In the novel “Dissidence. Tumult,” Alekseev reflects on the root causes and consequences of the merciless Russian uprising, the revolution, and the Civil War. Dissidence is a look back at Russia’s past: an attempt to understand what made a God-fearing and, by nature, calm Russian peasant pick up a rifle—or pitchforks—and go with them to his neighbor; what made brothers and fathers kill one another.
The action of the first book—“Tumult”—covers the period from the mid-19th century to 1920. The main events take place after the revolution. Merchant towns in Siberia smell of incense and robbery. The Kolchakites, the interventionists, Red Army regiments, and bands of criminals—whose gates to the central prisons opened in 1917—pour blood across the vastness of Siberia.
Red Terror is followed by White, White by Red, and the land takes everyone into one fraternal grave, without knowing any distinctions. Twin brothers, Andrei and Alexander, from the noble Beresin family, search for their path amid the crowd of the living and the dead—where it is so easy to lose one’s soul, one’s mind, one’s faith, and one’s ability to tell good from evil…