In Kourdakov’s book, he uses the idea of contrast when writing. What this means is when writing he will have two different things, either to choose from, or deal with. He does this not only to show the complexity of his life, but also to give the readers a better understanding of what is going on. Not only that, but it gives a very interesting read. There are many of these contrasts in the book. For example, Sunday afternoon’s activities, or the meetings — public and private — where he got his award, or the leaders of the USSR vs. the leaders of the victims. All of these show the problems and decisions in his life that let the reader know who he really is. It shows what kind of person he is. Really the writing in this book is to show what the time was like, and how he reacted to it, rather than and a story of his life as well. The book has lots of insight.
All of these show what his life is like. One of these contrasts is Joining a crime syndicate, or not. Of course the leading factor in this was money being that the pay rate was really high. If he were to join the Syndicate and do the jobs, he would get paid 25 rubles. This for him was big. This he would have never even thought of before. Why wouldn’t he take it? The jobs, however, were violent and hurt a lot of people. The jobs included beating up worshippers of Christ, and then stealing their bibles. Of course he took a job where he failed, and he stopped doing it so often.
This contrast is not the most complex in the book, but one of the biggest. This contrast shows how he could choose between doing bad things for a lot of money, or staying clean and making no money. The biggest factor in these contrasts is the part of money, if he was not being paid a ridiculous amount for the period in time, than he never would have done the jobs. This contrast and difficult decision led to him doing bad things, and even fail on one of the assignments.
These Contrasts show how difficult his life was. He was constantly making decisions that were complex and life changing. He had to choose between the secret police and poverty. And that is just one of the money tough choices. The other ones were Army vs. Navy, Lenin prayer vs. the slave labor city, joining a crime syndicate vs. staying clean, telling the truth about suicide vs. telling a lie. Those decisions are some of the most difficult. But he is including in the book for a reason. To show the reader why and how difficult his life was. He writes them into the book, for yes a very good read, but also as a window into his life and a window into his experiences. His writing style shows insight and understanding into that time period he lives in.
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