Heller Michal, The Machine and the Screws. How Soviet man hardened himself [1st edition].

Heller Michael, The Machine and the Screws. How the Soviet Man Hardened Himself, ed. Instytut Literacki, Paris 1988, 1st edition, p. 286, dimensions 13.5 x 21.5 cm. Publisher's booklet cover. Slight rubbing of the cover

The juxtaposition of the most important events and turns in the life of the author of Machines and Screws allows one to understand that this is a book, with all the rigors of workshop and reluctance to refer to one's own life, perhaps the most personal in the historian's oeuvre. In it we are dealing with a kind of "life-writing": almost a peer of the Soviet Union describes the experiences that befell him and all his fellow citizens, fellow travelers of Soviet Russia. He describes and proves - with his own life and the acuity of his analysis - how it was possible, contrary to the intentions of successive secretaries, NOT to become another screw.