Stalin, like Hitler, remains the very personification of evil but also one of the creators of today’s world. Now in an enthralling biography that reads like a thriller, Simon Sebag Montefiore unveils the shadowy, adventurous journey of the Georgian cobbler’s son who became the Red Tsar.What makes a Stalin? Was he illegitimate? Was his mother whore or saint? Was Stalin a Tsarist agent or Lenin’s chief gangster? Was his most notorious heist planned during his stay in London? Was he to blame for his wife’s death? If he really missed the 1917 Revolution, how did he emerge so powerful?Born in poverty, scarred by his upbringing, exceptional in his studies, this charismatic but dangerous boy was hailed as a romantic poet and trained as a priest but found his mission as fanatical revolutionary. He became the mastermind of bank robberies, protection-rackets, arson, piracy, and murder yet he was, uniquely part-intellectual, part-brigand. Surprisingly, he is also revealed as a scandalously prolific lover, leaving a trail of mistresses (varying from schoolgirls to noblewomen) and illegitimate children. Her is the arch-conspirator and escape-artist whose brutal ingenuity so impressed Lenin that he made Stalin (with Trotsky) his top henchman. The paranoid underworld of Joseph Conrad-style terrorism was Stalin’s natural habitat. Montefiore shows how murderous Caucasian banditry and political gangsterism, combined with pitiless ideology, qualified Stalin to demonstrate the Kremlin – and create the USSR in his flawed image. Based on massive research and astonishing new evidence in archives from Moscow to Georgia, YOUNG STALIN, companion and prequel to bestselling, prizewinning STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR, is a chronicle of the Revolution, a pre-history of the USSR – and an intimate biography: this is how Stalin became Stalin.

A New York Times Notable Book * Winner of the National Jewish Book Award * Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award * A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist "A gripping detective story, a stirring epic, a tale of ghosts and dark marvels, a thrilling display of scholarship, a meditation on the unfathomable mystery of good and evil, a testimony to the enduring power of the ancient archetypes that haunt one Jewish family and the greater human family, The Lost is as complex and rich with meaning and story as the past it seeks to illuminate. A beautiful book, beautifully written."--Michael Chabon In this rich and riveting narrative, a writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic--part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work--that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history. The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust--an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family's story began, and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him. Deftly moving between past and present, interweaving a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews and provocative ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal, grippingly suspenseful, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates all that is lost, and found, in the passage of time.

The Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times, ruling a sixth of the world's surface for three centuries. How did one family turn a war-ruined principality into the world's greatest empire? And how did they lose it all? This is the intimate story of twenty tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Simon Sebag Montefiore's gripping chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild extravagance, with a global cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries and poets, from Ivan the Terrible to Tolstoy and Pushkin, to Bismarck, Lincoln, Queen Victoria and Lenin. To rule Russia was both imperial-sacred mission and poisoned chalice: six of the last twelve tsars were murdered. Peter the Great tortured his own son to death while making Russia an empire, and dominated his court with a dining club notable for compulsory drunkenness, naked dwarfs and fancy dress. Catherine the Great overthrew her own husband (who was murdered soon afterward), enjoyed affairs with a series of young male favorites, conquered Ukraine and fascinated Europe. Paul I was strangled by courtiers backed by his own son, Alexander I, who in turn faced Napoleon's invasion and the burning of Moscow, then went on to take Paris. Alexander II liberated the serfs, survived five assassination attempts and wrote perhaps the most explicit love letters ever composed by a ruler. The Romanovs climaxes with a fresh, unforgettable portrayal of Nicholas II and Alexandra, the rise and murder of Rasputin, war and revolution--and the harrowing massacre of the entire family. Dazzlingly entertaining and beautifully written from start to finish, The Romanovs brings these monarchs--male and female, great and flawed, their families and courts--blazingly to life. Drawing on new archival research, Montefiore delivers an enthralling epic of triumph and tragedy, love and murder, encompassing the seminal years 1812, 1914 and 1917, that is both a universal study of power and a portrait of empire that helps define Russia today.

Michael Chekhov, nephew of Anton Chekhov, was arguably one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century. From his time as Stanislavsky's pupil, followed by his artistic leadership in the Second Moscow Art Academic Theatre, his enforced emigration from the Soviet Union and long pilgrimage around Europe, to his work in Hollywood, his life has made a huge impact on the acting profession. Chekhov's remarkable actor-training techniques inspired many Hollywood legends - including Anthony Hopkins and Jack Nicholson - and his techniques remain one of the theatre's best kept secrets. This first English translation of Chekhov's extraordinary autobiographies combines The Path of the Actor, from 1928, and extensive extracts from his later Life and Encounters. Full of humorous and insightful observations involving prominent characters from Moscow and the European theatre of the early twentieth century, Chekhov takes us through events in his acting career and personal life, from his childhood in St. Petersburg until his emigration from Latvia and Lithuania in the early 1930s. Chekhov's witty, penetrating (and at times immensely touching) accounts have been edited by Andrei Kirillov, whose extensive and authoritative notes accompany the autobiographies. Co-editor, Anglo-Russian trained actor, Bella Merlin, also provides a useful hands-on overview of how the contemporary practitioner might use and develop Chekhov's ideas.

