Their dream was to "liberate" the whole of Asia, and their starting point was British India, the richest of all imperial possessions.The bloody struggle that ensued, the full story of which has never been told, marked a dramatic new twist in the Great Game. Among the players were British Indian intelligence officers and the armed revolutionaries of the Communist International. There were also Muslim visionaries and Chinese warlords-as well as a White Russian baron who roasted his Bolshevik captives alive.Pieced together from secret archives, intelligence reports, and the long-forgotten memoirs of the players involved, here is an extraordinary tale of intrigue and treachery. Like Hopkirk's bestselling The Great Game, its theme is ominously topical in view of the violent events that still grip this turbulent region-from the Caucasus to Afghanistan-where the Great Game never really ended.

    Translated by Guy Daniels.

    Brought up in Russia but taken on visits to Scotland, Eugenie Fraser marvelously evokes a child's reactions to two totally different environments, sets of customs, and family backgrounds. With the events of 1914 to 1920—the war with Germany, the Revolution, the murder of the Tsar, and the withdrawal of the Allied Intervention in the north—came the disintegration of Russia and of family life. The stark realities of hunger, deprivation, and fear are sharply contrasted with the adventures of childhood. The reader shares the family's suspense and concern about the fates of its members and relives with Eugenie her final escape to Scotland.

    Includes new political terminology, new Russian institutions, new countries and republics and new city names. Contains 26,000 entries in the English-Russian section and 40,000 words in the Russian-English section. Irregularities in Russian declensions and conjugations appear at the beginning of each entry.

    Raised by a brutal and alcoholic father, he moved to Moscow to escape--and to become the author of popular magazine stories. His stories led to plays and his plays to fame, but tuberculosis claimed him at the early age of forty-four. 8-page photo insert.

    

    

    

    Despite her family's and the tsar's opposition, Maria was determined to join her husband thousands of miles from St. Petersburg. She was more than halfway there when the tsar's decree that she could never return from Siberia was read to her. The reunion occured in the depths of a silver mine, where she fell at her husband's feet and kissed his chains.Christine Sutherland's fascinating portrait of Maria and members of the Decembrist circle is based on the unpublished memoirs and diaries of the princess, which the Volkonsky family made available to her. The exile in Siberia lasted for almost thirty years, when an amnesty following the tsar's death freed them.In exile, Maria brought to Prince Volkonsky her love, gaiety, and artistic talents, together with a force of character, courage, and integrity which sustained them through the long years. A second son and a daughter were born to them in the detention camp of Chita in Transbaikalia. The Volkonskys were eventually allowed to settle in Irkutsk in a large, well-furnished wooden house. Maria's benevolent influence on the govenor of the province, in establishing local schools, in building the first theater in Siberia, and in promoting farm cooperatives, won her the love of the populace as "our Princess."

    

    In the early nineteenth century the centers of Romanian political life were the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which were both under Ottoman rule but which had separate, autonomous administrations. Although welcoming Russian aid against the Ottoman Empire, the Romanian leadership at the same time feared that the Russian government would use its military power to establish a firm control over the Principalities or would annex Romanian lands, as indeed occurred in 1812. Here this difficult relationship is examined in detail as it developed during the century in connection with the major events leading to the international acceptance of Romanian independence in 1878.

    Advanced Beginning through Advanced In 12 self-contained units, this outstanding reference provides a clear, systematic presentation of the major grammatical elements of Russian -- a complete guide for developing a greater mastery of Russian.

    Women scientists, workers, artists and intellectuals of all ages and ethnic backgrounds and from all parts of the Soviet Union report on their experiences as workers, mothers, daughters and dissidents.

    

    Eating and drinking are viewed here as social activities which involves the economics of production, storage and distribution of food stuffs. These activities attract both social controls and state taxation; in this way the everyday process of eating and drinking is linked with the history of Russia. The dominance of grain in the diet throughout the period and the importance of salt, as implied in the title, are dealt with, as are the early Russian beer-drinking fraternities. The relatively late introduction of spirits, in the from of vodka, and it disastrous consequences in social terms are described. Tea and the samovar, also much more a latecomer than is generally realized, did little to diminish excessive drinking. Drinking, in any event, was by no means discourage by the state, since it was a major source of state income. The final section of the book looks at rural diets in the nineteenth century, when some variation and new items, such as the potato, became important. At the same time, peasants depended basically on the grain crop, as they had for thousands of years. Forced by txation to enter the market, afflicted by severe famines towards the end of the century, many peasants ate and drank no better as a result of the modernization of the county.

    Focusing on an aspect of Russian literary history that has previously been almost ignored, he shows how Russian writers of this period tried unusual methods to make their texts visually interesting or expressive. The book includes 183 illustrations, most from rare publications and many reproduced for the first time. The author discusses such figures as the Symbolist Andrey Bely, the Futurists Aleksey Kruchonykh, Vasili Kamensky, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the post-Futurist Ilya Zdanevich, and their use of devices ranging from unorthodox layouts and florid typography to roughly done lithographed or handmade books.Originally published in 1984.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.

    Mr. McConkey's achievement…is to send the reader back to the Russian master with renewed wonder."—Harvey Shapiro, The New York TimesIn 1890 Anton Chekhov—thirty years old and already a famous writer—left his home and family in Moscow to travel 6,500 miles across Russia, over frozen land and sea, by train, ferry, and troika, to visit the island of Sakhalin, a penal colony off the coast of Siberia.What was Chekhov seeking by undertaking such a harrowing journey to that God-forsaken island? Ostensibly, he went in his role of physician, to observe the medical conditions and to collect statistical information (Indeed, Chekhov wrote that during his stay he filled out more than 10,000 census cards based on interviews with prisoners and exiles.) But his motivation, as James McConkey reflects, was more likely escape: escape from the sense of confinement that fame, fortune, and family had brought—a search, in other words, for freedom in a place where no one was free.In To a Distant Island, McConkey recreates Chekhov's remarkable journey in all of its complexity, while interweaving a journey of his own. As McConkey guides us through the Russian wilderness and into the soul of this great writer, he uncovers the peculiar and hidden forces that shaped two lives."The genre in which McConkey does his best writing has no name. He invented it…What McConkey does is to create meaning out of ordinary life. He'll take a tiny incident…and by linking it through memory with a series of past events, he'll create what is not exactly a story but a pattern in time. By then the incident is no longer small; it has become the focus for a revelation…His books should be famous." —Noel Perrin, U.S.A. TodayJames McConkey is the author of Crossroads, The Tree House Confessions, The Novels of E.M. Forster, and Court of Memory (a continuing biography that appeared serially in various magazines, primarily The New Yorker), and many other books. He is Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature Emeritus at Cornell University.Jay Parini is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College. He is the author of The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year and Robert Frost: A Life and many other works of fiction, criticism, poetry, and biography.