBC history magazine and I feel that I was a little deceived. What I was expecting was a story examining the history of 1940s Russia through a form of murder mystery. The style I was expecting was akin to that of Hilary Mantel, the fiction filling in gaps in the historical record and allowing the reader a greater perceived insight into historical figures. I had good reasons for these expectations; Simon Sebag Montefiore is by trade a historian so I can be forgiven for believing that his fiction would be even more grounded in historical reality than Mantel’s historical fiction. What I failed to properly notice were the repeated descriptions of the novel as a love story.

I believe that what Mr Montefiore has attempted to do is not to illuminate Russia’s history but rather Russia’s literature. To combine an homage to Solzhenitsyn with an homage to Pasternak in a single novel seems like an almost impossible task, but it has been achieved in this finely crafted story. Montefiore achieves this by setting the book out in sections, the first reminding the reader of Dr Zhivago, the next Cancer Ward, then back to Zhivago and so on. He even manages to include an introduction to Pushkin to help his readers to really get a broad picture of Russian literary genius. This is extremely well done, my problem is that I really do not enjoy angst driven examination of the human condition. I had to force my way through the Pasternak sections in order to get the reward of some Solzhenitsyn.

The story is set against a historical backdrop that is (I’m sure) very well researched. This is summarised in a couple of pages at the end of the book and is in its own right very interesting. However, the historical accuracy of this backdrop is fairly immaterial to the story, which could have been set in any dystopian society real or imagined.

If you want a good romance this could be the book for you, if you are interested in great literature then this is also to be recommended. If you want a ‘historical novel’ stick to Hilary Mantel, Sansom, Bragg or even Bernard Cornwell.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is an acclaimed historian and author of the prizewinning biography "Young Stalin". In One Night in Winter, his second work of fiction, he marries his deeply developed understanding of Stalin's complex, paranoid psyche to actual domestic events in Moscow during and immediately after WW2, to create a plausible, intriguing and often dark story.

His fully fledged players are a mixture. Some are invented while others are actual people, true to their characters and parts in history and often quoted accurately. The result is a superior and wholly satisfying historical thriller which provides an understanding of its time, place and people. Highly recommended.

Simon Sebag Montefiore has written an outstanding historical novel which accurately captures the feelings, thoughts, and atmosphere of Stalinist Russia immediately after World War II. The author creates astonishingly realistic characters and a series of events that begin in complete innocence and which crescendo and climax into surreal interrogations at the Lubyanka Prison of several high school aged students and also of two children who are ten years old and six years old respectively. They are accused of a cover up, a conspiracy against the Soviet government and Stalin himself. It all started when two important members of an innocent sounding, exclusive, but very secret Poetry Club reenacted a duel based on Pushkin's poetry and life. They wore authentic nineteenth century costumes and presumably used theatrical firearms. This reenactment took place on a very special day near a bridge when the Victory Parade was held on June 24, 1945 with Stalin in attendance, accompanied on a balcony by the highest Soviet dignitaries. The actors ended up dead as a result of the duel. When the local police investigate and discover who the victims are, they pass on the investigation to higher authorities, The complex nature of the crime that two dead students who are the children of high ranking Soviet officials is most astonishing in and of itself but when the interrogators begin to round up their friends for questioning and take them to the most notorious prison in the Soviet Union, the parents and those aware of what these special circumstances mean begin to fear for their lives and for the lives of their children. Most mind-boggling of all is that the interrogators accuse these students of a conspiracy against the government, a plot against Stalin himself. Past history has demonstrated exactly what serious consequences follow when the role, authority and decisions of the exalted leader of the Soviet Union are questioned.

