Forty years after his Hitler: A Study in Tyranny set a standard for scholarship of the Nazi era, Lord Alan Bullock gives readers a breathtakingly accomplished dual biography that places Adolf Hitler's origins, personality, career, and legacy alongside those of Joseph Stalin--his implacable antagonist and moral mirror image.

    Guerrillas on skis, heroic single-handed attacks on tanks, unfathomable endurance, and the charismatic leadership of one of this century's true military geniuses - these are the elements of both the Finnish victory and a gripping tale of war.

    Compelling characters, fluid, thrilling reading, and a strong sense of history set these books apart in the minds of more than a half million fans who’ve loved them. Join Phillips and Pella again or for the first time as peasant and princess alike face the prospect of their beloved Russia being torn apart. Conflict within and without brews as thoughts of revolution stirs the masses and war looms in the Balkans. The lives of the characters will be forever changed…and so will yours.

    Today, these brutal events are symbolized by one word, Katyn—a crime that still bitterly divides Poles and Russians. Paul’s richly updated account covers Russian attempts to recant their admission of guilt for the murders in Katyn Forest and includes recently translated documents from Russian military archives, eyewitness accounts of two perpetrators, and secret official minutes published here for the first time that confirm that U.S. government cover-up of the crime continued long after the war ended.Paul’s masterful narrative recreates what daily life was like for three Polish families amid momentous events of World War II—from the treacherous Nazi-Soviet invasion in 1939 to a rigged election in 1947 that sealed Poland’s doom. The patriarch of each family was among the Polish officers personally ordered by Stalin to be shot. One of the families suffered daily repression under the German General Government. Like thousands of other Poles, two of the families were deported to Siberia, where they nearly died from forced labor, starvation, and neglect. Through painstaking research, the author reconstructs the lives of these families including such stories as a miraculous escape on the last transport of Poles leaving Russia and a mother’s daring ski trek over the Carpathian Mountains to rescue a daughter she had not seen in six years. At the heart of the drama is the Poles’ uncommon belief in “victory in defeat”—that their struggles made them strong and that freedom and independence, inevitably, would be regained.

    In this spirited memoir, Plisetskaya reflects on her personal and professional odyssey, presenting a unique view of the life of a Soviet artist during the troubled period from the late 1930s to the 1990s.Plisetskaya recounts the execution of her father in the Great Terror and her mother’s exile to the Gulag. She describes her admission to the Bolshoi in 1943, the roles she performed there, and the endless petty harassments she endured, from both envious colleagues and Party officials. Refused permission for six years to tour with the company, Plisetskaya eventually performed all over the world, working with such noted choreographers as Roland Petit and Maurice Béjart. She recounts the tumultuous events she lived through and the fascinating people she met—among them the legendary ballet teacher Agrippina Vaganova, George Balanchine, Frank Sinatra, Rudolf Nureyev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. And she provides fascinating details about testy cocktail-party encounters with Khrushchev, tours abroad when her meager per diem allowance brought her close to starvation, and KGB plots to capitalize on her friendship with Robert Kennedy. Gifted, courageous, and brutally honest, Plisetskaya brilliantly illuminates the world of Soviet ballet during an era that encompasses both repression and cultural détente.Still prima ballerina assoluta with the Bolshoi Ballet, Maya Plisetskaya also travels around the world performing and lecturing. At the Bolshoi’s gala celebrating her 75th birthday, President Vladimir Putin presented her with Russia’s highest civilian honor, the medal for service to the Russian state, second degree. Tim Scholl is professor of Russian language and literature at Oberlin College. Antonina W. Bouis is the prize-winning translator of more than fifty books, including fiction, nonfiction, and memoirs by such figures as Andrei Sakharov, Elena Bonner, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

    Here is a story of a great civilization made human, played out through the lives of four families who are divided by ethnicity but united in shaping the destiny of their land.

    Amazing in its thematic range and stylistic breadth, his poetry "leaps continents and covers war and peace, intolerance and human striving . . . a passionate and essential edition of his collected poems" ( The New York Times).

    The Blue Lantern, winner of the Russian Little Booker Prize, gathers eight of his very best stories. Various, delightful, and uncategorizable, the stories are highly addictive. Pelevin here, as in The Yellow Arrow (New Directions, 1996), Omon Ra (ND, 1997), and A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia (ND, 1998), pays great attention to the meaning of life, in earnest and as spoof. In the title story, kids in a Pioneer camp tell terrifying bedtime stories; in "Hermit and Six-Toes," two chickens are obsessed with the nature of the universe as viewed from their poultry plant; the Young Communist League activists of "Mid-Game" change their sex to become hard-currency prostitutes; and "The Life and Adventures of Shed #XII" is the story of a storage hut whose dream is to become a bicycle.

    The author has had access to Nijinsky's hospital files, medical records, and many other previously unexplored documents, including personal correspondence in the family archives and the dancer's own sketches and notebooks.

    A quarter of a century after his death, his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, became a worldwide bestseller. In Manuscripts Don't Burn the title a line from his famous novel, J.A. E. Curtis presents a gripping chronicle of Bulgakov's life, using as source material, among other documents, a partial copy of one of his diaries which was presumed lost and uncovered decades later in the KGB’s archives. That diary and those of his third wife record the nightmarish precariousness of life during the Stalinist purges. Also included are letters to Stalin, in which Bulgakov pleads to be allowed to emigrate; letters to his siblings; intimate notes to his second and third wives; and letters to and from other writers such as Gorky and Zamyatin.

