Pasternak and Stalin: What Was Said?
A short telephone call between Joseph Stalin and Boris Pasternak sealed the fate of a fellow writer. What exactly transpired during that fateful discussion remains subject to debate.
Russia
The KGB After Stalin
In 1954 a new agency was founded: the KGB. While less violent and arbitrary than what it replaced, its insidious reach soon permeated Soviet society.
The English Plan to Colonise Russia
When England’s search for a Northwest Passage via sea failed, an audacious plan to forge a land route was hatched by the Muscovy Company.
‘George Orwell and Russia’ by Masha Karp review
The suggestion that Russia has become an Orwellian tyranny is an inadequate explanation as to why the country finds itself in its present situation.
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‘The Red Hotel’ by Alan Philps review
The correspondents who reported on a period when Russia changed European, and world, history.
Martyrdom of an Old Believer
The Archpriest Avvakum Petrov was burned in Pustozersk on 14 April 1682.
American Moppets
Americanised globalisation and the new world of Russian business in the 1990s.
Survival of the Least Fit
Is there a trend of ‘reverse Darwinism’ in Russian history?
The Unbreakable City
The Battle of Stalingrad began in August 1942, subjecting its residents to months of living hell. But few doubted that the city was worth defending; its significance to the Soviet project made it too important to abandon.
Was the Cold War the Biggest Change in Russia’s Relationship with the West?
Announced on 12 March 1947 with the intention of containing Soviet expansion, the Truman Doctrine is sometimes seen as the first declaration of the Cold War. Four experts ask whether the conflict’s legacy is a defining one.