The author created an historical novel, a great work of literature which is a major contribution to understanding Russian culture, politics and history during the post World War II era. The author is a Russian historian and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He engaged in meticulous research and loosely based his work on an actual event that occurred in 1943 at which time two children of Soviet officials were found dead, wearing costumes, which resulted in investigations, imprisonment, and banishment for those who were accused and found guilty. In this fictional novel, the author creates a highly believable, suspenseful plot based on the circumstances and relationships between all those affiliated with the Fatal Romantics' Club, those who attended the best school in Moscow named the Joseph Stalin Commune School, and the parents of the children, many of whom were highly important Soviet officials. The characters are highly developed and most impressive in their respective roles, both in fulfilling their duties and the expectations of family and society as well as expressing their true feelings and natures.The author creates tension, drama, romance, unexpected arrests, and imprisonment with great skill as the plot is gradually developed and explored related to new revelations which clarify how the authorities learned of the Poetry Club and their twisted interpretation of a secret book which came to light in which some thoughts and ideas were recorded by the leader of the club. The author. There are many surprises and a few unexpected twists toward the end of the novel that ties together the diverse pieces of this most fascinating surreal puzzle. Erika Borsos [pepper flower]

The "Children's Case" is the center of this historical fiction novel based in Russia and surrounding the families of Russian political leaders. Initially, the death of a young couple seems a tragic but small-scale event: however their clothing of a century past is a clue that there is more to their lives.

The search for the killers and what their attire represents isn't an easy one: too many people are involved and their not eager to share their involvement. Much of this revolves around Stalin himself, at times described almost affectionately, and his cronies who fear any opposition to their regime. Another main character is a romantic literature professor who personifies a sort of flaky appeal that naturally rubs his superiors wrong.

So, with all this happening, why does it earn an "ehh" from this Russophile? It seems almost too stereotypical, starting with the names, locations, and cultural references; all could easily be taken from page one of a Wiki page on Russia. It doesn't feel unique. The author is acclaimed and knowledgeable, but this feels like it's all been told before. Maybe it's the vast amount of characters (that rivals Tolstoy) that makes it hard to keep track of everyone and thus care about them. They come and go so quickly and with so little difference that it's all a whirl of names and the story arcs become quickly tangled.

"One Night in Winter: A Novel" by Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historical novel that demonstrates the horrors and terror Stalin inflected on Russia. It's beautifully executed with good flow and wonderful characters against a background of darkness. I was pulled into the story early on and couldn't help but think about myself if I were in Russia during the reign of Stalin and what may have down.

This is a story I was deeply moved by. When I finished it, I had to sit in silence thinking about what I had just read.

One Night In Winter translates the fear that permeated so much of Soviet culture, even in the most privileged families. The story focuses on the so-called Children's case, in which two school children from prominent families are found shot. Instead of writing this novel as a detective story about who did it, which in all honesty is never 100% clear, the story focuses on the brutality of the Soviet justice system. School children are forced to confess to crimes they did not commit because of the paranoia instilled by Stalin and those who execute his orders. In the end, the children and their families, while spared being shot, are devastated by this brutal system. It's truly heart wrenching.
The book is impeccably researched and it's clear the author has a profoundly intimate knowledge of Russia history. If you're the least bit interested in WWII era history, or are just looking for a truly exceptional novel, you need to read this book. It's phenomenal.

This is a gripping read. Simon Sebag Montefiore knows how to hold your attention so that you'll want to read the whole book in one sitting. It's great on plot, suspense, and context, though one wonders whether charm can co-exist with the intense horror of the Stalin period. At times it's too light hearted. The two love stories are too slushy. The characters are too thin. As a result, it's not great literature, but it is a good thriller.

Geoff Crocker Editor Atheist Spirituality web site

British historian and author Simon Sebag Montefiore writes both fiction and non-fiction. He mainly writes about Russia, back when it was Russia, and the Soviet Union, when it was the Soviet Union. His first work of fiction was "Sashenka", set in the old Russian Empire and continuing into Stalin's rule. It was an epic novel of a woman, one of the first Bolshevics and how she made her way in the Soviet power structure. Montefiore's new novel, "One Night in Winter", is in some ways a continuation of "Sashenka", with basically new characters. And "Night" is just as powerfully written as "Sashenka".

"One Night in Winter" is the retelling of a true story of murder among the young elite in Moscow in 1945. The actual incident the story is based on occurred in 1943, but Montefiore has taken certain liberties with his story. The story opens in April, 1945, in front of School #801, which is a private school in Moscow, attended by the children of the high-ranking members of the Soviet government and military. These kids - mostly around 17 and 18, with some younger siblings - are referred to by parents and teachers alike as "children". These "children" had led privileged, protected lives, even during war-time. Not said in the book, but certainly true were that other kids of the same age were fighting and dying in battles against the Germans, who had invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941.

