Download or read book Moscow Diary written by Walter Benjamin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Moscow Diary written by Anna Porter and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Earthly Signs written by Marina Tsvetaeva and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A moving collection of autobiographical essays from a Russian poet and refugee of the Bolshevik Revolution. Marina Tsvetaeva ranks with Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pasternak as one of Russia’s greatest twentieth-century poets. Her suicide at the age of forty-eight was the tragic culmination of a life buffeted by political upheaval. The essays collected in this volume are based on diaries she kept during the turbulent years of the Revolution and Civil War. In them she records conversations of women in the markets, soldiers and peasants on the train traveling from the Crimea to Moscow in October 1917, fighting in the streets of Moscow, a frantic scramble with co-workers to dig frozen potatoes out of a cellar, and poetry readings organized by a newly minted Soviet bohemia. Alone in Moscow with two small children, no income, and a missing husband, Tsvetaeva struggled to feed her daughters (one of whom died of malnutrition in an orphanage), find employment in the Soviet bureaucracy, and keep writing poetry. Her keen and ruthless eye observes with compassion and humor—bringing the social, economic, and cultural chaos of the period to life. These autobiographical writings not only give a vivid eyewitness account of Russian history but provide vital insights into the workings of Tsvetaeva’s unique poetics. Includes black and white photographs.
Download or read book A Russian Diary written by Anna Politkovskaya and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-04-23 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia’s most fearless journalists, was gunned down in a contract killing in Moscow in the fall of 2006. Just before her death, Politkovskaya completed this searing, intimate record of life in Russia from the parliamentary elections of December 2003 to the grim summer of 2005, when the nation was still reeling from the horrors of the Beslan school siege. In A Russian Diary, Politkovskaya dares to tell the truth about the devastation of Russia under Vladimir Putin–a truth all the more urgent since her tragic death. Writing with unflinching clarity, Politkovskaya depicts a society strangled by cynicism and corruption. As the Russian elections draw near, Politkovskaya describes how Putin neutralizes or jails his opponents, muzzles the press, shamelessly lies to the public–and then secures a sham landslide that plunges the populace into mass depression. In Moscow, oligarchs blow thousands of rubles on nights of partying while Russian soldiers freeze to death. Terrorist attacks become almost commonplace events. Basic freedoms dwindle daily. And then, in September 2004, armed terrorists take more than twelve hundred hostages in the Beslan school, and a different kind of madness descends. In prose incandescent with outrage, Politkovskaya captures both the horror and the absurdity of life in Putin’s Russia: She fearlessly interviews a deranged Chechen warlord in his fortified lair. She records the numb grief of a mother who lost a child in the Beslan siege and yet clings to the delusion that her son will return home someday. The staggering ostentation of the new rich, the glimmer of hope that comes with the organization of the Party of Soldiers’ Mothers, the mounting police brutality, the fathomless public apathy–all are woven into Politkovskaya’s devastating portrait of Russia today. “If anybody thinks they can take comfort from the ‘optimistic’ forecast, let them do so,” Politkovskaya writes. “It is certainly the easier way, but it is also a death sentence for our grandchildren.” A Russian Diary is testament to Politkovskaya’s ferocious refusal to take the easier way–and the terrible price she paid for it. It is a brilliant, uncompromising exposé of a deteriorating society by one of the world’s bravest writers. Praise for Anna Politkovskaya “Anna Politkovskaya defined the human conscience. Her relentless pursuit of the truth in the face of danger and darkness testifies to her distinguished place in journalism–and humanity. This book deserves to be widely read.” –Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent, CNN “Like all great investigative reporters, Anna Politkovskaya brought forward human truths that rewrote the official story. We will continue to read her, and learn from her, for years.” –Salman Rushdie “Suppression of freedom of speech, of expression, reaches its savage ultimate in the murder of a writer. Anna Politkovskaya refused to lie, in her work; her murder is a ghastly act, and an attack on world literature.” –Nadine Gordimer “Beyond mourning her, it would be more seemly to remember her by taking note of what she wrote.” –James Meek
