the Russian Revolution
‘A group of deranged idiots’ – how the Soviets saw the Avant-Gardists
First welcomed, then vilified, by Lenin, Russian artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Kandinsky and Chagall would find their only real supporters in the West
The travails of Britain’s first Labour government
Attacked in the press, by the right and even by its own supporters, Ramsay MacDonald’s short-lived government still managed to achieve a surprising amount
Haunted by Old Russia: Rachmaninoff’s lonely final years
Exiled from Russia and often denigrated in America, Rachmaninoff lived in a fug of unbearable, impenetrable sadness, says Paul Kildea
An innocent abroad: a Dutch tour operator in 1980s Russia
‘One morning in late October 1988,’ begins TheLong Song of Tchaikovsky Street, ‘this dapper-looking guy from Leiden asked me if…
Did a vodka ban precipitate the Russian Revolution?
It’s one of the more mysterious features of human history that people of every era and in almost every place…
Heroines of the Soviet Union
Klara Goncharova, a Soviet anti-aircraft gunner, wondered at the end of the second world war how anyone could stand to…
Teffi: from Russia with laughs
‘Ah! Scrubbing the deck! My childhood dream! As a child I had once seen a sailor hosing the deck with…
T.E. Lawrence: from young romantic to shame-shattered veteran
T.E. Lawrence is seen as a ‘metaphor for imperialism, violence and betrayal’ in the Middle East. But woeful Arab leadership has also been to blame for the region’s problems, says Justin Marozzi
Maxim Gorky’s revolutionaries are ready for martyrdom
Maxim Gorky was trumpeted as ‘the great proletarian writer’ by Soviet critics, who considered his novel The Mother one of…
Uncle Joe is revered in Putin’s Russia as a benevolent dictator
‘Lately, the paradoxical turns of recent Russian history… have given my research more than scholarly relevance,’ remarks Oleg Khlevniuk in…
