Soviet Union
The tragic fate of Ukraine’s avant-garde
In a recent interview Oleksandr Syrskyi, the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, said that he spends his time off…
Will the Caucasus ever be tamed?
Its ruined fortresses, broken monasteries and deserted villages attest to centuries of conflict, and any idea of a united Caucasus remains a dream, says Christoph Baumer
Too in thrall to today’s dogmas: ITV1’s A Spy Among Friends reviewed
In 2014, Ben Macintyre presented a BBC2 documentary based on his book A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the…
A Soviet version of Martin Parr: Adam Curtis’s Russia 1985-1999 –TraumaZone reviewed
Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone – even the title makes you want to scream – is Adam Curtis’s Metal Machine Music: the…
What does Russia really want?
The question of ‘why’ Russia invaded Ukraine has been forgotten amid war’s fog. Greed and malice partially explains it. History, geopolitics…
What Washington was like during the Cuban Missile Crisis (2002)
On 27 October 1962, US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara stepped out of crisis meetings and looked up at the sky.…
The humanity of Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev, the final President of the Soviet Union who died last night, was remarkable both as an international politician…
Gorbachev was no saint. But he was a kind of hero
Mikhail Gorbachev is dead at the age of 91, and in a way I feel orphaned. I became fascinated by…
The sin of neutrality
Yet again, millions of civilians across the Horn of Africa are starving. The world blames the crisis on drought and…
Tales from the Gulag: why I’m helping survivors tell their stories
Why I’m helping survivors tell their stories
Why the far-right flourishes in East Germany
A spectre is haunting Germany — the spectre of the AfD. Having come to prominence on a wave of anti-migrant…
What does Belarus's opposition leader want?
There is an assumption that those fighting tyranny must instead want Western-style democracy, that the arc of history bends towards…
America’s Yeltsin moment
The end of the Cold War was as great a shock to US politics as it was to the Soviet Union’s. The…
Riveting: Dear Comrades! reviewed
Andrei Konchalovsky’s Dear Comrades! is based on a true event and set in 1962 in the Russian city of Novocherkassk…
Biden’s Brezhnev vibes
Like many other Americans who had the misfortune to live under socialism, I’ve been having lots of flashbacks lately. In…
Olivia de Havilland’s Red Scare
Olivia de Havilland, who has died aged 104, will forever be remembered for the role of Melanie Hamilton in Gone…
From letter to worse
It is a truth generally acknowledged that any statement of civil principles will now be met with pitchforks and personal…
Culture is going underground: meet the rebel army
Leaf Arbuthnot and Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the new cultural rebels
The problem with mystery podcasts like Wind of Change
Did the US secretly write a power ballad in order to bring down the Soviet Union? That’s the question behind…
In his new piano concerto Thomas Ades’s inspiration has completely dried up
There’s nothing like a good piano concerto and, sad to relate, Thomas Adès’s long-awaited first proper attempt at the genre…
The beauty of Soviet anti-religious propaganda
Deep in the guts of Russian library stacks exists what remains — little acknowledged or discussed — of a dead…
Why Roy Cohn is not one of the world’s most evil men
New York The Roy Cohn documentary Bully. Coward. Victim: the Story of Roy Cohn was successfully screened at the…
Why did the Soviets not want us to know about the pianist Maria Grinberg?
Only four women pianists have recorded complete cycles of the Beethoven piano sonatas: Maria Grinberg, Annie Fischer, H. J. Lim…
There is a jewel of a painting at Gagosian’s Francis Bacon show
‘It is no easier to make a good painting,’ wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, than it is…
Dau is not just a pretentious fraud – it’s rather disgusting
The best booers, in my experience, are the Germans. There’s real purpose and thickness to their vocals. Italians hiss. The…
