Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle. In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing reversal, encircled and trapped their Nazi enemy. This battle for the ruins of a city cost more than a million lives. Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides, fighting in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield. Antony Beevor has interviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including prisoner interrogations and reports of desertions and executions. As a story of cruelty, courage, and human suffering, Stalingrad is unprecedented and unforgettable.

    Included are the familiar masterpieces--"The Kiss," "The Darling," and "The Lady with the Dog"--as well as several brilliant lesser-known tales such as "A Blunder," "Hush!," and "Champagne." These stories, ordered from 1886 to 1899, are drawn from Chekhov's most fruitful years as a short-story writer. A truly balanced selection, they exhibit the qualities that make Chekhov one of the greatest fiction writers of all time: his gift for detail, dialogue, and humor; his emotional perception and compassion; and his understanding that life's most important moments are often the most overlooked."The reason we like Chekhov so much, now at our century's end," writes Ford in his perceptive introduction, "is because his stories from the last century's end feel so modern to us, are so much of our own time and mind." Exquisitely translated by the renowned Constance Garnett, these stories present a wonderful opportunity to introduce yourself--or become reaquainted with--an artist whose genius and influence only increase with every passing generation.

    The NKVD officer carefully designed it. He measured my size with a stick, made lines on the forest floor, and told me to dig. He wanted to make sure I'd fit well inside."In 1941 Janusz Bardach's death sentence was commuted to ten years' hard labor and he was sent to Kolyma—the harshest, coldest, and most deadly prison in Joseph Stalin's labor camp system—the Siberia of Siberias. The only English-language memoir since the fall of communism to chronicle the atrocities committed during the Stalinist regime, Bardach's gripping testimony explores the darkest corners of the human condition at the same time that it documents the tyranny of Stalin's reign, equal only to that of Hitler. With breathtaking immediacy, a riveting eye for detail, and a humanity that permeates the events and landscapes he describes, Bardach recounts the extraordinary story of this nearly inconceivable world.The story begins with the Nazi occupation when Bardach, a young Polish Jew inspired by Soviet Communism, crosses the border of Poland to join the ranks of the Red Army. His ideals are quickly shattered when he is arrested, court-martialed, and sentenced to death. How Bardach survives an endless barrage of brutality—from a near-fatal beating to the harsh conditions and slow starvation of the gulag existence—is a testament to human endurance under the most oppressive circumstances. Besides being of great historical significance, Bardach's narrative is a celebration of life and a vital affirmation of what it means to be human.

    Eventually freed from the gulag in the 1970's, he finds he has no reason to return to the West-he has become Russian in everything but birth. Now, on the day of his 80th birthday, Russia has changed. Communism has evaporated. In the aftermath, information has come to light that Alex is still alive. This moving story weaves together the events of Alex's life, exploring this momentous day, his harrowing past in the camp and his life in the village. And it ends with his having to make a personal choice, perhaps for the first time in his life, and the climax is shattering.

    It includes over 600 images of costumes, official regalia portraits, books, icons and jewellery belonging to, or associated with, the imperial family. In addition, the book contains previously unpublished documentary material from the State Archive in Moscow: diaries of the tsar's family, their photo albums, letters and personal memorabilia, as well as historical documents relating to the family's murder. In the words of Dr Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the Hermitage, Nicholas & Alexandra 'presents the final chapter of tsarist Russia as it's never been told before.'

    An account of the life of the wife of the Grand Duke Serge of Russia, and her role in the politics and personal intrigue of her day.

    In these essays he sketches a portrait of the darkest hours faced by the fledgling revolution, and defends the red terror against abstract criticisms as a regrettable, though unavoidable, product of horrible circumstances.

    It also recounts the lives of the Tsar's children from his controversial second marriage - to his mistress, Catherine Dolgorouky - of whom the youngest, Catherine, lived in England for several years and died in 1959. The collapse of the dynasty, the Russian revolution and execution of several members of the family are thus seen through the eyes of the surviving sons and daughters of the Tsar Liberator.

    It is also a story of the history, people and cultures of the Caucasus and of tiny ethnic groups struggling for both physical and cultural survival.