In April, the Germans had surrendered and all of Moscow was in the streets, celebrating. A core group of students from School #801 had joined in the impromptu festivities when two shots rang out, and a young man and woman lay dead on a bridge. The two were children of the elite and had been students at #801. The police and Stalin's own men were determined to find out who committed the murders. But finding the facts meant taking in these "children" for questioning at the feared Lubianka Prison. Even though their parents were some of Stalin's closest advisers, little mercy was shown to the kids. Eight children - including two aged 6 and 10 - were held for weeks as the questioning continued. Eventually, the kids began to "tell" on their parents. What was said in apartments between husband and wife. What was confided in their children.

When did the fear of Lubianka override the question of familial loyalty?

Montefiore writes his characters - both the adults and the children - with incredible nuance. All the adults - including the teachers and administrators at School #801 - lived lives of fear and secrecy. Their service to the Soviet government and to Stalin himself, did not protect them or their children from the oppression of the system. This book is incredible reading and is a good sequel-of-a-sort to "Sashenka".

As seen on The Bookish Owl (http://www.thebookishowl.net/?p=6975)

One Night in Winter was an atmospheric novel. Simon Sebag Montefiore nailed the tone of Communist Russia and there is a sense of dread, betrayal, and apprehension throughout the entire book. The characters, despite all of them being interesting, failed to resonate with me. One of the main characters, Serafima, read like a Mary Sue and came across as flat even with her intriguing story arc. One Night in Winter was a riveting read but it failed to get me to empathize with the people involved, however dire their circumstances were.

I was excited to see that Simon Sebag Montefiore has turned his pen again towards fiction. "One Night in Winter" is an intensely moving, dark and enthralling tale of passion and secrets, it transcends the boundaries of genre, being at once a political thriller, historical fiction, and romance. Montefiore, a terrific storyteller, writes about family love, youthful romance, mystery and adulterous passion, equally brilliantly as he did writing about power in his compelling nonfiction work, combined with his genuine insight into the mind of Stalin and his court, and you have a book that will delight any reader.

A fidgety page-turner, this book is impossible to put down, an intelligent compilation of primary and secondary, real and fictional characters. Montefiore is unflinching in his depiction of Stalin as the master manipulator, and the villainous nature of his acolytes, and most malignant monsters, Beria, Abakumov, and Kobylov. His fictional characters so well drawn, both believably flawed and heroic. Here is poor young Andrei with a tainted family name, beautiful Serafima with a secret, romantic hero Benya Golden with a broken heart, General Satinov with a dangerous passion, and best of all, ten-year old Senka, who is in my opinion the most wonderful character ever invented in fiction.

The author powerfully evokes the sense of a world in which everything is so delicately balanced, that the tiniest ripple can assume seismic proportions, packed with historical details, bringing post-war Russia to life, immaculately describing the lavish lifestyle of the Soviet elite in chandeliered apartments in the Granvosky building, owning more than one posh car, chauffeurs, and designer clothes, while the rest of the country lives in crumbling buildings, roads, walls, cars, all beige, peeling, khaki, and grey. All sharing an anxious existence under the shadow of the Central Committee (Stalin) the deity that controls all.

While looking into the deaths of two students from Moscow's most elite school, found shot dead on the Stone Bridge near the Kremlin, on the day of the victory parade in 1945, a Pushkin-inspired secret club of the "Fatal Romantics' is discovered, "If we cannot live with love, we choose death" was in the club's mission statement, when Stalin learns of such "bourgeois sentimentality" it pricks the ailing dictator's ears, fueled by his paranoia, the rounding up frenzy begins for everyone involved ages six to eighteen. Thus begins the horrifying, tear-jerking, heartrending "Children's Case". With their children in the dungeons of the Lubyanka, frantic parents inwardly fighting an emotional breakdown, could only smile in public and calmly proclaim that Soviet justice will prevail.

As the interrogation progresses, brother is played against sister, children against parents and the investigation takes a turn where now the children have the unbearable burden of saving their parents. While switching back and forth between timelines, the author slowly exposed the hidden world of families and marriages, unveiling an adulterous affair, and forbidden young love, both equally heartbreaking.

