New Books Network Lesley Chamberlain, "The Mozhaisk Road" (Austin Macauley, 2025)
Jan 25, 2026
Lesley Chamberlain, novelist and historian who has long studied Russia, discusses her new novel The Mozhaisk Road. She traces 1978 Moscow through dissidents, invented apparatchiks, and Western reporters. Short scenes explore rumors of collapse, private political talk, and symbolic acts like a bulldozed outdoor art show. The conversation evokes nostalgia for Moscow’s cultural contradictions.
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Young Correspondent's Early Russia Experience
- Chamberlain recounts living in Russia at 26 and being plunged into Soviet life after studying Russian literature.
- That early experience seeded forty years of thinking that produced The Mozhaisk Road.
Three Perspectives Explain Russia's Puzzle
- Lesley Chamberlain frames her novel around Western observers, dissidents, and apparatchiks to explore Russia's moral complexities.
- She argues these groups interact to reveal why Russians are trapped in historical patterns preventing reform.
Apparatchiks And The Banal Evil Trap
- Chamberlain invents 'Nomklats'—apparatchiks who perpetuate the system through everyday compromises.
- She treats them sympathetically to probe how banal evil and moral weakness take hold.
