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In the archives of the Memorial International Human Rights Centre
in Moscow is an extraordinary diary, a rare first-person testimony
of a commander of guards in a Soviet labour camp. Ivan Chistyakov
was sent to the Gulag in 1937, where he worked at the Baikal-Amur
Corrective Labour Camp for over a year. Life at the Gulag was
anathema to Chistyakov, a cultured Muscovite with a nostalgia for
pre-revolutionary Russia, and an amateur painter and poet. He
recorded its horrors with an unmatchable immediacy, documenting a
world where petty rivalries put lives at risk, prisoners hacked off
their fingers to bet in card games, railway sleepers were burned
for firewood and Siberian winds froze the lather on the soap. From
his stumbling poetic musings on the bitter landscape to his
matter-of-fact grumbles about his stove, from accounts of the
conditions of the camp to reflections on the cruelty of loneliness,
this diary is unique - a visceral and immediate description of a
place and time whose repercussions still affect the shape of modern
Russia.
Winner of a PEN Translates Award When Anya is arrested at a Moscow
anti-corruption rally under false pretences, she is given a 10-day
sentence at a detention centre. Her cellmates are five other
ordinary women arrested on petty charges. Ten listless days stretch
before Anya and, as she appeals her sentence and recalls her
progress from apolitical youth to informed citizen, she is troubled
by strange, dreamlike visions, and wonders if her cellmates might
somehow not be as ordinary as they seem. A brilliant exploration of
what it means to be marginalized both as an independent woman and
in an increasingly intolerant Russia in particular, The Incredible
Events in Women's Cell Number Three introduces one of the most
urgent and gripping new voices in international literature.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 'Absolutely essential and
heartbreaking reading. There's a reason Ms. Alexievich won a Nobel
Prize' - Craig Mazin, creator of the HBO / Sky TV series Chernobyl
- A new translation of Voices from Chernobyl based on the revised
text - In April 1986 a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl
nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky and radiation escaped to
contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come. While
officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent
years collecting testimonies from survivors - clean-up workers,
residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans - crafting
their voices into a haunting oral history of fear, anger and
uncertainty, but also dark humour and love. A chronicle of the past
and a warning for our nuclear future, Chernobyl Prayer shows what
it is like to bear witness, and remember in a world that wants you
to forget. 'Beautifully written. . . heart-breaking' - Arundhati
Roy, Elle 'One of the most humane and terrifying books I've ever
read' - Helen Simpson, Observer
The first English-language account of Ivan Morozov and his ambition
to build one of the world's greatest collections of modern art "A
century of Russian culture distilled in the story of the life,
family and collection of the lavish, lazy, kindly, eccentric
grandson of a serf who brought Monet and Matisse to Moscow, waited
three years for the right 'Blue Gauguin'-and survived the first
years of Bolshevik rule."-Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times
"Best Books of 2020: Visual Arts" A wealthy Moscow textile
merchant, Morozov started buying art in a modest way in 1900 until,
on a trip to Paris, he developed a taste for the avant-garde.
Meticulous and highly discerning, he acquired works by the likes of
Monet, Pissarro, and Cezanne. Unlike his friendly rival Sergei
Shchukin, he collected Russian as well as European art. Altogether
he spent 1.5 million francs on 486 paintings and 30 sculptures-more
than any other collector of the age. Natalya Semenova traces
Morozov's life, family, and achievements and sheds light on the
interconnected worlds of European and Russian art at the turn of
the twentieth century. Morozov always intended to leave his art to
the state-but with the Revolution in 1917 he found himself
appointed "assistant curator" to his own collection. He fled Russia
and his collection was later divided between Moscow and St.
Petersburg, only to languish in storage for decades. Morozov: The
Story of a Family and a Lost Collection was published to coincide
with "The Morozov Collection" exhibition at the Fondation Louis
Vuitton, Paris, May 2021. Exhibition Schedule: Paris Fondation
Louis Vuitton May 12 - October 10, 2021
When Vladimir Putin became President of Russia in 2000, his first
priority was to reestablish the intelligence agencies' grip on the
country by portraying himself as a strongman protecting Russian
citizens from security threats. Despite condemnation by the United
Nations, the European Parliament, and European Union, the policy of
brutal "ethnic cleansing" in Chechnya continued. For Putin,
Islamist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, were a
welcome opportunity to rebrand the war against Chechen
independence, not as the crushing of a democracy, but as a
contribution to President George W. Bush's "War on Terror." In the
years that followed, Putin's regime covertly supported and
manipulated extremist factions in Chechnya and stage-managed
terrorist attacks on its own citizens to justify continuing
aggression. US and European condemnation of Russian atrocities in
Chechnya dwindled as Russia continued to portray Chechen
independence as an international terrorist threat. Chechnya's Prime
Minister-in-Exile Akhmed Zakaev, who had to escape Chechnya, faced
Russian calls for his extradition from the United Kingdom, which
instead granted him political asylum as Russia's increased its
oppressive operations.
