Download or read book Gadfly in Russia written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This memoir and literary travelogue from one of the UK’s most esteemed novelists offers rare insight into Cold War–era Russia. In 1967, seeking an escape from his writing life, bestselling British novelist Alan Sillitoe embarks on a road trip from England to Russia via Harwich and Finland in his sturdy Peugeot. During his teens, the author had a cartographic fascination with the Battle of Stalingrad, and decades later he is still armed with intricate maps of the country based on British military intelligence, including one of the road from Leningrad to Moscow to Kiev, which he drew himself. Also in tow are a prismatic compass, binoculars, and a shortwave radio receiver. However, despite being so well prepared, Sillitoe embarks with naiveté about the political precariousness of an Englishman in the eyes of the Soviet regime. After passing through the endless days of a Scandinavian summer and a prolonged stop at a border control checkpoint—with his maps hidden in a secret compartment of the car—Sillitoe arrives in Leningrad. There, he meets George Andjaparidze, a worldly and candid English student who has been assigned by the Writers’ Union to serve as the author’s guide and keep him out of trouble. Though Sillitoe would rather continue his journey solo, Andjaparidze grows on him, and they begin what will become a lasting friendship. As soon as the duo leaves Leningrad, adventures and misadventures ensue. En route to Moscow, Sillitoe and Andjaparidze end up racing a pack of middle-age men in German sports cars partaking in a Berlin-to-Moscow rally. Sillitoe and Andjaparidze’s time in the capital is equally fast-paced, consisting of late nights fueled by vodka, impounded rubles, caviar breakfasts, erudite parties, and a pat on the back from a traffic cop for writing about the working class. A winding drive across western Russia and into Yugoslavia follows, replete with rebellious literature students, a speech on freedom, a visit to Tolstoy’s estate, accusations of espionage, and a near-fatal run-in with a brigade of Red Army tanks. At last the writer and guide reach their destination: Kursk, that fateful place where a Soviet victory in 1943 turned back the Nazi tide. But the story continues long after the road trip ends. Back in England, Andjaparidze visits Sillitoe and the two are caught up in a controversy surrounding the defection of the Soviet writer Anatoly Kuznetsov. Written from the perspective of another trip to Russia forty years later (Sillitoe was invited in 2005 by the British Council to return to Moscow), this travelogue provides a rare and intimate look at the country’s history, a compassionate understanding of its troubled ideology, and a frank portrayal of its undeniable lure.
Download or read book The Gadfly written by Ethel Lilian Voynich and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Reception of Ethel Lilian Voynich s Novel The Gadfly in the Soviet Union written by Lewis Jules Bernhardt and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Russian Gadfly Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers information on Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918- ), compiled by Katharena Eiermann. Includes a biographical sketch, news items, a bibliography, and links to book reviews and other related sites.
Download or read book An Interrupted Friendship written by E. L. Voynich and published by . This book was released on 2002-04-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethel Lilian Voynich was the girlfriend of Sidney Rosenblum, otherwise known in Britain as Sidney Reilly or Reilly Ace of Spies. With Rosenblum's last £300 the couple went off to Italy. Here under the Mediterranean sun and under the influence of the Roman Catholic religion, which touched every facet of Italian life and awoke emotionally charged memories of his Catholic upbringing, Sidney bared his soul to his mistress. She is best known for her first novel, "The Gadfly." In Russia, the name of Ethel Lilian Voynich is bracketed with Shakespeare and Dickens as being amongst the greatest writers. She later married a Polish revolutionary who fought for Poland's freedom from Russian rule and died in New York in 1960 at the age of ninety-six.
Download or read book Resurrection written by David Remnick and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1998-05-26 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Remnick chronicles the new Russia that emerged from the ash heap of the Soviet Union. From the siege of Parliament to the farcically tilted elections of 1996, from the rubble of Grozny to the grandiose wealth and naked corruption of today's Moscow, Remnick chronicles a society so racked by change that its citizens must daily ask themselves who they are, where they belong, and what they believe in. Remnick composes this panorama out of dozens of finely realized individual portraits. Here is Mikhail Gorbachev, his head still swimming from his plunge from reverence to ridicule. Here is Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the half-Jewish anti-Semite who conducts politics as loony performance art. And here is Boris Yeltsin, the tottering populist who is not above stealing elections. In Resurrection, they become the players in a drama so vast and moving that it deserves comparison with the best reportage of George Orwell and Michael Herr. "This is what happens when a good writer unleashes eye and ear on a story that moves with the speed of light. Resurrection has the feel of describing vast, historical change even as it is happening."--Chicago Tribune
Download or read book The Glory and the Sorrow written by Timothy Tackett and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arrival in Paris -- Life in Paris before the Revolution -- Making a Living -- Understanding the World -- The World Changes -- Days of Glory -- Rumor and Revolution -- Becoming a Radical -- Days of Sorrow.
Download or read book Mass Culture in Soviet Russia written by James Von Geldern and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers an array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, and folklore to offer a look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. This work focuses on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses.
Download or read book Rebuilding Russia written by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenit︠s︡yn and published by Harvill Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indictment of recent Soviet history, including the reforms of Gorbachev. Solzhenitsyn calls for the disbanding of the Soviet Union and the resurrection of a nation comprising the three Slavic republics of Russia and parts of Kazakhstan, but derides the violence of ethnic independence."
