Uncovering Russia’s dark soul
The country’s vast woods have been overlooked in our understanding of its violent history
BySoviet Union
February 1978: Clive James reviews the official biography of Leonid Brezhnev.
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Arvo Pärt: the holy minimalist who defied the Soviets
Now 90, the Estonian composer has spent a lifetime crafting music of profound beauty.
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How a Moscow archivist exposed the KGB, file by file
Gordon Corera’s account of the audacious counter-intelligence operative Vasili Mitrokhin is non-fiction that reads like a spy thriller.
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How America resembles the dying Soviet Union
Like the former communist bloc, Western liberalism is slowly disintegrating.
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Europe’s Iron Lady: Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas
The Baltic leader has become the EU’s strongest advocate for an uncompromising response to Russia.
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The dissident is dead
Dividing global politics into camps of angels and demons is no longer fashionable.
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Is another American revolution inevitable?
An interview with Peter Turchin.
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Peter Morgan’s Patriots confronts the rise of Putin in post-Soviet Russia
Tom Hollander plays the ambitious, politically well-connected billionaire Boris Berezovsky in this absorbing portrait of a power struggle.
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International Booker winner Georgi Gospodinov: “We’re living in the memory gap”
The Bulgarian novelist on the legacy of communism, the necessity of irony and why remembering is a political act.
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The delusions that bind communism and liberalism
The self-deception that fuelled Bolshevism did not die with the end of the Cold War: it persists in Western liberals…
By14 December 1984: Mikhail Gorbachev, heir apparent to the then Soviet general secretary Konstantin Chernenko, paid a visit to London.
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Gorbachev’s magnificent failure
The last Soviet leader, who died this week, accelerated the decline of the Soviet Union – but did so by…
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Mikhail Gorbachev tried to unite the impossible – his failure was heroic
What does a country do with a man who changed it forever?
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Western leaders praise Mikhail Gorbachev in the wake of his death
The last leader of the Soviet Union, credited with ending the Cold War, died at the age of 91 in…
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Lawrence Freedman’s Diary: My ban from entering Russia and memories of Cold War encounters with the KGB
I was last on the Kremlin’s most recent list of people to be sanctioned. This suggested I was something of…
By22 March 1963: The Soviet Union and China battle for control of world communism.
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What are “Trots” and “Tankies”?
Unpicking the political name-calling on the British left.
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