    His work has been exhibited at such major international venues as The Museum of Modern Art in New York (1991), the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1995) and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1995).Kabakov's installations are, in some instances, akin to theatrical mise-en-scènes, reproducing a cramped communal apartment or a flooded art museum as a site of schadenfreude-like comedies on human struggle and doomed aspirations. Alternating between light-hearted irony and deeply poignant tragedy, Kabakov evokes a shadowy world in which fable-like miracles might occur: a homespun cosmonaut may fly into space or the radio/television aerial may spell out a poem against the sky.Boris Groys, an art critic and philosopher, surveys the artist's long career and analyses its philosophical and formal dimensions in terms of art history as well as the artist's own biogaphy. In the Interview, David A. Ross discusses the artist's practice and its bridging of Eastern and Western contemporary art. Iwona Blazwick, Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, concentrates on the artist's contribution to the 1997 Skulptur Projekte in Munster, Looking up. Reading the Words, a sculpture that dares to offer 'the very best thing that you have ever done or seen in your life'. An extract from the short story 'The Steppe' by Anton Chekhov comprises the Artist's Choice. The Artist's Writings range from extracts from his Kafka-esque The Life of Flies, to fictional letters of complaint on communal life in the Soviet Union, to texts on the significance to the artist of the legacies of Cezanne and Malevich.

    Born in Armenia, he survived the Turkish genocide begun in 1915 and arrived in America in 1920. One of the first abstract expressionists, he was a major influence on the New York art scene, which included de Kooning, Rothko, Pollock, and others. After a devastating series of illnesses, injuries, and personal setbacks, he committed suicide at the age of 46.In Black Angel, Nouritza Matossian uses for the first time Gorky's original letters in Armenian and other new source material, writing with authority and insight about the powerful influence Gorky's Armenian heritage had upon his painting. She also provides an informed and important critique of the entire body of Gorky's major work.

    With an encyclopedic knowledge of Soviet source material, including archival documents released after the fall of the USSR, Vadim Rogovin presents a detailed and penetrating analysis of the causes, impact and consequences of Stalin's purges. He demonstrates that the principal function of the terror was the physical annihilation of the substantial socialist opposition to Stalin's bureaucratic regime.

    This volume comprises the classic selection edited by Birkett and Struve, in Russian, here furnished with a new bibliography, and complements the stories and plays by Chekhov already available in the BCP Russian Texts series. The twelve stories, which date from 1883 to 1896, range from miniatures of comic levity such as Tolsttyi i tonkii to stories of sophisticated maturity such as Dom s mezoninom. The stories included are as follows (titles given in English translation): Fat Man and Thin Man; The Boys; A Test for Rank; A Failure; A Little Joke; The Blank Catch; The Beauties; The Student; At Yuletide; An Incident in Practice; Anna Round the Neck; The House with the Mezzanine.

    N. Pirozhkova's moving memoir of her life with Isaac Babel, perhaps the Soviet Union's greatest writer, and one of the literary world's most lively and endearing characters. Pirozhkova was the only female engineer working on Stalin's grand Moscow subway project when she met Babel in 1932 and they spent the next eight years as husband and wife. At His Side is populated with Babel's wide circle of friends - among them Maxim Gorky, Sergey Eisenstein, and André Malraux - and includes some wonderful vignettes, as when Babel accompanies a cantankerous Boris Pasternak on a long train ride to Germany to receive a literary prize. But it is Babel himself, the affable and always witty writer, who is given vivid life on this pages. And then, in 1940, Stalin's secret police arrive at the door to take Babel away, and there begins the long and sorrowful aftermath to the story. After a mock trial, Babel was summarily executed, but his fate was kept from Pirozhkova and for years she was led to believe he was alive - and writing - in a Siberian prison camp. It was not until 1952 that she learned that Babel was dead, but even then the authorities played with the truth, claiming he'd died of a heart attack. It was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union that Pirozhkova learned the true circumstances of Babel's murder."Babel lives in his wife’s lucid yet adoring prose. We are with her, at his side"--New York Times Book Review"This glimpse into Babel’s last few years on earth, written by the person closest to him, will be a treasured possession" --Richard BernsteinThe New York Times

    experimented with and deployed biological weapons during the Korean War. Endicott and Hagerman explore the political and moral dimensions of this issue, asking what restraints were applied or forgotten in those years of ideological and political passion and military crisis. For the first time, there is hard evidence that the United States lied both to Congress and to the American public in saying that the American biological warfare program was purely defensive and for retaliation only. The truth is that a large and sophisticated biological weapons system was developed as an offensive weapon of opportunity in the post-World War II years. From newly declassified U.S., Canadian, and British documents, and with the cooperation of the Chinese Central Archives in giving the authors the first access by foreigners to relevant classified documents, Endicott and Hagerman have been able to tell the previously hidden story of the extension of the limits of modern war to include the use of medical science, the most morally laden of sciences with respect to the sanctity of human life. An important book for anyone interested in the history and morality of modern warfare.

