The eighth best book of 2023 goes to Marina Osipova’s The Drau River Flowers to Siberia: The Victims of Victory.

What is it about? In 1945 the Soviet Union was one of the victors in World War Two. It was supposed to be the end of repression, genocide, and tyranny but for those who found themselves under Soviet rule that was far from the truth. Told from the perspective of Anna and Zakhary, two individuals who are labelled as “enemies of the people” for different reasons, we learn about the victims of victory, whose stories have been hushed and silence in the decades after they happened.

Why did I love it? Having studied and written about World War Two for a long time now I have, of course, learned about the many crimes committed by the Soviet Union both before and after the war. Stalin is among one of the worst mass murderers in history and it should come as no surprise that he would continue his reign of terror after peace had been restored in Europe. Yet, despite this fact and the opening of Soviet archives in the late 1980s and 1990s, the stories of people arrested, tortured, and imprisoned after World War Two is surprisingly few and far between. One would be hard pressed to find many books focusing on these crimes, particularly ones focusing on what has been coined “the betrayal of the Cossacks.” Case in point, I only found out about the Cossacks and their betrayal while flipping through some decades old documentary that mentioned the incident in passing. I did a Google search and while you can find a Wikipedia article about it, there aren’t many other sources.

But Ms. Osipova set out to change that. In extraordinary prose, Ms. Osipova weaves together a heart wrenching story about two people who exemplified the victims of Stalin; Anna for the Soviet citizen caught in the crossfires of the Communists and the Fascists, and Zakhary for the person who viewed Stalin as the greater enemy and chose to fight for the Axis forces. While I won’t get into the complexities of their decisions, particularly Zakhary’s, I will say that as the reader I could not help but feel immense pity for them and many, many other real life people who suffered under Stalin. The Victims of Victory is, unsurprisingly, a very difficult book to read but that is no excuse to not pick it up. Writing and teaching about history is about learning from the past and how can we ever expect to learn about it if we refuse to read books like Ms. Osipova’s? It is easier to pick up a historical fiction story in which we know the ending is happy but it’s just as important to read the difficult stories as well. And that is why I have selected this historical fiction for the number eight spot.

Read my full review of The Drau River Flowers to Siberia: The Victims of Victory at https://rachelrheil.com/blog/2023/09/the-drau-river-flows-to-siberia-the-victims-of-victory-by-marina-osipova-review/.