While there's been a recent glut of (often overwrought) articles about economic reform and political liberalization in the former Soviet Union, few writers have captured -- on an accessible, human level -- what these changes have meant for the people who actually live there. So perhaps Gallina Dutkina, a well-known Russian journalist, deserves credit merely for trying to pin down the complexities of the post-Soviet era in her new book. You may finish this tome, however, and realize once again that good intentions are rarely enough.

Dutkina's publisher touts "Moscow Days" as "the first book by a Russian to detail everyday life in the post-Soviet era," but that description is a bit misleading. Instead of giving us quotidian reality and telling detail, Dutkina takes on this massive topic in broad, bland strokes. She describes the effects of inflation, for example, as follows: "I remember the first weeks after price controls were lifted, when people died of heart attacks merely looking at the price tags in the stores. An unhappy, tormented country -- not a country really, but just a mass of bruises. My heart filled with pity for everything living and a hatred for those who had brought my Motherland to such a brink." (Talk about inflation.) She mulls over other issues -- the plight of Russian women, emerging class divisions, the surge in crime, and the country's mafia-infested political structures -- in much the same fashion.

Rather than laying out the experiences of one family or a few individuals -- which might have been more meaningful -- Dutkina resorts to overarching generalizations and sweeping statements. Worse, her prose is as flat as her analysis. You're left with a sinking feeling that anyone, foreign or native, could have written this book, and you long for a sharp, insightful voice -- someone with skills akin to those of the brilliant Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinki -- to pick up where Dutkina leaves off.

-- Esther Wachs Book