May 01, 2013 Black Russians and Dark Years By Paul E. Richardson A review of "Twilight of the Romanovs," by Blom and Buckley, "Lina and Serge," by Simon Morrison, "The Black Russian," by Vladimir Alexandrov, and "Moscow 1937," by Karl Schlogel.
March 01, 2013 Decline and Stalin By Paul E. Richardson Book reviews of "The Last Man in Russia," by Oliver Bullough; "Stalin's Barber," by Paul Levitt; "St. Petersburg City Pack," by Oxygen Books; "Happy Moscow," by Andrei Platonov (Robert Chandler, trans.); and "The Lying Year," by Andrei Gelasimov (Marian Schwartz, trans.).
January 01, 2013 Three Histories and Some Magic Tales By Paul E. Richardson Reviews of three works of history and one collection of fiction.
November 01, 2012 Spies and Cats By Paul E. Richardson A review of two new works of fiction, Matthew Dunn's Sentinel and Ilya Boyashov's The Way of Muri. Both offer entertaining reading, for entirely different reasons.
November 01, 2012 The Museum of Abandoned Secrets By Paul E. Richardson Where we interview Nina Shevchuk-Murray, translator of this new book by Oksana Zabuzhko, which is an expansive piece of historical fiction that encompasses much of Ukrainian history, particularly during WWII. Interview
September 01, 2012 Films, Noir, Churches and Aristocrats By Paul E. Richardson Reviews of "Former People" by Douglas Smith, "Nevsky" by Ben McCool and Mario Guevara, "St. Petersburg Noir," edited by Julia Goumen and Natalia Smirnova, "Wooden Churches," by Richard Davies and Matilda Moreton, and "Russian Film Posters," by Vivays Publishing.
July 01, 2012 Chernobyl, Chechnya and a bit of Scifi By Paul E. Richardson A review of "Visit Sunny Chernobyl," by Andrew Blackwell, "Sniper" by Nicolai Lilin, "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and Natasha Borzilova's new CD, "Out of My Hands."
May 01, 2012 A Wealth of Literature By Paul E. Richardson Our review shelves were overloaded this month, necessitating more and shorter reviews. There is both great fiction (Scar, by the Dyachenkos; The Twelve Chairs, by Ilf & Petrov; The Time of Women, by Elena Chizhova; 50 Writers) and non-fiction including two Putin-focused histories and a remarkable look inside Soviet era labor camps.
March 01, 2012 Romanoviana By Paul E. Richardson Reviews of fiction with Romanov themes: The Fallen Queen, The Last Romanov, The Winter Palace. Shorter reviews of Notes on the Cuff, The Russian Origins of the Civil War, Russia: A 1000-year Chronicle of the Wild East
January 01, 2012 Gulags, Ments, Chekhov and Pushkin By Paul E. Richardson and Andrew Jameson Reviews of Fyodor Mochulsky's "Gulag Boss," William Ryan's "The Darkening Field," and Andrei Gelasimov's "Thirst," with shorter notices on "Memories of Chekhov" (Peter Sekirin) and "Pushkin Threefold" (Walter Arndt, trans.)
November 01, 2011 Tolstoy, Spies and Empire By Paul E. Richardson Reviews of a new biography of Tolstoy, a book about a French-run spy, and a firsthand account of the end of the Soviet empire. Oh, and a new translation of a less-read work by Dostoyevsky.
September 01, 2011 War and Literature By Paul E. Richardson Reviews of three non-fiction histories (Leningrad, by Anna Reid; Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder; The Damned and the Dead, by Frank Ellis) and three works of fiction (The Sky is Falling, by Caroline Adderson; The New Moscow Philosophy, by Vyacheslav Pyetsukh; Separate Kingdoms, by Valerie Laken).
