The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia
by Orlando Figes
Allen Lane, 784pp.

It’s a dangerous business, oral history, at least when you try it in Russia. Without oral history a complete history of the Soviet Union is almost impossible to write. Archival documents are dry, containing only the official point of view; memoirs, often written years later, are unreliable and frequently slide over important details. Read on »

Twelve Days: Revolution 1956 – How the Hungarians Tried to Topple Their Soviet Masters
by Victor Sebestyen
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006, 340pp.

Of all the great events of the Cold War, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is probably the one most in need of serious historical attention. In part this is because new archives have at last explained a number of mysteries: did Imre Nagy, the reforming communist and later national hero, really request Soviet ‘assistance’ in putting down the rebellion? Read on »

The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov
edited and annotated by Joshua Rubenstein and Alexander Gribanov
Yale University Press, 397 pp.

Since becoming president of Russia, Vladimir Putin has worked hard to mold Russian memories of the Soviet Union into something more positive, or anyway more nostalgic, than they had been under his predecessor. His goal, it seems, is to make Russians proud of their country again, to find heroes they can once again worship. Read on »

“We are able to do away with domestic tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of their own people only when we make all men answerable to the law.”
– Justice Robert Jackson, in his opening statement for the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials in 1945. Read on »

Anna of all the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova
by Elaine Feinstein
Weidenfeld, 322pp.

For far too long, the history of 20th century Russia has been understood almost exclusively through the prism of politics, as if it were about nothing more than Marxism and Leninism, revolution and totalitarianism, war and famine. Read on »

The Soviet Century, by Moshe Lewin, Verso, 416pp.

In the last several years, English-speaking readers have been treated to a plethora of Soviet history books unlike others before them. The opening of Soviet archives has given us everything from Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad to Simon Sebag-Montefiore’s book on Stalin’s court, to new biographies of Rasputin, Lenin and Trotsky. Now, however, we have The Soviet Century, the work of a respected American academic. It is a book whose qualities are not easy to describe. Read on »

Gulag: Life and Death Inside the Soviet Concentration Camps by Tomasz Kizny, Firefly Books, 2004, 496pp.

Yellowed, dusty, covered in thick cardboard, and held together with string, the Gulag photo albums stored in the Russian State Archive look, at first glance, like nothing more than old family albums kept too long in the attic. But even when opened, their true function isn’t immediately clear. Read on »

On the streets, giant menorahs jostle for space with Santa and Rudolph. On the airwaves, President Bush issues Christmas, Hanukah and Kwanzaa messages. At the mall, you can buy dreidels to stuff in your stockings or lights to decorate your Hanukah bush. Read on »

Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953,
Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov,
HarperCollins, 399 pp.

On August 7, 1948, Yuri Zhdanov wrote a letter to Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper. Yuri Zhdanov was not only the son of A.A. Zhdanov, a Politburo member and one of Stalin’s “favorites,” he was also Stalin’s son-in-law, and a Central Committee member in his own right. Nevertheless, the letter was an admission of grave error. Read on »

Khrushchev: The Man and His Era,
by William Taubman, Norton, 2004, 908 pp.

Because he has already been lauded for his extensive research and his psychological insight, I won’t heap further praise on William Taubman, author of a substantial new biography Khrushchev: the Man and His Era. Suffice it to say that he makes extensive use of newly opened archives, carefully parses the Cuban Missile Crisis, pays due attention to Khrushchev’s role in the terror of the 1930s, and includes a healthy sprinkling of the Soviet leader’s favorite insults (”Your view of Soviet power is from inside a toilet!”). Read on »