Download or read book The Maisky Diaries written by Gabriel Gorodetsky and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The terror and purges of Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s discouraged Soviet officials from leaving documentary records let alone keeping personal diaries. A remarkable exception is the unique diary assiduously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943. This selection from Maisky's diary, never before published in English, grippingly documents Britain’s drift to war during the 1930s, appeasement in the Munich era, negotiations leading to the signature of the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact, Churchill’s rise to power, the German invasion of Russia, and the intense debate over the opening of the second front. Maisky was distinguished by his great sociability and access to the key players in British public life. Among his range of regular contacts were politicians (including Churchill, Chamberlain, Eden, and Halifax), press barons (Beaverbrook), ambassadors (Joseph Kennedy), intellectuals (Keynes, Sidney and Beatrice Webb), writers (George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells), and indeed royalty. His diary further reveals the role personal rivalries within the Kremlin played in the formulation of Soviet policy at the time. Scrupulously edited and checked against a vast range of Russian and Western archival evidence, this extraordinary narrative diary offers a fascinating revision of the events surrounding the Second World War.
Download or read book Time of Troubles written by Iurii Vladimirovich Got'e and published by . This book was released on 2016-04-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the few diaries available from inside early Soviet Russia none approaches Iurii V. Got'e's in sustained length of coverage and depth of vivid detail. Got'e was a member of the Moscow intellectual elite--a complex and unusually observant man, who was a professor at Moscow University and one of the most prominent historians of Russia at the time the revolution broke out. Beginning his first entry with the words Finis Russiae, he describes his life in revolution-torn Moscow from July 8, 1917 through July 23, 1922--nearly the entire period of the Russian Revolution and Civil War up to the advent of the New Economic Policy. This remarkable chronicle, published here for the first time, describes the hardships undergone by Got'e's family and friends and the gradual takeover of the academic and professional sectors of Russia by the new regime. Got'e was in his mid-forties when he wrote the diary. At first he felt that Bolshevism meant complete doom for Russia, but eventually his ardent patriotism led him to accept the Bolsheviks' role in preserving the integrity of the Russian state. The diary was discovered in 1982 in the Hoover Institution Archives, in the papers of Frank Golder, to whom Got'e himself had entrusted it in 1922. It is translated literally and unabridged, with annotations by Terence Emmons. The introduction by Professor Emmons places the diary clearly in the context of Got'e's life and scholarly career. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Stafford Cripps in Moscow 1940 1942 written by Sir Richard Stafford Cripps and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stafford Cripps cut an incongruous figure in British politics in the 1930s. His fortuitous appointment as Ambassador to Moscow in 1940 secured him a prominent position in the War Cabinet. His meticulously kept diary describes the change in his political fortune and bears witness to key German-Soviet events during World War 2.
Download or read book The Day Will Pass Away written by Ivan Chistyakov and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rare first-person testimony of the hardships of a Soviet labor camp—long suppressed—that will become a cornerstone of understanding the Soviet Union. Originally written in a couple of humble exercise books, which were anonymously donated to the Memorial Human Rights Centre in Moscow, this remarkable diary is one of the few first-person accounts to survive the sprawling Soviet prison system. At the back of these exercise books there is a blurred snapshot and a note, "Chistyakov, Ivan Petrovich, repressed in 1937-38. Killed at the front in Tula Province in 1941." This is all that remains of Ivan Chistyakov, a senior guard at the Baikal Amur Corrective Labour Camp. Who was this lost man? How did he end up in the gulag? Though a guard, he is a type of prisoner, too. We learn that he is a cultured and urbane ex-city dweller with a secret nostalgia for pre-Revolutionary Russia. In this diary, Chistyakov does not just record his life in the camp, he narrates it. He is a sharp-eyed witness and a sympathetic, humane, and broken man. From stumblingly poetic musings on the bitter landscape of the taiga to matter-of-fact grumbles about the inefficiency of his stove, from accounts of the brutal conditions of the camp to reflections on the cruelty of loneliness, this diary is an astonishing record—a visceral and immediate description of a place and time whose repercussions still affect the shape of modern Russia, and modern Europe.