    His whimsical paintings have illustrated Stolichnaya vodka advertisements in hundreds of magazines worldwide, and in 1996 the United nations commissioned an original work from Gorbachev for its "Endangered Species" stamp. This first monograph on Gorbachev presents 100 full color plates spanning the artist's career, while essays offer a lively profile of Gorbachev the man and artist.

    Bringing together artists who worked in a broad range of styles and approaches, and often at great personal risk, Forbidden Art reveals artwork that challenged Soviet totalitarianism. From the horrific purges of the Stalin Era, to the time before the Soviet Union's collapse -- when failure to conform could result in loss of employment, imprisonment, or death -- this book documents the heroic legacy of Soviet nonconformist art, and includes a group of scholarly essays on such issues as the relation of Russian "outsider art" to the avant-garde. With a bibliography and artist biographies, this book is a captivating reminder of the artist's role in challenging the status quo.

    Compelled to assert their freedom and individualism, they faced the huge Russian army in a one-sided war which destroyed their land, their homes, and their families. This updated account also covers the role of Vladimir Putin in the continuing struggle.

    Aileen Kelly sets the conflict between utopian and anti-utopian traditions in Russian thought within the context of the shift in European thought away from faith in universal systems and "grand narratives" of progress toward an acceptance of the role of chance and contingency in nature and history.In the current age, as we face the dilemma of how to prevent the erosion of faith in absolutes and final solutions from ending in moral nihilism, we have much to learn from the struggles, failures, and insights of Russian thinkers, Kelly says. Her essays—some of them tours de force that have appeared before as well as substantial new studies of Turgenev, Herzen, and the Signposts debate—illuminate the insights of Russian intellectuals into the social and political consequences of ideas of such seminal Western thinkers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Darwin. Russian Literature and Thought Series

    Combining traditional elements with the fantastic and the surreal, Ivanov's stories address not only the themes of the Revolution--the dehumanizing effects of famine; the ferment, energy, and uncertainty of the tempestuous times—but also the quotidian: the quiet world of man and nature, and the elemental bond that tied peasants to their native land. Fertility and Other Stories makes available for the first time in English some of the best stories of one of the most talented twentieth-century Russian writers.

    Simon Franklin examines a wide range of writings, from the parchment manuscripts of the Orthodox Church, through the Novgorod birch-bark documents, to inscriptions on stone and metal. He analyzes the texts from a variety of perspectives, and presents fascinating insight into this crucial aspect of Russian history. The impressive scholarship and idiosyncratic wit of the volume commend it to specialists in Russian history and Russian literature.

    His imprisonment by Poland's military regime in the 1980s did nothing to quench his outpouring of writings, many of which were published in English as Letters from Prison. Beginning where that volume ended, Letters from Freedom finds Michnik briefly in prison at the height of the "cold civil war" between authorities and citizens in Poland, then released. Through his continuing essays, articles, and interviews, the reader can follow all the momentous changes of the last decade in Poland and East-Central Europe. Some of the writings have appeared in English in various publications; most are translated here for the first time.Michnik is never detached. His belief that people can get what they want without hatred and violence has always translated into action, and his actions, particularly the activity of writing, have required his contemporaries to think seriously about what it is they want. His commitment to freedom is absolute, but neither wild-eyed nor humorless; with a characteristic combination of idealism and pragmatism, Michnik says, "In the end, politics is the art of foreseeing and implementing the possible."Michnik's blend of conviction and political acumen is perhaps most vividly revealed in the interviews transcribed in the book, whether he is the subject of the interview or is conducting a conversation with Czeslaw Milosz, Vacláv Havel, or Wojciech Jaruzelski. These face-to-face exchanges tell more about the forces at work in contemporary Eastern Europe than could any textbook. Sharing Michnik's intellectual journey through a tumultuous era, we touch on all the subjects important to him in this wide-ranging collection and find they have importance for everyone who values conscience and responsibility. In the words of Jonathan Schell, "Michnik is one of those who bring honor to the last two decades of the twentieth century."