Providing a comprehensive narrative from his birth in Georgia to his rise to a member of the inner circle of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Stalin who was a seminary student, choirboy, Georgian poet and a rabble-rousing Marxist fanatic.

'One of the great love stories of history, in a league with Napoleon and Josephine, and Antony and Cleopatra ... Excellent, with dazzling mastery of detail and literary flair' Economist It was history's most successful political partnership - as sensual and fiery as it was creative and visionary. Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin - wildly flamboyant and sublimely talented - was the love of her life and her co-ruler. Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, defining the Russian empire to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving Potemkin free to love his beautiful nieces, and Catherine her young male favourites. But these 'twin souls' never stopped loving each other. Drawing on their intimate letters and vast research, Simon Sebag Montefiore's enthralling, widely acclaimed biography restores these imperial partners to their rightful place as titans of their age.

A widely acclaimed biography from the bestselling author of The Romanovs: "One of the great love stories of history” ( The Economist ) between Catherine the Great and the wildly flamboyant and talented Prince Potemkin. • "Captures the genius of two extraordinary Enlightenment figures—and of the age as well." — The Wall Street Journal Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin was the love of her life and her co-ruler. Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, territories that define the Russian sphere of influence to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving each of them free to take younger lovers. But these “twin souls” never stopped loving each other. Drawing on the pair’s intimate letters and on vast research, Simon Sebag Montefiore restores these imperial partners to their rightful place as titans of their age. "Biography in the grand tradition...Riveting...The author [is] a gifted storyteller." — The Washington Post

The decision to record my experiences, observations, and reactions during my stay in Russia I had made long before I thought of leaving that country. In fact, that was my main reason for departing from that tragically heroic land. The strongest of us are loath to give up a long-cherished dream. I had come to Russia possessed by the hope that I should find a new-born country, with its people wholly consecrated to the great, though very difficult, task of revolutionary reconstruction. And I had fervently hoped that I might become an active part of the inspiring work. I found reality in Russia grotesque, totally unlike the great ideal that had borne me upon the crest of high hope to the land of promise. It required fifteen long months before I could get my bearings. Each day, each week, each month added new links to the fatal chain that pulled down my cherished edifice. I fought desperately against the disillusionment. For a long time I strove against the still voice within me which urged me to face the overpowering facts. I would not and could not give up. Then came Kronstadt. It was the final wrench. It completed the terrible realization that the Russian Revolution was no more. I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything. Unable and unwilling to become a cog in that sinister machine, and aware that I could be of no practical use to Russia and her people, I decided to leave the country. Once out of it, I would relate honestly, frankly, and as objectively as humanly possible to me the story of my two years' stay in Russia. I left in December, 1921. I could have written then, fresh under the influence of the ghastly experience. But I waited four months before I could bring myself to write a series of articles. I delayed another four months before beginning the present volume.

By Louis Fischer, 1964. 707 pp., 52 chapters, appendix, a section on notes, index. a few photos. Called a "masterly" biography by a leading autjhority on Russian history and author of many other books.

Knopf; 1st edition (1975) 177 pages

Prince Grigory Potemkin was Catherine the Great's lover and secret husband. An outstandingly gifted political counselor, he won the Crimea, founded the Black Sea Fleet, and made Russia a Near Eastern power. Volatile, handsome, and always astonishing, his magnificence enchanted and scandalized Europe.With all new research, Sebag Montefiore brings to life Potemkin's blazing love for Catherine, lays to rest the smear of the "Potemkin Villages", and restores him to his place as a colossus of the 18th century. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

An important collection of writings and memoirs on the Russian Futurist movement from one of America's pre-eminent linguists and literary theorists. Born in Moscow in 1896, Roman Jakobson brought an extraordinary rare poet's sensibility to his exploration of language. This volume, which fills a major gap in the literature of the Russian avant-garde, is a lively collection of letters, memoirs, poetry, prose, and essays. It includes recollections of Mayakovsky, Khlebnikow and others.

The classic account of the social, economic, and political dynamics of the first socialist revolution as told by one of its central leaders. Trotsky describes how, under Lenin’s leadership, the Bolshevik Party led the working class, peasantry, and oppressed nationalities to overturn the monarchist regime of the landlords and capitalists and bring to power a government of the workers and peasants—one that set an example for toilers the world over. Nowhere are those world-shattering events explained with more clarity and insight than in this powerful account. Unabridged edition, 3 vols. in one. “Trotsky’s History is a monumental work”—Studies in East European Thought Chronology, glossary, lists of principal persons, parties, and political groups, index.

