OLD PETER'S RUSSIAN TALES BY ARTHUR RANSOME

A few years ago BBC Radio 4 broadcast an excellent adaptation of this collection of stories over the Christmas holiday period. The Corporation also made a very interesting television programme about the life of author Arthur Ransome.

RUSSIAN FAIRY STORIES

Boris's Bookshelf recommends http://www.oldrussia.net/ 

"RUSSIA 2018" & A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION ON LEO TOLSTOY

Russia's successful bid to host the Football World Cup in 2018 has stirred me to write a post that's been on my mind for a couple of weeks, that is since the centenary of Tolstoy's death on 20 November. This event has not been officially celebrated in Russia to the same degree as the 150th anniversary of Chekhov's birth (see below) for some reason. However, the trajectory of Tolstoy's life bears comparison with that of Chekhov because of its contrary path. Tolstoy was born an aristocrat, but ultimately rejected his inheritance and died in a humble railway station master's house, whilst Chekhov had humble origins but enjoyed the ultimate celebrity death. Perhaps the message of this is that we may all have to eat humble pie* at some point, and the world of British football might like to reflect on this. Meanwhile, I hope for a Russian cultural renaissance in thr run up to 2018, along with all the sports stuff.

The wonderful colour photograph of Tolstoy is also taken from the Wikipedia Media Commons.

* I strongly recommend getting someone else to pay for this, and/or an accompanying rich sauce. Perhaps Boris's Bookshelf will visit the Cafe Pushkin for the next post.

CHEKHOV AND THE SWEDISH MODEL

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Chekhov

The 150th anniversary of Anton Chekhov's birth is celebrated this year. He has an excellent wikipedia entry from which this picture is taken.

I'm sure that the brilliant Chekhov would have been amused by the expression "Swedish Model": for some a reference to the Scandinavian political system and accompanying social values ; for others the prospect of some "light porn".

However, Chekhov's short story - a genre of which he is regarded as the master - entitled "The Head Gardener's Tale", a Swedish story told by a Russian, also seems to invoke an ambiguous set of values of the kind explored in some well known contemporary Scandinavian fiction.

From Moscow Central to Spying in Suburban USA

Having just finished listening to "The Complete Smiley" on BBC Radio 4, I'm naturally intrigued by the discovery of a Russian spy ring in suburban USA.

After initially denying all existence of the suburban spy ring, it now seems that Russia is offering a one for one exchange of people held over there for spying offences. How Very Cold War !

Nevertheless, it's all a very long way from the days of British Russian spies Burgess and Maclean, which is a shame because I so much enjoyed a recent showing of the 1983 screen play "An Englishman Abroad".

The Moscow scenes looked so authentic, although I believe they were shot in Glasgow and Dundee. Well, it can be cold there too !

Whispering Campaign of Orlando Figes

"The Whisperers" by Orlando Figes is a fine work of scholarship and a deeply moving account of private life in Stalin's Russia.

It is curious, therefore, that Figes or his wife and fellow academic - for the authorship is not quite clear - should choose to rubbish the work of other historians of Russia and the former Soviet Union through anonymous reviews.

However, academia has always been something of a cloak and dagger profession, as reflected in the murder mystery campus novel genre.

Incidentally, I'm sure that Stalin would have enjoyed the furore unleashed by the unmasking of Figes; and the episode reminds us that the darker side of the human psyche, with its rivalries and resentments, is never too far away.

To the Castle and Back

I've recently started reading Vaclav Harvel's memoir "To the Castle and Back", whose title naturally reminds me of fellow Czech writer Franz Kafka's book "The Castle". It is a testimony to the difference between the first part of the last century and its final decade that Havel secures a relatively long tenure at "the Castle", whilst the hero of Kafka's novel struggles to gain entry to a rather more surreal fortification. Nevertheless, Havel's own memoir finds him battling with external forces, as well as those internalised within himself, and its wryly ironic structure, or apparent lack of one, reflects this process.

I look forward to properly reviewing "To the Castle and Back" at a later date. In the meantime, readers may observe that the images have mysteriously disappeared from my previous post, and indeed from my other blogs too. Was some censor at work I wondered, given the political content of these blogs ? It seems, however, that this disappearance of photographs and other images is a technical problem of Blogger.com, and that the pictures can reappear, coming back, as it were, from some virtual castle themselves.

MOLOTOV'S LIBRARY

A new book by Rachel Polonsky called Molotov's Magic Lantern recounts the accidental discovery of a library belonging to a leading figure during the Stalinist era of Russian Soviet history.

Whilst renting an apartment in a building known as "The Fifth House of the Soviets", during the late 1990s, Polonsky discovers from an American banker and fellow tenant that Molotov's books and furniture are upstairs.

Amongst this library is Winston Churchill's History of the Second World War, in which Molotov is described as a "human being who perfectly resembles the modern description of a robot".

Polonsky herself describes Molotov as a "bureaucratic monster". He was author of the notorious death lists between 1937-8.

However, Molotov, like Stalin himself, was undoubtedly a literary man steeped in the "approved classics" and their "sufferings of little men".

This image of "The Rat Swallower" is taken from the contemporary Laterna Magica Galante (Magic Lantern Show)Show.

Timothy Garten Ashe's account of the 1989 revolutions across central and eastern Europe which brought about the collapse of the former Soviet Block is also called "The Magic Lantern".