It should be required reading. And we should note how strong an influence this book was on writer Craig Mazin of HBO’s mini-series.

It’s raw and beautiful and so beautiful because of its raw reports. The vast collections (sorted under headers, “monologues” on different themes) are purposefully and carefully disorienting in their placement and pacing—it reveals just how wide this impact was, and names or faces blur into a massive collective affected by the failure of the Soviet state to protect its people, and moments in which the state threw its people into danger in an attempt to save greater parts of the population.