Based on Dovlatov's experiences as a journalist in the Soviet Republic of Estonia, this is an acidly comic picture of ludicrous bureaucratic ineptitude, which obviously still continues.

    “This volume... never once fails to instruct and stimulate. This is a great Russian talking of great Russians” (Anthony Burgess). Edited and with an Introduction by Fredson Bowers; illustrations.

    Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible--and tries to stay alive doing it.

    Its reign ended with the execution of Nicholas II and Alexandra in the early 20th century. Noted Russian scholar W. Bruce Lincoln has portrayed the achievement, significance and high drama of the Dynasty as no previous book has done. His use of rare archival materials has allowed him to present a portrait of the Romanovs based on their own writings and those of the persons who knew them.PrefaceAcknowledgmentsA Note on Russian Names and DatesPrologueMuscovite beginnings (1613-1689)Tsars and tsarinas In the eye of the storm The politics of Muscovy The rise of an empire (1689-1796) Eighteenth-century emperors & empresses An imperial city in the makingFrom debauchery to philosophy Imperial aspirations Empire triumphant (1796-1894) The imperial dynasty The new faces of St. PetersburgFrom golden age to iron ageThe colossus of the north The last emperor (1894-1917) Nicky and Sunny: the last Romanovs The approach of disaster Days of war and revolution The last days of the RomanovsNotes and ReferencesWorks CitedIndex

    A sympathetic account of Sonya Tolstoy's struggle for independence reveals Sonya to be a forerunner of today's modern woman, showing how her intense love for Tolstoy was diminished by his refusal to see her as her own person

    and Russia, No Day without a Line is a series of thematically assembled journal entries which together form an unusual and engaging personal memoir. Ranging from Olsesha's prerevolutionary childhood, to notable cultural figures, to Russian and Western literature, the entries are a fundamental piece of the legacy of a major Russian writer and an important contribution to the literature of autobiography and memoir.

    It sends one back to the original texts with a whole host of new questions.... And it also helps us to understand the place of the 'official' writer in that peculiar mixture of ideology, collective pressure, and inspiration which is the Soviet literary process." --Times Literary Supplement"The Soviet Novel has had an enormous impact on the way Stalinist culture is studied in a range of disciplines (literature scholarship, history, cultural studies, even anthropology and political science)." --Slavic Review"Those readers who have come to realize that history is a branch of mythology will find Clark's book a stimulating and rewarding account of Soviet mythopoesis." --American Historical ReviewA dynamic account of the socialist realist novel's evolution as seen in the context of Soviet culture. A new Afterword brings the history of Socialist Realism to its end at the close of the 20th century.

    Conflating a biography and a criticism of Tolstoy, Shklovsky uses this great author to make a case for a revolutionary way of reading and appreciating literature.

    This closely documented study chronicles the Cheka's emergence as a vast, ubiquitous, and all-purpose apparatus for the suppression of internal opposition.Answerable solely to the Central Committee of the Communist Party as its special organ of merciless summary justice, aspiring to security surveillance over the entire society, the Cheka set the scene for the 20th-century totalitarian police state and the succession of formidable Soviet politicalpolice agencies, from Stalin's OGPU and NKVD to today's KGB.

    His superiors in the Moscow police force are suspicious of his Jewish wife, the black-market copies of his beloved Ed McBain 87th Precinct novels are getting tough to find, and his dreams of becoming a competitive weight-lifter are receding at a rapid clip. And then there's the famous dissident who's been murdered right before his trial—a trial intended to showcase the wonders of the Soviet judicial system. Rostnikov is charged with finding the killer, but the arrest had better be politically convenient, acceptable to the KGB. And things only get trickier when the killer strikes again, displaying a fondness for weapons—a hammer, a sickle, a vodka bottle—with a particularly Russian resonance. Clearly, he's making a statement, but what exactly is he saying? And can Rostnikov stop him before he says it again?

    

    Victor Terras’s companion work provides readers with a richer understanding of the Dostoevsky novel as the expression of a philosophy and a work of art.     In his introduction, Terras outlines the genesis, main ideas, and structural peculiarities of the novel as well as Dostoevsky’s political, philosophical, and aesthetic stance. The detailed commentary takes the reader through the novel, clarifying aspects of Russian life, the novel’s sociopolitical background, and a number of polemic issues. Terras identifies and explains hundreds of literary and biblical quotations and allusions. He discusses symbols, recurrent images, and structural stylistic patterns, including those lost in English translation.

    . . a dual self-portrait . . . by two gifted, courageous people whose story adds a heroic chapter to the tragic annals of our century."--The New York Times Book Review

    

    "Magisterial and authoritative.a panoramic view of Russia's social, political, economic and culture development."--The New York Times Book Review. "Reads with the excitement of good fiction.a sparkling story."--Chicago Sun-Times. "Highly recommended."--Choice. "Engrossing narrative is rich with human interest and transports the reader back into 18th-century Russia."--Publishers Weekly. "A well-balanced scholarly treatment.meticulous research."--Library Journal.

    The 681 pieces contained in this volume offer unique and intimate insights into the composer's life. They range from two months before his 21st birthday in 1861 to six weeks before his death. In vivid, informative detail Tchaikovsky discusses both his own music and that of his contemporaries, as well as European literature, art, and, in a long missive, his reactions to the New World. The fascination and importance of these letters lie in the light that they throw on the social and political climate in which Tchaikovsky lived. He also has much to say about patriotism, censorship, the conditions of the peasantry, the place of the Orthodox Church, and attitudes toward foreign countries. This is the definitive work on Tchaikovsky by Tchaikovsky.

    

    

    Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko was a child of the Bolshevik Revolution. His father, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, led the Bolshevik storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917 and went on the become a leading Soviet military figure, political operative, and diplomat. He was a victim of judicial murder during Stalin's purges of the late thirties. Vladimir Antonov-Oveyenko's official rehabilitation in 1956 was one of the first acts of Khrushchev's de-Stalinization program. His son, Anton, almost totally blind and a survivor of many years in Stalin's prisons and concentration camps, told the story of Stalin from personal experience. The fate of the Soviet Union under Stalin - as well as the official silence that again enshrouds the man Anton denounced as a gangster - led him to write a remarkable and damning book.

    This book describes the formation and evolution of these movements, which were at once united by a powerful vision and sundered by the contradictions of practical politics.

    443 pages.