I've cried buckets over the Author's first novel "Sashenka", a chilling story that tugs at your heartstrings, and at the end you are bawling, I have also been a huge fan of his history books, particularly his masterpiece on Jerusalem, and now "One Night in Winter", complex, nerve jangling, and emotionally demanding, is a work of great imaginative achievement, and one I can reread with undiminished pleasure. I highly recommend it.

This book was riveting from the very beginning! Set in Russia around the time of World War II, this story is a historical fiction that pulls you into the frightening time of Stalin’s dictatorship. It illustrates the degree of loyalty and single-minded focus demanded of the people at that time in history, especially those individuals and their families working closest to Stalin. It is a story of love, loss, regrets, fear, longing, short-lived relief, loyalty, hope, and sacrifice. Russian culture, literature, politics and philosophy are all interwoven this tale of a county, community, family and individuals in a very powerful time in world history. A great read!!

Bummed cause dad's exiled in Siberia and officially a non-person? Chill. The golden-hearted headmistress of Party Prep High in Moscow will fast track you and pay your fees. Worried dad's show trial might give you a bad rep? That shabby ain't chic with the communista elite? DUDE! Brush up your Pushkin...start quoting him now! Brush up your Pushkin, and the women you will wow!

It was apparently that easy to make them swoon back in Moscow, 1945. New kids in the movie Clueless have a harder time making the cut then our hero Andrei who is hanging with the son's of Soviet generals and the daughter's of Soviet cinema stars first week in town. A few stanzas of Eugene Onegen is you need to be in The Fatal Romantics gang, where boys wear their hair shockingly, unsocialistically long

All of this inanity is accompanied by truly mediocre writing. Serafima has "golden flecks in her eyes" (I don't even know what that means) and there's foreshadowing that hits you over the head like an actual Hammer & Sickle: "the antics of the Fatal romantics could ruin his rehabilitation. But as Andrei hurried towards his next lesson he sensed it was already too late..." [swell organ music]. Stalin's son has come and gone...more meatball than menace.

I'm a third of the way through this crap, and it is entirely possible I will die of boredom. I wanted to leave a warning before doing so: this one's a stinker.

Spoiled by annoying mistakes which should not have been made by a writer with such a profound knowledge of Russian / Soviet history. For example,it is inconceivable that a Soviet citizen in 1945 would compare falling pollen with "tiny alien spaceships". Stalin compares the 'American' Hurricane plane with Soviet machines, when anybody knows the Hurricane was British & obsolete at the time of Stalin's dialogue. The Mauser was not the standard Red Army sidearm.The Georgian for "thank you very much" is didi madloba, not didi madlobt. It is highly unlikely that Kurbsky - the son of a vanished victim of the purges - would be a car owner just after the end of the Patriotic War. Although these errors are small, they drastically reduce the authenticity of the narrative for anyone familiar with Soviet history.
For a really heartbreaking account of this regime and how it tore families apart, try The Whisperers , by Orlando Figes.

This novel places the reader in the midst of Stalin's Russia, where everyone chooses their words most carefully and the slightest misstep can mean arrest, imprisonment or death. In this Orwellian setting we meet a group of privileged young students who tempt the fates and the powers that be. Communist dogma is recited but the romance of Pushkin burns in their souls. This novel us about what it costs human beings to live under oppression, suspicion, and fear, and how love, even kept as the ultimate secret, empowers, emboldens, and ennobles.

Overall, such a strange book, consisting of 4 or 5 chunks of stories, loosely related but none of them at all compelling. A couple of ho-hum love stories, a few scared children, and one of the least interesting murder-suicide plots I've ever come across. The characters are weak (indistinguishable from each other) and do not "feel" Russian in any way. The dialogues are trite and unoriginal. At some point you suspect that the author does not know where the book is going and also does not have much of a grasp of human nature. As a student of Russian history and culture I wanted to love this book but was sorely disappointed .

Engaging. A complex tale spins out from what had started as fanciful children's play, revealing along the way the complex, unsettling life that existed under Stalin's rule. With each short chapter, I wanted to know what happens next. Though this is a very different style of writing, it reminded me of Ursela Hegi's Stones From The River in how it conveys in a very powerful way the nuances of lies and pretense by which normal citizens become complicit in the totalitarian rule that destroys them.