    Her fantasies are shattered, however, when she is bought by a feisty little girl whose cats pride themselves on forceful fighting and ferocious clawing. The child becomes disgusted with the toy's meek nature and throws her on the floor; she is rescued by a kindhearted cousin, Ben, a kindred spirit who at once realizes that Tasha was born to dance. This is an enchanting tale with a simple, powerful message--dreams can be realized. The striking, detailed illustrations, a combination of colored pencil and watercolor, bring to life the endearing stuffed animals of the nursery, the sullen protagonist, and the gentle hero. Most impressive though is a two-page spread of Tasha, with a perfect breakup of light and dark and flow of movement. If one blinks for just a moment, she really does appear to be dancing. --Debra S. Gold, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Cleveland

    Perhaps because of the popularity of his Easter eggs, Fabergé’s skilled competitors have been largely overlooked. Fabergé and the Russian Master Goldsmiths tells their story and features their masterpieces as well as Fabergé’s. Today, the creations of the Russian master goldsmiths are dispersed throughout the world. A broad sampling of masterpieces from the great Russian collections, as well as from private and public collections, are depicted here in nearly 300 full-color illustrations, a number of which are published here for the first time.

    

    The rough-hewn beauty of traditional peasant homes--with their samovars, stoves, and ornate exteriors--is portrayed with knowledgeable and insightful authority. The breathtaking photographs and evocative text guide the reader through the homes of Pasternak, Gorky, Dostoevsky, and other artists and intellectuals. Over 300 full color photographs.

    The year of Comrades began with the murder of Rasputin and ended with the creation of the secret police. In a narrative style, this book chronicles the events of the February Revolution.

    Volume 3

    

    Petersburg in the years 1890 to 1914, when it was witnessing the last moments of its imperial incarnation and, simultaneously, the first shocks of social and technological change.

    Four Russian Plays: The Infant (aka The Minor) by Denis Fonvizin Chatsky (aka Woe from Wit) by Alexander Griboyedov The Inspector General by Nikolai Gogol Thunder (aka The Storm) by Alexander Ostrovsky

    Their reward was forced repatriation into Stalin's Gulag at the hands of Western powers in 1945.

    The lives of ordinary Russians are illuminated in this oral history collection in which they speak of their experiences during events from the Revolution through to the present day

    Moreover the established historiography dealing with those years has tended to focus on the processes of accommodation and communal disintegration. However, the historical processes as analysed in this collection of essays emerge as multi- rather than uni-directional, far more variegated and complex than usually described hitherto. Contradictory trends were associated with different localities, levels of development and ideological allegiances. Traditional loyalties, new socio-ethnic structures, communal cohesion, romantic rediscoveries of the past and the political solidarity engendered by the struggle for emancipation across Europe, all served to counterbalance the homogenizing forces of modernity. Bringing together the work of fourteen leading historians, this book represents a major contribution to the revision, which has gained momentum in recent years, of the traditional historiography.

    Artists such as Exter, Lissitzky, Malevich, Popova, Rodchenko, Stepanova, and Tatlin revolutionized costume, set, and poster design, bringing an imaginative vitality to the state that has rarely been equaled.This lavishly illustrated book accompanies an exhibition organized by Nancy Van Norman Baer of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the internationally known Soviet scholar John E. Bowlt and the staff of the Bakhrushkin State Central Theatrical Museum in Moscow. Works have been selected for their dazzling visual qualities and for the insight they provide into the turbulent history of Russian avant-garde theatre in a changing cultural climate.

    

    Then followed nearly a century of suspicion and hostility. Now, thanks to glasnost and a thaw in the Cold War, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union have nearly come full circle--we're almost friends again.In the initial volume of a three-volume series, historian Norman Saul presents the first comprehensive survey of early Russian-American relations by an American scholar. Drawing upon secondary and documentary publications as well as archival materials from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain, he reveals a wealth of new detail about contacts between the two countries between the American Revolutionary War and the purchase of Alaska in 1867. By weaving personal experiences into analysis of the basic trends, Saul provides a fuller understanding of Soviet-American experience.His conclusion? That the early relationships--diplomatic, cultural, scientific, economic, and personal--between the two countries were more extensive than had been reported before, more important, and more congenial.In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the U.S. and Russia had a lot in common, Saul notes, and many of those similarities persist today. Both countries, in part because of geographic size, faced problems in developing their natural resources. Both countries were economically dependent on systems of forced labor--slavery in the U.S. and serfdom in Russia. Reform resulted in freedom without land for American slaves, and land without freedom for the serfs. Then, as now, Russia looked to the U.S. for help with technology.Saul shows that differences also persist. The United States was geographically isolated and developed in relative peace, while Russia developed within the reach of the European powers and, consequently, worried more about defense. As is still the case, Russian government seemed appallingly autocratic to those whose rights were guaranteed by the U.S. constitution, and deal-making between citizens of the two countries was hampered by the Russians' belief that Americans were materialistic and deceitful, and by Americans' notion that Russians were slow, bureaucratic, and expected to be bribed.At a time when United States-Soviet relations have taken yet another dramatic turn, it is more important than ever to trace--and to understand--the history of the relationship of these two countries. As Saul shows clearly, parallel developments of the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries in some ways foreshadow parallel development into the two superpowers in the mid twentieth.