If you want to know where the brothers Paul and George Soros got their business skills, look no further than this little adventure story told by their father. In simple, understated style, Tivadar Soros tells how he and his companions broke out of their Siberian prisoner-of-war camp at the time of the Russian Revolution and traveled on foot through inhospitable mountains to freedom. And this was just preparation for the equally horrendous conditions that Tivadar and his family endured in World War II. -- "As a schoolboy, I used to join my father in the swimming pool after school, and after swimming he would regale me with an installment of his adventures. In this way they became an important part of my childhood." (George Soros) -- "I and my brother consider it to be our good fortune to grow up observing how our father lived and dealt with the problems of the world." (Paul Soros)

An outstanding dispatch from the frontline of war - unsparing, unsentimental, blackly comic and brutally beautiful - by and ordinary soldier who tells it like it is. Arkady Babchenko was still a naove 18-year-old when he and his fellow teenage conscripts arrived in a camp just north of Chechnya. Fresh off the truck, the new recruit rapidly learned the meaning of savagery and fear, before he'd even been near the front line. By the time he started his active duty, he had developed a tough skin against the harsh treatments meted out by his seniors and grew hardened and cynical. With unblinking honesty, Arkady Babchenko traces his journey from innocence to experience, taking the raw and mundane reality of war and twists it into compelling, chilling - and eerily elegant - prose.

On February 12, 1994, probably in her eighty-fourth year, the woman known as Anna Anderson died in Charlottesville, Virginia. Was she, as she claimed, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar, or was she a former Polish factory worker who, miraculously, had intimate knowledge of the royal family's activities? The fate of Anastasia and that of the entire Russian Imperial family is still shrouded in mystery, even after the confirmation in 1993 of the discovery of their remains in a pit near Ekaterinburg in the Urals. The many reports out of Russia concur that two of the royal children were missing from the grave, but do not agree on their identity. The cover-ups and contradictory statements by earlier Communist regimes have further clouded the Romanovs' untimely end. Even the house where the family was executed was destroyed on the orders of Boris Yeltsin. John Klier untangles the strands of the Romanov mysteries, separating unpalatable truths from tactical, political lies. Fluent in Russian and an expert in Russian history and archival materials, he has traveled to Russia, the United States, and Western Europe in search of the lost Romanovs.

This book undoes 50 years of mythmaking about Stravinsky's life in music. During his spectacular career, Igor Stravinsky underplayed his Russian past in favor of a European cosmopolitanism. Richard Taruskin has refused to take the composer at his word. In this long-awaited study, he defines Stravinsky's relationship to the musical and artistic traditions of his native land and gives us a dramatically new picture of one of the major figures in the history of music. Taruskin draws directly on newly accessible archives and on a wealth of Russian documents. In Volume One, he sets the historical scene: the St. Petersburg musical press, the arts journals, and the writings of anthropologists, folklorists, philosophers, and poets. Volume Two addresses the masterpieces of Stravinsky's early maturityÑ Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and Les Noces . Taruskin investigates the composer's collaborations with Diaghilev to illuminate the relationship between folklore and modernity. He elucidates the Silver Age ideal of "neonationalism"Ñthe professional appropriation of motifs and style characteristics from folk artÑand how Stravinsky realized this ideal in his music. Taruskin demonstrates how Stravinsky achieved his modernist technique by combining what was most characteristically Russian in his musical training with stylistic elements abstracted from Russian folklore. The stylistic synthesis thus achieved formed Stravinsky as a composer for life, whatever the aesthetic allegiances he later professed. Written with Taruskin's characteristic mixture of in-depth research and stylistic verve, this book will be mandatory reading for all those seriously interested in the life and work of Stravinsky.

This astonishing true story is the tale of a young American man who was sent to the Soviet Union with his parents by the Ford Motor Company to set up an auto plant. He was eventually thrown into Soviet prisons and could not return to America until forty-five years later. During his life in and out of Russian prisons, he met and fell in love with a beautiful Russian gymnast who followed him into exile and lived with him and their child for a year in Siberia, in a caved chopped out under the ice. Theirs is the compelling story of a romance destined to thrive under even the most desperate conditions. It was 1938 when Victor Herman was inexplicably thrown into prison, after he had become a celebrity in the Soviet Union, having won acclaim as "the Lindbergh of Russia" for his flying and world-record-breaking parachute jumps. But what happened to him was a common nightmare during the Stalin years: those who survived imprisonment and torture were sent north to hard labor in the icy forests an