Martin's Press, 1994). Encyclopedic in scope, with more than 800 poems, 100 photographs, a historical chronology, index of first lines, and a bibliography. The Complete Poems will be the definitive English language collection of Akhmatova for many years to come.

    He was a wealthy aristocrat who preached the virtues of poverty and the peasant life, a misogynist who wrote Anna Karenina, and a supreme writer who declared, "Literature is rubbish." From Tolstoy's famously bad marriage to his enormously successful career, Troyat presents a brilliant portrait that reads like an epic novel written by Tolstoy himself.

    His extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on the revolutionary consciousness. Yet there was once a danger that his life and influence would be relegated to the footnotes of history. Published over the course of ten years, beginning in 1954, Deutscher’s magisterial three-volume biography turned back the tide of Stalin’s propaganda, and has since been praised by everyone from Tony Blair to Graham Greene. In this definitive work, now reissued in a single volume, Trotsky’s true stature emerges as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution.

    An Armenian Sketchbook, however, shows us a very different Grossman, notable for his tenderness, warmth, and sense of fun.       After the  Soviet Government confiscated—or, as Grossman always put it, “arrested”—Life and Fate, he took on the task of revising a literal Russian translation of a long Armenian novel. The novel was of little interest to him, but he needed money and was evidently glad of an excuse to travel to Armenia. An Armenian Sketchbook is his account of the two months he spent there.       This is by far the most personal and intimate of Grossman’s works, endowed with an air of absolute spontaneity, as though he is simply chatting to the reader about his impressions of Armenia—its mountains, its ancient churches, its people—while also examining his own thoughts and moods. A wonderfully human account of travel to a faraway place, An Armenian Sketchbook also has the vivid appeal of a self-portrait.

    In the intervening years, the vicissitudes of life led her through two marriages, childbirth and childrearing, and exile from her homeland-until she became an unconventional nun, devoted to the service of the destitute and the despairing in Nazi-occupied France during WWII.Mother Maria was eventually consigned to Ravensbruck concentration camp because of her support of the Jews in Paris. There she continued to help those around her up until-and even by means of-her own death. Now canonized by the Orthodox Church as St Maria, she demonstrates how to love the image of God in each person, even when surrounded by hatred, undiluted evil, and brutality.Sergei Hackel (+ 2005), priest of the Moscow Patriarchate in the UK, was for many years the editor of the ecumenical journal Sobornost and the "voice" of the BBC Russian religious broadcasts during the Soviet era.

    A political exile from czarist Russia, he spent years in Paris as a bohemian poet and later became a correspondent for Izvestia in Western Europe. He was one of the few distinguished Soviet writers to survive Stalin. Ehrenburg’s 1954 novel The Thaw lent its name to the critical period following Stalin’s death. His memoir People, Years, Life outraged the Kremlin in the 1960s by describing a “conspiracy of silence” that had prevailed under the dictator.Ehrenburg was a young Bolshevik who turned anti-Communist and then two decades later became a spokesman for Stalin. He was an assimilated Jew who fought anti-Semitism and a Russian patriot who was both mistrusted by orthodox Communists and denounced by Hitler as his main enemy. As a Jew, he was said to have betrayed his people; as a writer, his talent; as a man, his conscience. Yet, as Joshua Rubenstein shows, Ehrenburg retained a measure of integrity. He helped other writers, including Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pasternak. He battled censorship and championed European art in Moscow. His circle of friends included Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, Ernest Hemingway, Isaac Babel, and André Malraux.In vivid detail, Tangled Loyalties draws extensively on new material from Russian archives, from Ehrenburg’s private correspondence, and from interviews with scores of family members and friends. This penetrating biography will challenge our assumptions about collaboration, assimilation, dissent, and moral survival.

    Stalin renovated Suvorov's reputation by borrowing his title, the unprecedented rank ""Generalissimo of the Russian Army,"" and by incorporating Suvorov's image into propaganda posters depicting himself. Longworth demonstrates that Suvorov is quite capable of standing magnificently upright in history without Stalin's aid. Coming from a rather middle-class family at a time when wealthy young aristocrats dominated the officer class, Suvorov rose slowly; he did not achieve his greatest eminence until nearly seventy. Nor did he ever really lose touch with the common footsoldier. As a tactician, he broke every rule and abandoned classical strategy in favor of loose organization on the field that allowed for fluid adaptation to events. When slow, deliberate plodding of troops was considered absolutely necessary, he instead struck like a mongoose. He was the bane of fellow officers, and was indeed a vain, impish eccentric...An absorbing portrait of a quixotic pragmatist who never lost a battle.

    Two quotes illustrate this. The 1st is by Larry Collins, 'Richard Sorge's brilliant espionage work saved Stalin & the Soviet Union from defeat in the fall of 1941, probably prevented a Nazi victory in WWII & thereby assured the dimensions of the world we live in today.' The 2nd is by Frederick Forsyth, 'The spies in history who can say from their graves, the information I supplied to my masters, for better or worse, altered the history of our planet, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Richard Sorge was in that group.' Masquerading as a Nazi journalist, Richard Sorge worked undetected as head of a Red Army spy ring until he was arrested & executed in Japan during the WWII. Such an astonishing story as his is bound to attract attention but not only was this the 1st book to offer an authoritative account, it has, in many ways, not least in the quality of its writing, never been superseded. The authors rejected legend & found facts that were even stranger. They provide an account as reliable as it's enthralling of possibly the most successful spy who ever operated; a man who for eight years transmitted from Japan a continuous stream of valuable information, often derived from the highest quarters, culminating in precise advance information of Hitler's invasion of Russia, of Japan's decision not to attack Russia in '41 & of the near certainty of war against America that October or November instead. Jointly written books sometimes jar, but not this one. The authors had complementary skills, F.W. Deakin being an authority on 20th-century European history & G.R. Storry no less of an authority on 20th-century Japan. Together they do justice to 'the man whom I regard as the most formidable spy in history,'--Ian Fleming (edited)

    The author draws on interviews and on other kinds of now unavailable documents to produce a work that remains a unique view of early Soviet Russia.Originally published in 1987.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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.

    

    Sofia is a Soviet Everywoman, a doctor's widow who works as a typist in a Leningrad publishing house. When her beloved son is caught up in the maelstrom of the purge, she joins the long lines of women outside the prosecutor's office, hoping against hope for any good news. Confronted with a world that makes no moral sense, Sofia goes mad, a madness which manifests itself in delusions little different from the lies those around her tell every day to protect themselves. Sofia Petrovna offers a rare and vital record of Stalin's Great Purges.