Molotov S Magic Lantern

Author : Rachel Polonsky
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2011-01-11
Category : Travel
ISBN : 1429974907

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Molotov's Magic Lantern by Rachel Polonsky Pdf

When the British journalist Rachel Polonsky moves to Moscow, she discovers an apartment on Romanov Street that was once home to the Soviet elite. One of the most infamous neighbors was the ruthless apparatchik Vyacheslav Molotov, a henchman for Stalin who was a participant in the collectivizations and the Great Purge—and also an ardent bibliophile. In what was formerly Molotov's apartment, Polonsky uncovers an extensive library and an old magic lantern—two things that lead her on an extraordinary journey throughout Russia and ultimately renew her vision of the country and its people. In Molotov's Magic Lantern, Polonsky visits the haunted cities and vivid landscapes of the books from Molotov's library: works by Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Akhmatova, and others, some of whom were sent to the Gulag by the very man who collected their books. With exceptional insight and beautiful prose, Polonsky writes about the longings and aspirations of these Russian writers and others in the course of her travels from the Arctic to Siberia and from the forests around Moscow to the vast steppes. A singular homage to Russian history and culture, Molotov's Magic Lantern evokes the spirit of the great artists and the haunted past of a country ravaged by war, famine, and totalitarianism.

Author : Rachel Polonsky
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2010-03-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780571258277

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Molotov's Magic Lantern by Rachel Polonsky Pdf

When Rachel Polonsky went to live in Moscow, she found an apartment block in Romanov Street, once a residence of the Soviet elite. One of those ghostly neighbours was Stalin's henchman Vyacheslav Molotov. In Molotov's former apartment, Rachel Polonsky discovered his library and an old magic lantern. Molotov - ruthless apparatchik, participant in the collectivizations and the Great Purge - was also an ardent bibliophile. Molotov's library and his magic lantern became the prisms through which Rachel Polonsky renewed her vision of Russia. She visited cities and landscapes associated with the books in the library - Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Akhmatova and many less well-known figures. Some were sent to the Gulag by the man who collected their books. She writes exceptionally well about the longings and aspirations of Russian writers in the course of a journey that takes her to the Arctic and Siberia, the Crimean summer and Lake Baikal, from the forests around Moscow to the vast steppes. In each place she encountered the spirit of great artists and the terrible past of a country ravaged by war, famine, and totalitarianism.

Author : Rachel Polonsky
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:851313326

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Molotov's Magic Lantern by Rachel Polonsky Pdf

Author : Steven Fisher
Publisher : Forest Cat Productions
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2021-10-31
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1737766310

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Into Russia's Cauldron by Steven Fisher Pdf

Into Russia's Cauldron takes you on the dramatic journey of an individual and an institution fighting the inevitable in revolutionary Russia, a story grippingly brought to life in the century-old journal of Leighton Rogers.

Author : Edvard Radzinsky
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 522 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2011-03-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780307754622

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The Last Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky Pdf

Russian playwright and historian Radzinsky mines sources never before available to create a fascinating portrait of the monarch, and a minute-by-minute account of his terrifying last days.

Author : Sara Wheeler
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2019-11-05
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9781524748029

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Mud and Stars by Sara Wheeler Pdf

With the writers of the golden age as her guides—Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Turgenev, among others—Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet fields and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of nationalities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Bypassing major cities as much as possible, she goes instead to the places associated with the country’s literary masters. Wheeler weaves these writers’ lives and works around their historical homes, giving us rich portraits of the many diverse Russias from which these writers spoke. Illustrated with both historical images and contemporary snapshots of the people and places that shaped her journey, Mud and Stars gives us timely, witty, and deeply personal insights into Russia, then and now. One of Smithsonian’s Ten Best Travel Books of the Year

Author : Mark Galeotti
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2018-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300186826

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The Vory by Mark Galeotti Pdf

The first English-language book to document the men who emerged from the gulags to become Russia's much-feared crime class: the vory v zakone Mark Galeotti is the go-to expert on organized crime in Russia, consulted by governments and police around the world. Now, Western readers can explore the fascinating history of the vory v zakone, a group that has survived and thrived amid the changes brought on by Stalinism, the Cold War, the Afghan War, and the end of the Soviet experiment. The vory--as the Russian mafia is also known--was born early in the twentieth century, largely in the Gulags and criminal camps, where they developed their unique culture. Identified by their signature tattoos, members abided by the thieves' code, a strict system that forbade all paid employment and cooperation with law enforcement and the state. Based on two decades of on-the-ground research, Galeotti's captivating study details the vory's journey to power from their early days to their adaptation to modern-day Russia's free-wheeling oligarchy and global opportunities beyond.

