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Author: Pamela A. Jordan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442247746
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381
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Book Description
Stalin’s Singing Spy follows the remarkable life of NadezhdaPlevitskaya, a Russian peasant girl who achieved fame as one of Tsar Nicholas II’s favorite singers and infamy as one of Stalin’s agents. Pamela A. Jordan traces Plevitskaya’s life from her childhood in an isolated village to national stardom. She always declared that she was foremost an artist who sang for all people, regardless of their ideological leanings or socioeconomic background. She claimed throughout her career to be fundamentally apolitical, yet decades later in Europe, Plevitskaya was unmasked as one of Joseph Stalin’s secret agents along with her husband, White Russian General Nikolai Skoblin. Their experiences in exile shed light on Stalin’s covert operations and the hardships Russian émigrés faced in interwar Europe, an era of great political and economic turmoil. In addition, this book uncovers the roles that the couple played in one of the Soviets’ major intelligence coups—the 1937 kidnapping of White Russian General Evgeny Miller in Paris. Jordan recreates Plevitskaya’s sensationalized 1938 criminal trial in the Palace of Justice, where she was accused of conspiring to kidnap Miller and portrayed as a Red femme fatale. The first Western biography of Plevitskaya and the first to reconstruct her dramatic trial, this book provides a fascinating window into Soviet-era espionage in interwar Europe.
Author: Pamela A. Jordan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442247746
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381
Get Book Here
Book Description
Stalin’s Singing Spy follows the remarkable life of NadezhdaPlevitskaya, a Russian peasant girl who achieved fame as one of Tsar Nicholas II’s favorite singers and infamy as one of Stalin’s agents. Pamela A. Jordan traces Plevitskaya’s life from her childhood in an isolated village to national stardom. She always declared that she was foremost an artist who sang for all people, regardless of their ideological leanings or socioeconomic background. She claimed throughout her career to be fundamentally apolitical, yet decades later in Europe, Plevitskaya was unmasked as one of Joseph Stalin’s secret agents along with her husband, White Russian General Nikolai Skoblin. Their experiences in exile shed light on Stalin’s covert operations and the hardships Russian émigrés faced in interwar Europe, an era of great political and economic turmoil. In addition, this book uncovers the roles that the couple played in one of the Soviets’ major intelligence coups—the 1937 kidnapping of White Russian General Evgeny Miller in Paris. Jordan recreates Plevitskaya’s sensationalized 1938 criminal trial in the Palace of Justice, where she was accused of conspiring to kidnap Miller and portrayed as a Red femme fatale. The first Western biography of Plevitskaya and the first to reconstruct her dramatic trial, this book provides a fascinating window into Soviet-era espionage in interwar Europe.
Author: Boris Volodarsky
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1526792281
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
This book is new in every aspect and not only because neither the official history nor an unofficial history of the KGB, and its many predecessors and successors, exists in any language. In this volume, the author deals with the origins of the KGB from the Tsarist Okhrana (the first Russians secret political police) to the OGPU, Joint State Political Directorate, one of the KGB predecessors between 1923 and 1934. Based on documents from the Russian archives, the author clearly demonstrates that the Cheka and GPU/OPGU were initially created to defend the revolution and not for espionage. The Okhrana operated in both the Russian Empire and abroad against the revolutionaries and most of its operations, presented in this book, are little known. The same is the case with regards to the period after the Cheka was established in December 1917 until ten years later when Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled, and Stalin rose to power. For the long period after the Revolution and up to the Second World War (and, indeed, beyond until the death of Stalin) the Chekaâs main weapon was terror to create a general climate of fear in a population. In the book, the work of the Cheka and its successors against the enemies of the revolution is paralleled with British and American operations against the Soviets inside and outside of Russia. For the first time the creation of the Communist International (Comintern) is shown as an alternative Soviet espionage organization for wide-scale foreign propaganda and subversion operations based on the new revelations from the Soviet archives Here, the early Soviet intelligence operations in several countries are presented and analyzed for the first time, as are raids on the Soviet missions abroad. The Bolshevik smuggling of the Russian imperial treasures is shown based on the latest available archival sources with misinterpretations and sometimes false interpretations in existing literature revised. After the Bolshevik revolution, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first chief of SIS, undertook to set up âan entirely new Secret Service organization in Russiaâ. During those first ten years, events would develop as a non-stop struggle between British intelligence, within Russia and abroad, and the Cheka, later GPU/OGPU. Before several show âspy trialsâ in 1927, British intelligence networks successfully operated in Russia later moving to the Baltic capitals, Finland and Sweden while young Soviet intelligence officers moved to London, Paris, Berlin and Constantinople. Many of those operations, from both sides, are presented in the book for the first time in this ground-breaking study of the dark world of the KGB
Author: Andrew Meier
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393335356
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 414
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Book Description
Filled with dramatic revelations, "The Lost Spy" may be the most important American spy story to come along in a generation, exploring the life and death of Isaiah Oggins, one of the first Americans to spy for the Soviets. of illustrations.
