SOURCE: "A Russian Family Copes with Stalinism's Evils," in The New York Times, August 8, 1994, p. C16.

In the review below, Lehmann-Haupt faults Generations of Winter for its use of archaic jargon and slang but nevertheless calls the book "monumental" and finds the language less distracting as the novel progresses.

There are a few hurdles to overcome before you can get caught up in the powerful sweep of Vassily Aksyonov's Generations of Winter, a Tolstoyan historical novel that is a departure from the author's previous, less traditional fiction (The Island of Crimea, Say Cheese!, The Burn) and traces the roller-coaster fortunes of one Russian family from 1925, the year of Stalin's ascent to power, to 1945, the end of World War II.

"'So you're not afraid?'" asks an American journalist in Moscow on page 10 "with the directness of a quarterback shotgunning the ball across midfield into his opponent's territory." The...