I Heard Lenin Laugh

I Heard Lenin Laugh PDF Author: Martin Sixsmith
Publisher: MacMillan
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Hello. And pleasure to meet you. My name Yevgeny. Yevgeny, yes. But my friends they call me Zhenya. Now, where was I born? In Vitebsk. You want know about Vitebsk? OK. Start thinking about famous painter, Marc Chagall. Now you see Vitebsk: it got cows flying over roofs of houses playing violins and green sheep smiling very large. Alright, only joking. In the looking glass world of the old Soviet reality, the future is certain. But the past is unpredictable and the truth a negotiable commodity. Into this changeable environment comes young Zhenya Gorevich, struggling to embrace a supposed Communist utopia. When his mother confesses the unlikely secret of his parentage, he determines to escape Russia and find his long-lost father. His impossible quest will take him from provincial Vitebsk to Moscow and beyond, as he tries desperately to find a way to get to swinging London and reclaim his noble birthright. Culminating with the 1966 World Cup in England, Martin Sixsmith has written a playful, yet strikingly poignant story of one man’s life journey combining the classic tradition of Russian satire with his own wry humour.

I Heard Lenin Laugh

I Heard Lenin Laugh PDF Author: Martin Sixsmith
Publisher: MacMillan
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Hello. And pleasure to meet you. My name Yevgeny. Yevgeny, yes. But my friends they call me Zhenya. Now, where was I born? In Vitebsk. You want know about Vitebsk? OK. Start thinking about famous painter, Marc Chagall. Now you see Vitebsk: it got cows flying over roofs of houses playing violins and green sheep smiling very large. Alright, only joking. In the looking glass world of the old Soviet reality, the future is certain. But the past is unpredictable and the truth a negotiable commodity. Into this changeable environment comes young Zhenya Gorevich, struggling to embrace a supposed Communist utopia. When his mother confesses the unlikely secret of his parentage, he determines to escape Russia and find his long-lost father. His impossible quest will take him from provincial Vitebsk to Moscow and beyond, as he tries desperately to find a way to get to swinging London and reclaim his noble birthright. Culminating with the 1966 World Cup in England, Martin Sixsmith has written a playful, yet strikingly poignant story of one man’s life journey combining the classic tradition of Russian satire with his own wry humour.

Historically Inevitable?

Historically Inevitable? PDF Author: Tony Brenton
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847658598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Marx held that the progression of society from capitalism to communism was 'historically inevitable'. In Russia in 1917, it seemed that Marx's theory was being born out in reality. But was the Russian Revolution really inevitable? This collection of fourteen contributions from the world's leading Russian scholars attempts to answer the question by looking back at the key turning points of the revolution. From the Russo-Japanese conflict of 1904-5 through to the appropriation of church property in 1922, and focusing especially on the incredible chain of events in 1917 leading to the October Revolution itself, Historically Inevitable? is a forensic account of Russia's road to revolution. Each contribution gives not only a fast-paced, incisive narrative account of an individual aspect of Revolution but also, for the first time, an intriguing counter-factual analysis of what might have gone differently. Featuring Richard Pipes on the Kornilov affair, Orlando Figes on the October Revolution, Dominic Lieven on foreign intervention and Martin Sixsmith on the attempted assassination of Lenin in 1918, Historically Inevitable? explains how each of these moments, more through blind luck than any historical inevitability, led to the creation of the world's first communist state. Tony Brenton's afterword to the volume draws parallels between the Revolution and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and places the events of 1917 in the context of more recent events in Russia and the Crimea. Featuring contributions from: Donald Crawford - Sean McMeekin - Dominic Lieven - Orlando Figes - Richard Sakwa - Douglas Smith - Martin Sixsmith - Simon Dixon - Boris Kolonitsky - Richard Pipes - Edvard Radzinsky - Catriona Kelly - Erik Landis - Evan Mawdsley

Lenin

Lenin PDF Author: Leon Trotsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Heads of state
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description


Putin and the Return of History

Putin and the Return of History PDF Author: Martin Sixsmith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1399409883
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
An original history of Russia's thousand-year past, tracing the forces and the myths that have shaped Putin's politics and rekindled the Cold War. Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has reshaped history. In the decades after the collapse of Soviet communism, the West convinced itself that liberal democracy would henceforth be the dominant, ultimately unique, system of governance - a hubris that shaped how the West would treat Russia for the next two decades. But history wasn't over. Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency, he appeared to commit himself to friendship with the West, suggesting that Russia could join the European Union or even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin of those years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist, dedicated to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad. So, what happened? Was he lying when he proclaimed his support for freedom, democracy and friendship with the West? Or, was he sincere? Did he change his views at some stage between then and now? And if that is the case, what happened to change him? Putin and the Return of History examines these questions in the context of Russia's thousand-year past, tracing the forces and the myths that have shaped Putin's politics of aggression: the enduring terror of encirclement by outsiders, the subjugation of the individual to the cause of the state, the collectivist values that allow the sacrifice of human lives in battle, the willingness to lie and deceive, the co-opting of religion and the belief in Great Russia's mission to change the world.

