The Upper and the Lower

Full immersion in the era of the Great Break: the author recreates everyday life and the way of living of the time of the First World War and the subsequent revolution, delicately and persuasively.

In front of the reader is a melodious, expressive language that brings back the feeling of “War and Peace,” but under other historical circumstances.

This is a work of fiction based on documentary material, where the word is given to everyone: there are no unconditionally right and no unambiguously guilty parties. Perhaps that is why Galina Kalinkina calls the book a “novel-justification.”

Galina Kalinkina is a prose writer, critic, and essayist.

Her novels “Лист лавровый в пищу не употребляется” and “Голое поле” were included in the longlists of the “Bolshaya Kniga” and “Yasnaya Polyana” prizes.

In Moscow, in the Preobrazhenskaya Sloboda, a house of a manufacturer—an Old Believer—still stands. The family chronicle in the novel “Верхние и нижние” was invented by the author, but it relies on real details of life in a Moscow merchant family. The household members and their close relatives are divided into “the upper ones” and “the lower ones,” into “drummers,” “doll-makers,” “lawyers/legists” and “heirs.” All of them try to hold on to their dreams and protect the house amid the reality of the war of 1914 and the revolution that followed it. Some accept the changes, while others wait for “the final horror” to leave…

Galina Kalinkina chooses a stratum of people that contemporary writers scarcely noticed. Ordinary Russian townspeople of the early 20th century against the backdrop of revolutions, the First World War, and the Civil War. But in such upheavals there is no simple “background” and no mere extras—each hero of “Верхние и нижние” is in one way or another drawn into the larger history (Roman Senchin).

We still do not fully see Russia on the eve of the revolution—its people, their way of life, and how an enormous, terrifying story grows out of everyday life. The author helps us see this time by holding the years of the great rupture up to a careful magnifying glass (Olga Balla).