    Expertly translated and annotated by Harlow Robinson, the correspondence presented here covers Prokofiev's earliest years at St. Petersburg Conservatory, his extensive worldwide travels, and his return to Moscow. Among the correspondents are childhood friend Vera Alpers, harpist Eleonora Damskaya, ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, theatrical director Vsevolod Meyerhold, Soviet critic Boris Asafiev, composers Vernon Duke and Nikolai Miaskovsky, soprano Nina Koshetz, musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, violinist Jascha Heifetz, conductor Serge Koussevitsky, and film director Sergei Eisenstein. Prokofiev vividly describes, often with dramatic flair and a quirky sense of humor, concerts, performances, his compositions, political events, and meetings with other musicians and composers. His observations are peppered with musical gossip as well as eccentric, original, and disarmingly apolitical insights.

    In this magisterial and exciting book, Ulam offers a brilliant history of Russian political and intellectual life in those critical years from 1855 to 1884 and describes the successive conspiracies that shook the edifice of tsarist autocracy.

    Each topic is divided into sections on vocabulary, phraseology and useful background information adaptable for self-teaching and for oral conversation classes. Exercises are included on specific grammar points and related vocabulary, all Russian texts included as information source and as models for adaptation are translated, and an English-Russian vocabulary is provided.

    A little-known former Cossack land, the Donbas remained a haven for fugitives, providing freedom to whoever needed it. As a result, Stalin's Terror was extraordinarily harsh in the Donbas. Drawing on much new information from formerly closed archives in Ukraine and Russia, the book paints a detailed yet panoramic picture of the tumultuous history of the Donbas and analyzes critical events in modern Ukrainian and Russian history from a regional perspective.

    Drawing on interviews with key actors in the Soviet Union before, during, and after its collapse in 1991, General William E. Odom tells a riveting and important story.

    This anthology provides an unusual selection of stories and a play from among the author's own favorites, including "The Student" and "The Three Sisters." Drawing from such rare artifacts as the Moscow Art Theatre's album from its production of "The Three Sisters" (with Chekhov's wife in the role of Masha) and Vladimir Nabokov's handwritten lecture notes on Chekhov's oeuvre, this Collector's Edition of most-loved works offers readers the chance to become acquainted with Chekhov's tender humor through the author's own choices from among his poignant and whimsical tales.

    It covers the equivalent of two years of college-level study.                40 lessons, each with a lively, authentic Russian dialogue that includes the most common and useful expressions for everyday conversation.                English translations and explanations of Russian grammar and usage, pronunciation, vocabulary, and cultural notes.                Quizzes to check your progress.                A summary of Russian grammar.                A section on letter writing for business or social occasions.                An extensive two-way glossary.While this book stands on its own as a complete course and an invaluable reference, you'll find that using it with the recorded lessons is even more effective. Along with the recordings, Living Language® Ultimate Russian cassette packages include this manual.

    The selections translated here illustrate in colorful detail how the experiences and the composition of Russian society and culture evolved from the late eighteenth century through the 1917 revolution, in response to economic, technological, and political changes. Fortunetelling and etiquette manuals, thieves' tales, children's literature, popular songs, war stories, women's novels, satires of life in America, and vaudeville skits are just a few of the genres represented.

    A variety of beautiful effects, details, and textures can be easily achieved by using this stitch with different size needles, threads, and fabrics.This book is a complete guide to the old Russian folk style of punchneedle embroidery and contains simple descriptions of the equipment needed, detailed instructions for stitching, easy-to-follow diagrams, and 28 delightful iron-on transfer patterns of flowers, birds, butterflies, leaves, and more.Popular as a hobby, a craft, and an art form, punchneedle embroidery has an amazing variety of uses: decorate items such as purses, necklaces, combs, belts, pins, earrings, scarves, shawls, aprons; add a designer touch to shirts, blouses, skirts, and dresses; embellish home furnishings and accessories such as pillows, wall hangings, table cloths, mirror or picture frames, fabric boxes, sachets, tablecloths, napkins, and more. Many hobbyists use punchneedle to create miniature rugs, pillows, and furnishings for doll houses. There is no limit to the items you can embroider with this versatile technique.Gail Bird became interested in Russian punchneedle embroidery several years ago. Since then she has become the nation’s foremost promoter of the craft, devoting all her efforts to developing punchneedle embroidery as an art form. She has lectured throughout the United States and demonstrated the craft in major department stores and on television. A serious historian of the form, Mrs. Bird has traveled to Russia, Poland, and Hungary to study embroidery techniques, and possesses the world’s largest collection of finished contemporary Russian punchneedle embroidery.

    The 7.62mm AKM assault rifle and its folding-stock twin, the AKMS, were based on the popular AK-47 design. This illustrated manual covers the history, function, maintenance, assembly and disassembly, confirmation of zero, penetration characteristics of various cartridges, trajectory and dispersion patterns, accessories and more.