Soggy Saga

Before he left the Soviet Union for the U.S. in 1980, Vassily Aksyonov was part of a restless generation of writers chafing at centuries of censorship and inspired by the irreverent styles of the West. The Burn, a novel written in the early '70s and first published in the U.S. after the author's arrival, is his best-known satirical howl against Soviet oppression and conformity. Aksyonov has published other books in exile, but now, after a decade of personal and artistic freedom, he has written one for the American market. Generations of Winter (Random House; 592 pages; $25) will probably draw comparisons to War and Peace and Dr. Zhivago. In fact, Aksyonov has assembled a clumsy reproduction of a romantic Russian family saga, erratically decorated with historical murals, folklore, fantasy and B-movie dialogue.

Set between 1925 and 1945, Generations moves from disaster to disaster as despotic communism devours its own and Germany attacks and destroys millions more. Members of the Gradov family, led by Dr. Boris Nikitovich, make their separate ways through history. Aksyonov impressively spreads out a panorama of suffering, but he overlays it with shameless melodrama, unconvincing uplift and grotesque humor. Readers who sling their hammock, move their samovar onto their veranda and settle down for an old-fashioned summer read may be distracted by a narrative farrago that includes a scene in which Dr. Gradov nearly wins the Order of Lenin for giving Stalin an emergency enema.

But where is it written that a novel can't combine tragedy and hamfisted vulgarity? Certainly not in America. History, Marx said, repeats itself as farce; with Generations of Winter, so does Russian historical fiction.