The War of Nerves

The War of Nerves PDF Author: Martin Sixsmith
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1639361820
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
A major new history of the Cold War that explores the conflict through the minds of the people who lived through it. More than any other conflict, the Cold War was fought on the battlefield of the human mind. And, nearly thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its legacy still endures—not only in our politics, but in our own thoughts and fears. Drawing on a vast array of untapped archives and unseen sources, Martin Sixsmith vividly recreates the tensions and paranoia of the Cold War, framing it for the first time from a psychological perspective. Revisiting towering, unique personalities like Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Nixon, as well as the lives of the unknown millions who were caught up in the conflict, this is a gripping narrative of the paranoia of the Cold War—and in today's uncertain times, this story is more resonant than ever.

Lenin's Kisses

Lenin's Kisses PDF Author: Yan Lianke
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802193943
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
This “blistering satire” of modern China was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize and a New York Times Editor’s Choice novel (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Lenin’s Kisses is set in modern day China, in the village of Liven. Nestled within the Balou Mountains, the people have enough food and leisure to be content—until their crops and livelihood are obliterated by a snowstorm in the middle of summer. Then a county official arrives with a peculiar plan. He wants to use the villagers to start a traveling performance troupe. Next, he’ll take the profits and buy Lenin’s embalmed corpse from Russia and install it in a mausoleum to attract tourism. But the success of the Shuanghuai County Special-Skills Performance Troupe comes at a serious price. Named a finalist for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, Lenin’s Kisses is “a satirical masterpiece” (Kirkus) that was on Best Book of 2012 lists from the New Yorker, MacLeans, and Kirkus, and was also a New York Times Editors’ Choice.

My Sins Go With Me

My Sins Go With Me PDF Author: Martin Sixsmith
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471149862
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In the darkest days of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Anna-Maria van der Vaart sheltered Allied pilots, gave refuge to persecuted Jews and participated in audacious acts of sabotage. She survived when others did not, a witness to their courage and to the terrible treachery that betrayed so many of them to the Nazis. Tens of thousands of Dutchmen elected to fight with the Germans, while many civilians turned over their Jewish neighbours to an almost certain death. Holland’s Jewish leaders prevaricated, hoping to save their people and their own skins. But the exploits of the Dutch Resistance produced unimaginable heroism and unparalleled self-sacrifice. A chance meeting with Martin Sixsmith in 2019 led to Anna-Maria telling him her story. In Dutch and German archives, interviews with survivors, personal diaries and contentious memoirs by those with things to hide, Sixsmith came across a drama on a scale he could never have imagined. My Sins Go with Me is a story of remarkable bravery, and of cowardice and betrayal in the hardest of times.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking PDF Author: Anya von Bremzen
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307886832
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations “Delicious . . . A banquet of anecdote that brings history to life with intimacy, candor, and glorious color.”—NPR’s All Things Considered Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, naively joyous, and melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return. Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, Anya and her mother decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience. Through these meals, and through the tales of three generations of her family, Anya tells the intimate yet epic story of life in the USSR. Wildly inventive and slyly witty, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly

Feature Writing for Journalists

Feature Writing for Journalists PDF Author: Sharon Wheeler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000576698
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Feature Writing for Journalists considers both newspapers and magazines and helps the new or aspiring journalist to become a successful feature writer. Using examples from a wide range of papers, specialist and trade magazines and 'alternative' publications, Sharon Wheeler considers the different types of material that come under the term 'feature' including human interest pieces, restaurant reviews and advice columns. With relevant case studies as well as interviews with practitioners, Feature Writing for Journalists is exactly what you need to understand and create exciting and informative features.

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia PDF Author: James von Geldern
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253013399
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
This anthology offers a rich array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, comic routines, and folklore to offer a close look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. Both state-sponsored cultural forms and the unofficial culture that flourished beneath the surface are represented. The focus is on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses. The period covered encompasses the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the mixed economy and culture of the 1920s, the tightly controlled Stalinist 1930s, the looser atmosphere of the Great Patriotic War, and the postwar era ending with the death of Stalin. Much of the material appears here in English for the first time. A companion 45-minute audio tape (ISBN 0-253-32911-6) features contemporaneous performances of fifteen popular songs of the time, with such favorites as "Bublichki," "The Blue Kerchief," and "Katyusha." Russian texts of the songs are included in the book.