Download or read book The Fall of Robespierre written by Colin Jones and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The day of 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) is universally acknowledged as a major turning-point in the history of the French Revolution. Maximilien Robespierre, the most prominent member of the Committee of Public Safety, was planning to destroy one of the most dangerous plots that the Revolution had faced.
Download or read book Russia s Contribution to China s Surface Warfare Capabilities written by Paul Schwartz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The provision of advanced Russian military technology has been critical for the development of China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) capability. This study focuses on one aspect of the relationship, namely Russia’s contribution to the PLA Navy’s surface and anti-surface warfare capabilities. Following a discussion of the role of the fleet in China’s A2AD strategy, the author examines in depth the specific warships, anti-ship missile systems, and air defense systems that Russia has been providing. Next, he considers specifically how Russian technology has translated into new military capability for China’s maritime forces. Finally, he offers a projection of the likely future direction of Russian assistance in this area. While China has made enormous progress in developing its indigenous defense production capability, this report makes the case that Russian defense assistance has been, is, and will likely continue to be important for the development of China’s surface warfare capabilities and its A2AD project more broadly.
Download or read book Gadfly written by Ethel Lilian Voynich and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Russians written by Gregory Feifer and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From former NPR Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer comes an incisive portrait that draws on vivid personal stories to portray the forces that have shaped the Russian character for centuries-and continue to do so today. Russians explores the seeming paradoxes of life in Russia by unraveling the nature of its people: what is it in their history, their desires, and their conception of themselves that makes them baffling to the West? Using the insights of his decade as a journalist in Russia, Feifer corrects pervasive misconceptions by showing that much of what appears inexplicable about the country is logical when seen from the inside. He gets to the heart of why the world's leading energy producer continues to exasperate many in the international community. And he makes clear why President Vladimir Putin remains popular even as the gap widens between the super-rich and the great majority of poor. Traversing the world's largest country from the violent North Caucasus to Arctic Siberia, Feifer conducted hundreds of intimate conversations about everything from sex and vodka to Russia's complex relationship with the world. From fabulously wealthy oligarchs to the destitute elderly babushki who beg in Moscow's streets, he tells the story of a society bursting with vitality under a leadership rooted in tradition and often on the edge of collapse despite its authoritarian power. Feifer also draws on formative experiences in Russia's past and illustrative workings of its culture to shed much-needed light on the purposely hidden functioning of its society before, during, and after communism. Woven throughout is an intimate, first-person account of his family history, from his Russian mother's coming of age among Moscow's bohemian artistic elite to his American father's harrowing vodka-fueled run-ins with the KGB. What emerges is a rare portrait of a unique land of extremes whose forbidding geography, merciless climate, and crushing corruption has nevertheless produced some of the world's greatest art and some of its most remarkable scientific advances. Russians is an expertly observed, gripping profile of a people who will continue challenging the West for the foreseeable future.
Download or read book The Gadfly written by Ethel Voynich and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most exciting novel I have ever read" - Bertrand Russell "Masterpiece of story telling" - The New York Times
Download or read book Red Notice written by Bill Browder and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true story of high finance, murder, and one man's fight for justice.
Download or read book The Gadfly written by E. L. Voynich and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-12 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gadfly - By E. L. Voynich - Arthur Burton, an English Catholic, travels to Italy to study to be a priest. He discovers radical ideas, renounces Catholicism and leaves Italy. While away he suffers great hardship, but returns with renewed revolutionary fervour. He becomes a journalist, expounding radical ideas in brilliant satirical tracts published under the pseudonym "the gadfly". The local authorities are soon dedicated to capturing him. Gemma, his lover, and Padre Montanelli, his Priest, show various forms of love via their tragic relations with the focal character of Arthur: religious, romantic, and family. The story compares these emotions to those Arthur experiences as a revolutionary, particularly drawing on the relationship between religious and revolutionary feelings. This is especially explicit at the climax of the book, where sacred descriptions intertwine with reflections on the Gadfly's fate. It is debatable to what extent an allegorical comparison can be drawn between the Gadfly and Jesus.
Download or read book Picture written by Lillian Ross and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic look at Hollywood and the American film industry by The New Yorker's Lillian Ross, and named one of the "Top 100 Works of U.S. Journalism of the Twentieth Century." Lillian Ross worked at The New Yorker for more than half a century, and might be described not only as an outstanding practitioner of modern long-form journalism but also as one of its inventors. Picture, originally published in 1952, is her most celebrated piece of reportage, a closely observed and completely absorbing story of how studio politics and misguided commercialism turn a promising movie into an all-around disaster. The charismatic and hard-bitten director and actor John Huston is at the center of the book, determined to make Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage—one of the great and defining works of American literature, the first modern war novel, a book whose vivid imagistic style invites the description of cinematic—into a movie that is worthy of it. At first all goes well, as Huston shoots and puts together a two-hour film that is, he feels, the best he’s ever made. Then the studio bosses step in and the audience previews begin, conferences are held, and the movie is taken out of Huston’s hands, cut down by a third, and finally released—with results that please no one and certainly not the public: It was an expensive flop. In Picture, which Charlie Chaplin aptly described as “brilliant and sagacious,” Ross is a gadfly on the wall taking note of the operations of a system designed to crank out mediocrity.
