A brilliant new work of interpretative history that provides a unique perspective on the beautiful but tortured culture of twentieth-century Russia.

Russia has endured more bloodshed than any other European country in the twentieth century. Yet, while countries such as Germany have learned the value of confronting the darker side of their own pasts, Russia has never faced the reality of its troubled history in a meaningful and collective way. In this provocative and highly original book, Catherine Merridale asks Russians difficult questions about how their country's volatile past has affected their everyday lives, their aspirations, their dreams, and their nightmares.

Based on extensive research including rare imperial archives, Soviet propaganda, memoirs, letters, newspapers, literature, psychiatric studies, and texts, as well as interviews with doctors, priests, social workers, policemen, survivors, gravediggers, and funeral directors, Night of Stone seeks answers to the questions: What is the true impact of violence in the Soviet century? How successfully have the Russians psychologically rewritten their own histories? What rituals have survived the Soviet regime, and what do they tell us of the Russian mentality? Reminiscent of the highly successful The Hour of Our Death, Night of Stone is an emotionally wrenching, eloquent work that will appeal to all readers of Russian and European history as well as anyone interested in the processes of memory.

"Merridale's account of how ordinary Russians coped with violent death on a scale few of us can even imagine is an epic and moving history." Misha Glenny, The Observer (Best Books of the Year choice)

"You don't have to be morbid – or a Russian scholar – to respond to this extraordinary and important book....Night of Stone is an admirable attempt to bridge the gulf in perception which still divides Russia and the West. Ms. Merridale is never condescending towards those she meets, and she listens not just to their words. She knows that in Russia, if you really wont to understand you have to listen also to the silences. The Economist

"Beautifully and simply written, Night of Stone is full of extraordinarily vivid glimpses of the past....The author's acceptance, and admiration, of the survival techniques and endurance of her interlocutors are among the reasons why this enthralling book so successfully sheds light on what she rightly calls 'a beautiful but tortured culture.'" The Times [London]

"An absorbing story of how Russians lived during the wars and terror of the twentieth century and how the survivors coped with the consequences. Merridale presents a penetrating yet graceful and moving narrative on death and memory in Russia, rich in oral an documentary research." Hiroaki Kuromiya, author of Freedom and Terror: A Ukranian-Russian Borderland, 1870-1990s

"Original and intriguing" Antony Beevor, The Independent (Best Books of the Year choice)

"A sensitive an highly original investigation of the effect on the Russian mind today of its long accumulated experiences of suffering and death. Illuminating reading." Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror

"This is a superb book...Having said that I find it hard to imagine who, exactly, is going to be able to read it....I found the subject matter of this book...almost too tragic to endure through nearly five hundred pages....Merridale writes with real flair and passion, and is clearly more than a standard academic observer of her subject." Anne Applebaum, Literary Review, December 2000,

"The British historian Catherine Merridale set out to write the story of 20th century Russia, a society that saw two revolutions ? the Soviet, in 1917, and the overthrow of Communism, in 1991. She wanted to write about "the idea that a modern revolution could try to create an entirely new kind of person." What she found was more coherence than disjunction, and most of this coherence had to do with death.

It could hardly be otherwise in a society that, from the beginning of World War I in 1914 to Stalin's death in 1953, lost more than 50 million citizens to war, to political violence, to the famines that swept the country in the early '30s and late '40s, and to the epidemics that followed each of those catastrophes, often because..." Charles Taylor, Salon.com (read Salon.com's entire review)

During the twentieth century, Russia, Ukraine, and the other territories of the former Soviet Union experienced more bloodshed and violent death than anywhere else on earth: fifty million dead in an epic of destruction that encompassed war, revolution, famine, epidemic, and political purges. In Night of Stone, Catherine Merridale asks Russians difficult questions about how their country's volatile past has affected their everyday lives, aspirations, dreams, and nightmares. Drawing upon evidence from rare Imperial archives, Soviet propaganda, memoirs, letters, newspapers, literature, psychiatric studies, and interviews, Night of Stone provides a highly original and revealing history of modern Russia.