Author : Geoffrey Roberts
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2022
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780300179040

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Stalin's Library by Geoffrey Roberts Pdf

A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin's tumultuous life and politics, told through his personal library. Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs

Author : Anne Applebaum
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 803 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2012-10-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780385536431

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Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum Pdf

In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.

Author : Janet M. Hartley
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2021-01-12
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300245646

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The Volga by Janet M. Hartley Pdf

A rich and fascinating exploration of the Volga--the first to fully reveal its vital place in Russian history The longest river in Europe, the Volga stretches over three and a half thousand km from the heart of Russia to the Caspian Sea, separating west from east. The river has played a crucial role in the history of the peoples who are now a part of the Russian Federation--and has united and divided the land through which it flows. Janet Hartley explores the history of Russia through the Volga from the seventh century to the present day. She looks at it as an artery for trade and as a testing ground for the Russian Empire's control of the borderlands, at how it featured in Russian literature and art, and how it was crucial for the outcome of the Second World War at Stalingrad. This vibrant account unearths what life on the river was really like, telling the story of its diverse people and its vital place in Russian history.

Author : Rachel Polonsky
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 1998-11-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0521621798

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English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance by Rachel Polonsky Pdf

The turn of the nineteenth century, a time of exceptional creativity in Russia, was also a time of great receptivity to foreign cultural influences. Among the most important of these were English poetry and aesthetic thought, which gave new impetus to the Russian imagination. This 1998 book is a study of the Russian reception of English literature from Romanticism to aestheticism, focusing particularly on the reception by Russian poets of Shelley, Ruskin, Pater, Frazer and Wilde. Framing this account is a pioneering exploration of the intellectual background to these influences in comparative scholarship, illuminating a common interest in myth, folklore, anthropology, and the origins of language. This book discusses the relationship between Russian conceptions of national identity, literary influence and the origins of comparative literary history.

Author : Robert Silverberg
Publisher : Open Road Media
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2018-05-08
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781504051354

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The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg Pdf

How far will four friends go for immortality? This novel is Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author “Robert Silverberg at his very best” (George R. R. Martin). After Eli, a scholarly college student, finds and translates an ancient manuscript called The Book of Skulls, he and his friends embark on a cross-country trip to Arizona in search of a legendary monastery where they hope to find the secret of immortality. On the journey with Eli, there’s Timothy, an upper-class WASP with a trust fund and a solid sense of entitlement; Ned, a cynical poet and alienated gay man; and Oliver, a Kansas farm boy who escaped his rural origins and now wants to escape death. If they can find the House of Skulls where immortal monks allegedly reside, they’ll undergo a rigorous initiation. But do those eight grinning skulls mean the joke will be on them? For a sacrifice will be required. Two must die so that two may live forever . . . Stretching the boundary between science fiction and horror, Robert Silverberg masterfully probes deeper existential questions of morality, brotherhood, and self-determined destiny in what Harlan Ellison refers to as “one of my favorite nightmare novels.” This ebook features an illustrated biography of Robert Silverberg including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

Author : David Satter
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 510 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2011-12-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300178425

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It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway by David Satter Pdf

A veteran writer on Russia and the Soviet Union explains why Russia refuses to draw from the lessons of its past and what this portends for the future Russia today is haunted by deeds that have not been examined and words that have been left unsaid. A serious attempt to understand the meaning of the Communist experience has not been undertaken, and millions of victims of Soviet Communism are all but forgotten. In this book David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent and longtime writer on Russia and the Soviet Union, presents a striking new interpretation of Russia's great historical tragedy, locating its source in Russia's failure fully to appreciate the value of the individual in comparison with the objectives of the state. Satter explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society. He shows how it is possible for a government to deny the inherent value of its citizens and for the population to agree, and why so many Russians actually mourn the passing of the Soviet regime that denied them fundamental rights. Through a wide-ranging consideration of attitudes toward the living and the dead, the past and the present, the state and the individual, Satter arrives at a distinctive and important new way of understanding the Russian experience.

Author : Orlando Figes
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 1000 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2008-09-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780141808871

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The Whisperers by Orlando Figes Pdf

Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.

Author : John Hersey
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020-06-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9780593082362

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Hiroshima by John Hersey Pdf

Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.