I am a Russophile. I loved this book. I recommended it to my husband and mom and they loved it as well. Very suspenseful. I could not put it down. Unlike some other reviewers I did not think it was too long and I loved the descriptiveness of Moscow in 1945.

Bummed cause dad's exiled in Siberia and officially a non-person? Chill. The golden-hearted headmistress of Party Prep High in Moscow will fast track you and pay your fees. Worried dad's show trial might give you a bad rep? That shabby ain't chic with the communista elite? DUDE! Brush up your Pushkin...start quoting him now! Brush up your Pushkin, and the women you will wow!

It was apparently that easy to make them swoon back in Moscow, 1945. New kids in the movie Clueless have a harder time making the cut then our hero Andrei who is hanging with the son's of Soviet generals and the daughter's of Soviet cinema stars first week in town. A few stanzas of Eugene Onegen is you need to be in The Fatal Romantics gang, where boys wear their hair shockingly, unsocialistically long

All of this inanity is accompanied by truly mediocre writing. Serafima has "golden flecks in her eyes" (I don't even know what that means) and there's foreshadowing that hits you over the head like an actual Hammer & Sickle: "the antics of the Fatal romantics could ruin his rehabilitation. But as Andrei hurried towards his next lesson he sensed it was already too late..." [swell organ music]. Stalin's son has come and gone...more meatball than menace.

I'm a third of the way through this crap, and it is entirely possible I will die of boredom. I wanted to leave a warning before doing so: this one's a stinker.

Spoiled by annoying mistakes which should not have been made by a writer with such a profound knowledge of Russian / Soviet history. For example,it is inconceivable that a Soviet citizen in 1945 would compare falling pollen with "tiny alien spaceships". Stalin compares the 'American' Hurricane plane with Soviet machines, when anybody knows the Hurricane was British & obsolete at the time of Stalin's dialogue. The Mauser was not the standard Red Army sidearm.The Georgian for "thank you very much" is didi madloba, not didi madlobt. It is highly unlikely that Kurbsky - the son of a vanished victim of the purges - would be a car owner just after the end of the Patriotic War. Although these errors are small, they drastically reduce the authenticity of the narrative for anyone familiar with Soviet history.
For a really heartbreaking account of this regime and how it tore families apart, try The Whisperers , by Orlando Figes.

This novel places the reader in the midst of Stalin's Russia, where everyone chooses their words most carefully and the slightest misstep can mean arrest, imprisonment or death. In this Orwellian setting we meet a group of privileged young students who tempt the fates and the powers that be. Communist dogma is recited but the romance of Pushkin burns in their souls. This novel us about what it costs human beings to live under oppression, suspicion, and fear, and how love, even kept as the ultimate secret, empowers, emboldens, and ennobles.

Overall, such a strange book, consisting of 4 or 5 chunks of stories, loosely related but none of them at all compelling. A couple of ho-hum love stories, a few scared children, and one of the least interesting murder-suicide plots I've ever come across. The characters are weak (indistinguishable from each other) and do not "feel" Russian in any way. The dialogues are trite and unoriginal. At some point you suspect that the author does not know where the book is going and also does not have much of a grasp of human nature. As a student of Russian history and culture I wanted to love this book but was sorely disappointed .

Engaging. A complex tale spins out from what had started as fanciful children's play, revealing along the way the complex, unsettling life that existed under Stalin's rule. With each short chapter, I wanted to know what happens next. Though this is a very different style of writing, it reminded me of Ursela Hegi's Stones From The River in how it conveys in a very powerful way the nuances of lies and pretense by which normal citizens become complicit in the totalitarian rule that destroys them.

I am a Russophile. I loved this book. I recommended it to my husband and mom and they loved it as well. Very suspenseful. I could not put it down. Unlike some other reviewers I did not think it was too long and I loved the descriptiveness of Moscow in 1945.

I love information dense books and even fiction, but this one straddles the world between non-fiction and fiction poorly which makes it a hard book to slog through. There isn't the pace of fiction or the feel of a great non-fiction book as it travels through historical events.
I couldn't finish this volume.

One Night in Winter provides the reader with a glimpse inside the Stalinist post-war era and the sycophantic Marshalls, Ministers and other elites (and more importantly, their families, children included) living life on the razor-edge of Joseph Stalin's psychopathic capriciousness and inhumanity.