Download or read book Cursed Days written by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1998-06 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nobel PrizeDwinning author's great anti-Bolshevik diary of the Russian Revolution, translated into English for the first time, with an Introduction and Notes by Thomas Gaiton Marullo. A harrowing description of the forerunners of the concentration camps and the Gulag. Marc Raeff"
Download or read book My Six Years with Gorbachev written by Anatoly C. Chernyaev and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2012-03-30 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on his own diary as well as secret documents and transcripts of high-level meetings, Anatoly Chernyaev recounts the drama that swept the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991. As Gorbachev&’s chief foreign policy aide for most of that period, he played a central role in efforts to halt the arms race, discard a confrontational ideology, and open his country to the world. And as Gorbachev&’s confidant on many domestic issues as well, Chernyaev offers rare insights into the struggle over glasnost, the growth of separatism, and the rise of Boris Yeltsin. While admiring of perestroika&’s founder, Chernyaev is frank in faulting Gorbachev for his hesitancy in economic reforms, for his delay in decentralizing Union-republic ties, and above all for his misplaced faith in the reformability of the Communist Party. Altogether this book is essential reading for those interested in the Cold War&’s end, the USSR&’s collapse, and especially the role played by ideas, ambitions, and key personalities in these momentous events.
Download or read book A Russian Journal written by John Steinbeck and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2001-05-03 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Steinbeck and Capa began a remarkable journey through the Soviet Union. Combining Steinbeck's compassion and humour with Capa's photographs, this text is a unique portrit of Russia and its people as they emerged from the ravages of war.
Download or read book I Want to Live written by Nina Lugovskai︠a︡ and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently unearthed in the archives of Stalin's secret police, the NKVD, Nina Lugovskaya's diary offers rare insight into the life of a teenage girl in Stalin's Russia-when fear of arrest was a fact of daily life. Like Anne Frank, thirteen-year-old Nina is conscious of the extraordinary dangers around her and her family, yet she is preoccupied by ordinary teenage concerns: boys, parties, her appearance, who she wants to be when she grows up. As Nina records her most personal emotions and observations, herreflections shape a diary that is as much a portrait of her intense inner world as it is the Soviet outer one. Preserved here, these markings-the evidence used to convict Nina as a "counterrevolutionary"- offer today's reader a fascinating perspective on the era in which she lived.
Download or read book Open Mic Night in Moscow written by Audrey Murray and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-07-24 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics, never imagining that it would involve kidnappers, garbage bags of money, and encounters with the weird and wonderful from Mongolia to Tajikistan. Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Siberia are not the typical tourist destinations of a twenty-something, nor the places one usually goes to eat, pray, and/or love. But the mix of imperial Russian opulence and Soviet decay, and the allure of emotionally unavailable Russian men proved strangely irresistible to comedian Audrey Murray. At age twenty-eight, while her friends were settling into corporate jobs and serious relationships, Audrey was on a one-way flight to Kazakhstan, the first leg of a nine-month solo voyage through the former USSR. A blend of memoir and offbeat travel guide, this thoughtful, hilarious catalog of a young comedian’s adventures is also a diary of her emotional discoveries about home, love, patriotism, loneliness, and independence. Sometimes surprising, often disconcerting, and always entertaining, Open Mic Night in Moscow will inspire you to take the leap and embark on your own journey into the unknown. And, if you want to visit Chernobyl by way of an insane-asylum-themed bar in Kiev, Audrey can assure you that there’s no other guidebook out there. (She’s looked.)
