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Just Send Me Word: A true story of love and survival in the Gulag |
Just Send Me Word is based on a cache of letters held by Memorial, a Russian archive of the Gulag. They recount the undying love of Svetlana and Lev serving a 10 year sentence on a trumped up charge. No obstacle was too great to keep them apart. The tyrant Stalin's death eventually brought an end to their ordeal. They were to be reunited at last in a memoir wonderfully realised by Orlando Figes.
(David Graham - bwl 65 Summer 2012) |
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Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia |
This is a book for anyone who is curious to discover Russia's past through the experiences of its intelligentsia, artists, writers, musicians and architects. Their perceptions, fantasies and attitudes about their country and its peasant majority played an important part in shaping events. Those who became exiles, lived under an idealistic belief in Russia's greatness but the ones who returned, almost without exception, fell foul of Stalin's ruthless system. A fascinating, accessible way to learn a lot of history.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 63 Winter 2011) |
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The Story of Russia |
Figes’ aim in this readable and informative history of Russia’s thousand-year history is to illuminate the terrible precedents of horror, persecution and terror that might help decipher the motives for Putin’s war in the Ukraine. Myths too have shaped Russia’s past. These reflect the structural continuities of Russian history, its geographic position, systems of belief, modes of rule, political ideas and social customs. Figes channels unsurpassed scholarship into a compulsive contribution to today’s geopolitical thinking.
(Jeremy Miller - bwl 107 Winter 2023) |
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The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia |
This magnificent book details the testimony of the countless ordinary Russians who were consumed into Stalin's murderous tyranny in the name of a perverted form of socialism. It sapped the moral fibre of the state. Its poisonous residue remains. Recently the offices of Memorial in which these records were kept was raided. No doubt by shadowy organs of the state. Plus ça change.
(David Graham - bwl 51 May 2009) |
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