Author: John McCannon
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822989131
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 872
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Book Description
Russian painter, explorer, and mystic Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) ranks as one of the twentieth century’s great enigmas. Despite mystery and scandal, he left a deep, if understudied, cultural imprint on Russia, Europe, India, and America. As a painter and set designer Roerich was a key figure in Russian art. He became a major player in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and with Igor Stravinsky he cocreated The Rite of Spring, a landmark work in the emergence of artistic modernity. His art, his adventures, and his peace activism earned the friendship and admiration of such diverse luminaries as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, H. G. Wells, Jawaharlal Nehru, Raisa Gorbacheva, and H. P. Lovecraft. But the artist also had a darker side. Stravinsky once said of Roerich that “he ought to have been a mystic or a spy.” He was certainly the former and close enough to the latter to blur any distinction. His travels to Asia, supposedly motivated by artistic interests and archaeological research, were in fact covert attempts to create a pan-Buddhist state encompassing Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet. His activities in America touched Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s cabinet with scandal and, behind the scenes, affected the course of three US presidential elections. In his lifetime, Roerich baffled foreign affairs ministries and intelligence services in half a dozen countries. He persuaded thousands that he was a humanitarian and divinely inspired thinker—but convinced just as many that he was a fraud or a madman. His story reads like an epic work of fiction and is all the more remarkable for being true. John McCannon’s engaging and scrupulously researched narrative moves beyond traditional perceptions of Roerich as a saint or a villain to show that he was, in many ways, both in equal measure.
Author: Natalie K. Zelensky
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253041201
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
An examination of the popular music culture of the post-Bolshevik Russian emigration and the impact made by this group on American culture and politics. Performing Tsarist Russia in New York begins with a rich account of the musical evenings that took place in the Russian émigré enclave of Harlem in the 1920s and weaves through the world of Manhattan’s Russian restaurants, Tin Pan Alley industry, Broadway productions, 1939 World’s Fair, Soviet music distributors, postwar Russian parish musical life, and Cold War radio programming to close with today’s Russian ball scene, exploring how the idea of Russia Abroad has taken shape through various spheres of music production in New York over the course of a century. Engaging in an analysis of musical styles, performance practice, sheet music cover art, the discourses surrounding this music, and the sonic, somatic, and social realms of dance, author Natalie K. Zelensky demonstrates the central role played by music in shaping and maintaining the Russian émigré diaspora over multiple generations as well as the fundamental paradox underlying this process: that music’s sustaining power in this case rests on its proclivity to foster collective narratives of an idealized prerevolutionary Russia while often evolving stylistically to remain relevant to its makers, listeners, and dancers. By combining archival research with fieldwork and interviews with Russian émigrés of various generations and emigration waves, Zelensky presents a close historical and ethnographic examination of music’s potential as an aesthetic, discursive, and social space through which diasporans can engage with an idea of a mythologized homeland, and, in turn, the vital role played by music in the organization, development, and reception of Russia Abroad.
Author: Boris Volodarsky
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1526733935
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 486
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Book Description
A look at the events surrounding the 2006 poisoning of a former Russian security officer in Great Britain. In November, 1998, Alexander Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel of the Russian security service or FSB, along with several former colleagues, publicly stated that their superiors had instigated an assassination attempt on a Russian tycoon and oligarch. Following his subsequent arrest and failed trials, Litvinenko fled to London where, having been granted asylum, he worked as a journalist and writer, as well as acting as a consultant for the British intelligence services. Eight years later, Litvinenko’s past caught up with him when he was assassinated in London. On November 1, 2006, Litvinenko was suddenly taken ill and hospitalized. He passed away twenty-two days later. Significant amounts of a rare, highly toxic element were subsequently found in his body. Before his death, Litvinenko had said, “You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world, Mr. Putin, will reverberate in your ears for the rest of your life.” Author Boris Volodarsky, who was consulted by the Metropolitan Police during the investigation and remains in close contact with Litvinenko’s widow, details the events surrounding Litvinenko’s murder. Volodarsky updates the story, referring to the findings of the official British inquiry, on the release of which Prime Minister David Cameron condemned Putin for presiding over “state sponsored murder.” The author proves that the Litvinenko’s poisoning is just one of many. Some of these assassinations or attempted assassinations are already known; others are revealed by him for the first time.