Download or read book DIARY OF A NAPOLEONIC FOOT SOLDIER written by Jakob Walter and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2012-05-09 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A grunt’s-eye report from the battlefield in the spirit of The Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front—the only known account by a common soldier of the campaigns of Napoleon’s Grand Army between 1806 and 1813. When eighteen-year-old German stonemason Jakob Walter was conscripted into the Grand Army of Napoleon, he had no idea of the trials that lay ahead. The long, grueling marches in Prussia and Poland sacrificed countless men to Bonaparte’s grand designs. And the disastrous Russian campaign tested human endurance on an epic scale. Demoralized by defeat in a war few supported or understood, deprived of ammunition and leadership, driven past reason by starvation and bitter cold, men often turned on one another, killing fellow soldiers for bread or an able horse. Though there are numerous surviving accounts of the Napoleonic Wars written by officers, Walter’s is the only known memoir by a draftee, and as such is a unique and fascinating document—a compelling chronicle of a young soldier’s loss of innocence as well as an eloquent and moving portrait of the profound effects of war on the men who fight it. Professor Marc Raeff has added an Introduction to the memoirs as well as six letters home from the Russian front, previously unpublished in English, from German conscripts who served concurrently with Walter. The volume is illustrated with engravings and maps, contemporary with the manuscript, from the Russian/Soviet and East European collections of the New York Public Library. Honest, heartfelt, deeply personal yet objective, The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier is more than an informative and absorbing historical document—it is a timeless and unforgettable account of the horrors of war.
Download or read book The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard written by Ivan Chistyakov and published by . This book was released on 2017-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the archives of the Memorial International Human Rights Centre in Moscow is an extraordinary diary, a rare first-person testimony of a commander of guards in a Soviet labour camp. Ivan Chistyakov was sent to the Gulag in 1935, where he worked at the Baikal-Amur Corrective Labour Camp for over a year. Life at the Gulag was anathema to Chistyakov, a cultured Muscovite with a nostalgia for pre-revolutionary Russia, and an amateur painter and poet. He recorded its horrors with an unmatchable immediacy, documenting a world where petty rivalries put lives at risk, prisoners hacked off their fingers to bet in card games, railway sleepers were burned for firewood and Siberian winds froze the lather on the soap. From his stumbling poetic musings on the bitter landscape to his matter-of-fact grumbles about his stove, from accounts of the conditions of the camp to reflections on the cruelty of loneliness, this diary is unique - a visceral and immediate description of a place and time whose repercussions still affect the shape of modern Russia.
Download or read book The Vodka Diaries written by Richard Sayette and published by Peace Corps Writers. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a radio broadcast on October 1st, 1939, Winston Churchill referred to Russia as, "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." During my tenure as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Russian Far East, I found Churchill's words to be accurate, as my limited knowledge about Russia stemmed from Dostoevsky and Pushkin novels. From the summer of 1994 until late 1995, I lived and worked in the Russian Far East as a Peace Corps Volunteer managing a small business center; only a few miles from both the Chinese and North Korean borders. I experienced firsthand the thrilling and often confusing environment as the Russian people established a foothold in a more open society marked by their initial forays into capitalism. My experiences living with a Russian family, managing a business center catering to Russian entrepreneurs and running with and from the Mafia during this tumultuous period allowed me insight into the Russian soul and allowed me to examine my own. Fluctuating between enjoying local celebrity status to being a suspected American spy, I had the opportunity to socialize with Russian and American politicians, various mafia organizations and Russians from all walks of life. The book takes a humorous and insightful look at the cultural differences between America and Russia as well as providing a peek at how my Russian friends and colleagues dealt with the flux of change within every aspect of their lives. Although this book is based on real events, I have changed the names of some of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and the Peace Corps staff for reasons of discretion.
Download or read book Intimacy and Terror written by Véronique Garros and published by The New Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international collaborative investigation by Russian, French, and Swiss scholars collects hundreds of private, unpublished diaries that record Soviet life during the harshest years of Stalin's purge.