Subjugate or Exterminate! is an authoritative first-hand account of
the Russo-Chechen conflict by a Chechen leader who played a central
role in all the main events. Akhmed Zakayev rose rapidly from an
actor of Shakespearean roles to Commander of the Western Group for
the Defense of Ichkeria, and later served as Deputy Prime Minister
of Chechnya and, in exile, as Prime Minister of the Chechen
Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). It describes how the Kremlin set about
discrediting and destroying a democratic government by interacting
with criminal gangs and fomenting Islamist forces to split the
Chechen independence movement in a perverse reversal of the "War on
Terror." Akhmed Zakayev's memoir begins with a historical survey of
the fraught relations between the Chechens and the Russian Empire
and Soviet Union, up to the collapse of the USSR. The advent of
Gorbachev's Perestroika raised hopes that independence might enable
Chechnya to end centuries of oppression and exploitation. Russia's
first war against Chechnya (1994-1996), initially conceived by the
military as a way of disguising the large-scale theft and
embezzlement of funds from illegal sales of Soviet armaments during
the withdrawal from East Germany, ended in humiliating defeat for
Russia. Thereafter, Russia set about subverting the democratically
elected government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria by
instigating the gruesome murder of Western humanitarian aid workers
and business partners, and by financing criminal gangs and
anti-democratic Islamist groups that the ChRI police were unable to
subdue. Interference by nationals of countries in the Middle East
caused further disruption. In August 1999, Russia launched a brutal
second war in Chechnya, on grounds widely believed to be fabricated
and characterized by widespread war crimes. The West did not
intervene. This is an eyewitness account of the dangers faced by
the Chechen leaders as they tried to resist and negotiate with a
treacherous opponent. It ends in the year 2000, with Vladimir
Putin's election as Russia's president.
Subjugate or Exterminate! is an authoritative first-hand account of
the Russo-Chechen conflict by a Chechen leader who played a central
role in all the main events. Akhmed Zakayev rose rapidly from an
actor of Shakespearean roles to Commander of the Western Group for
the Defense of Ichkeria, and later served as Deputy Prime Minister
of Chechnya and, in exile, as Prime Minister of the Chechen
Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). It describes how the Kremlin set about
discrediting and destroying a democratic government by interacting
with criminal gangs and fomenting Islamist forces to split the
Chechen independence movement in a perverse reversal of the "War on
Terror." Akhmed Zakayev's memoir begins with a historical survey of
the fraught relations between the Chechens and the Russian Empire
and Soviet Union, up to the collapse of the USSR. The advent of
Gorbachev's Perestroika raised hopes that independence might enable
Chechnya to end centuries of oppression and exploitation. Russia's
first war against Chechnya (1994-1996), initially conceived by the
military as a way of disguising the large-scale theft and
embezzlement of funds from illegal sales of Soviet armaments during
the withdrawal from East Germany, ended in humiliating defeat for
Russia. Thereafter, Russia set about subverting the democratically
elected government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria by
instigating the gruesome murder of Western humanitarian aid workers
and business partners, and by financing criminal gangs and
anti-democratic Islamist groups that the ChRI police were unable to
subdue. Interference by nationals of countries in the Middle East
caused further disruption. In August 1999, Russia launched a brutal
second war in Chechnya, on grounds widely believed to be fabricated
and characterized by widespread war crimes. The West did not
intervene. This is an eyewitness account of the dangers faced by
the Chechen leaders as they tried to resist and negotiate with a
treacherous opponent. It ends in the year 2000, with Vladimir
Putin's election as Russia's president.
From the author of the internationally acclaimed Putin's Russia and
A Russian Diary. Until her murder in October 2006, Anna
Politkovskaya wrote for the Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta,
winning international fame for her reporting on the Chechen wars
and, more generally, on Russian politics and state corruption.
Nothing But the Truth is a definitive collection of Anna
Politkovskaya's best writings: a lasting and inspiring book from
one fo the greatest reporters of our age.
A searing portrait of a country in disarray, and of the man at its
helm, from "the bravest of journalists" ("The New York Times")
Hailed as "a lone voice crying out in a moral wilderness" (New
Statesman), Anna Politkovskaya made her name with her fearless
reporting on the war in Chechnya. Now she turns her steely gaze on
the multiple threats to Russian stability, among them President
Putin himself.
Putin's Russia depicts a far-reaching state of decay. Politkovskaya
describes an army in which soldiers die from malnutrition, parents
must pay bribes to recover their dead sons' bodies, and conscripts
are even hired out as slaves. She exposes rampant corruption in
business, government, and the judiciary, where everything from
store permits to bus routes to court appointments is for sale. And
she offers a scathing condemnation of the ongoing war in Chechnya,
where kidnappings, extrajudicial killings, rape, and torture are
begetting terrorism rather than fighting it.
Sounding an urgent alarm, "Putin's Russia" is both a gripping
portrayal of a country in crisis and the testament of a great and
intrepid reporter.
The hero of Baize-Covered Table undergoes a searching bureaucratic
investigation, that staple of the old Soviet and even older Russian
police state. With the naked intensity of personal nightmare, the
hero visits and returns to the stark scene of his inquisition: the
bare room, the table, the ever-present decanter, and behind the
table those recurring phantoms, 'The Party Man, ' 'The Young Wolf,
' 'The Almost Pretty Woman, ' 'The One Who Asks the Questions.'.
Plucked from every background, and led by an N.K.V.D. Major, the
new recruits who boarded a train in Moscow on 16th October 1941 to
go to war had much in common with millions of others across the
world. What made the 586th Fighter Regiment, the 587th Heavy-bomber
Regiment and the 588th Regiment of light night-bombers unique was
their gender: the Soviet Union was creating the first all-female
active combat units in modern history. Drawing on original
interviews with surviving airwomen, Lyuba Vinogradova weaves
together the untold stories of the female Soviet fighter pilots of
the Second World War. From that first train journey to the last
tragic disappearance, Vinogradova's panoramic account of these
women's lives follows them from society balls to unmarked graves,
from landmark victories to the horrors of Stalingrad. Battling not
just fearsome Aces of the Luftwaffe but also patronising prejudice
from their own leaders, women such as Lilya Litvyak and Ekaterina
Budanova are brought to life by the diaries and recollections of
those who knew them, and who watched them live, love, fight and
die.
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