Author: Christoph Flamm
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 152752356X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Book Description
The political changes at the end of the last century in the Soviet Union, and later the Russian Federation, had deep-reaching repercussions on the interpretation of Russian culture in the time of division between “Russia Abroad” and “Russia at Home”. Ever since, scholars have tried to understand and to describe the interrelationship between the two Russias. In spite of intensive research, numerous conferences and publications, there are still many discoveries to be made and a number of questions to be answered. This volume presents a selection of articles based on papers presented at an international conference on Russian émigré culture that was held at Saarland University, Germany, in 2015. The essays assembled here offer new insights into aspects of Russian émigré culture already known to scholarship, but also to explore new facets of it. As such, it is not the well-known centres and leading figures of Russian emigration that are highlighted; instead the authors give prominence to places of seemingly secondary importance such as Prague, Istanbul or India and to such lesser-known aspects as collections and collectors of Russian émigré art and the impact of cultural activities of the Russian emigration on the culture of the respective host countries.
Author: Rebecca Mitchell
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789145759
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
Drawing extensively on Russian-language sources, a concise yet comprehensive survey of the life and work of one of classical music’s great composers. Unquestionably one of the most popular composers of classical music, Sergei Rachmaninoff has not always been so admired by critics. Detractors have long perceived Rachmaninoff as part of an outdated Romantic tradition from a bygone Russian world, aloof from the modernist experimentation of more innovative contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky. In this new assessment, Rebecca Mitchell resituates Rachmaninoff in the context of his time, bringing together the composer and his music within the remarkably dynamic era in which he lived and worked. Both in Russia and later in America, Rachmaninoff and his music were profoundly modern expressions of life in tune with an uncertain world. This concise yet comprehensive biography will interest general readers as well as those more familiar with this giant of Russian classical music.
Author: Edythe Haber
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786724391
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 525
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Book Description
Teffi was one of twentieth century Russia's most celebrated authors. Born Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya in 1872, she came to be admired by an impressive range of people – from Tsar Nicholas II to Lenin – and her popularity was such that sweets and perfume were named after her. She visited Tolstoy when she was 13 to haggle with him about the ending of War and Peace and Rasputin tried (and utterly failed) to seduce her. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 she was exiled and lived out her days in the lively Russian émigré community of Paris, where she continued writing – and enjoying comparable fame – until her death in 1952. Teffi's best stories effortlessly shift from light humour and satire to pathos and even tragedy – ever more so when depicting the daunting hardships she and her fellow émigrés suffered in exile. While best known for her stories and feuilletons, she also moved over to other genres, from serious poetry to theatrical miniatures and even music, and inhabited an extraordinary range of spheres connected to both high and popular culture. In the first biography of her in any language, Edythe Haber here brings Teffi – who has recently been 'rediscovered' in the West to resounding acclaim – to life. Teffi's life and works afford a unique panoramic view of the cultural world of early twentieth century Russia, from the debauchery of the Silver Age to the terror and euphoria of revolution, and of interwar Russian emigration. But they also offer fresh insights into the seismic events – from the 1905 Russian Revolution and World War II to life as a refugee – that she experienced first-hand and recreated in her vivid, penetrating, moving and witty writing.
Author: Vladimir Kovalevski
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399062107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
Vladimir Kovalevskii’s memoirs record in graphic detail a remarkable military career. As a soldier, a committed anti-communist and Russian patriot he saw from the inside a series of conflicts that ravaged Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. In the First World War he fought the Germans, as a White Russian he opposed the Bolsheviks. He joined the French Foreign Legion and served in Africa before fighting for Franco in the Spanish Civil War and for Hitler in the Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. His memoirs give a vivid insight into the armies he fought with and the causes he fought for – and they show how eventually the mental toll became so great that he was devoured by his own contradictions and the contradictions of his times. His experiences on the Eastern Front during the Second World War were shocking. He hoped the German campaign in the Soviet Union would liberate the Russian people, but after witnessing the grim suffering inflicted on the civilian population by a brutal occupying army he was deeply disillusioned and tormented by a sense of guilt. In the late 1940s, in order to make sense of his life as a soldier and to document the extraordinary sights he’d seen, he wrote these memoirs in Russian. They were buried in an archive for over seventy years, but they have now been edited, annotated and translated for this first English edition.
