Book Description
The fascinating first-person account of the cross-dressing prince who poisoned Rasputin with rose cream cakes laced with cyanide and spiked Madeira is now back in print. Originally published in France in 1952, during the years of Prince Youssoupoff's exile from Russia, Lost Splendor has all the excitement of a thriller. Born to great riches, lord of vast feudal estates and many palaces, Felix Youssoupoff led the life of a grand seigneur in the days before the Russian Revolution. Married to the niece of Czar Nicholas II, he could observe at close range the rampant corruption and intrigues of the imperial court, which culminated in the rise to power of the sinister monk Rasputin. Finally, impelled by patriotism and his love for the Romanoff dynasty, which he felt was in danger of destroying itself and Russia, he killed Rasputin in 1916 with the help of the Grand Duke Dimitri and others. More than any other single event, this deed helped to bring about the cataclysmic upheaval that ended in the advent of the Soviet regime.~The author describes the luxury and glamour of his upbringing, fantastic episodes at nightclubs and with the gypsies in St. Petersburg, grand tours of Europe, dabbling in spiritualism and occultism, and an occasional conscience-stricken attempt to alleviate the lot of the poor.~Prince Youssoupoff was an aristocrat of character. When the moment for action came, when the monk's evil influence over the czar and czarina became unbearable, he and his friends decided that they must get rid of the monster. He tells how Rasputin courted him and tried to hypnotize him, and how finally they decoyed him to the basement of the prince's palace. Prince Youssoupoff...is perfectly objective, remarkably modern and as accurate as human fallibility allows. His book is therefore readable, of historical value and intimately tragic. It is as if Count Fersen had written a detailed account of the last years of Marie Antoinette. --Harold Nicholson, on the first English edition, 1955 By Prince Felix Youssoupoff. Hardcover, 5.25 x 8.25 in./300 pgs / 0 color 14 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20143
Customer Reviews:
A time gone with the wind.......2007-08-07
I read this book, here in Brazil.The author(a gay) was a noble and rich man, in tzarist Russia.This memories are about the time when he was in Russia.Don't wait to read about the life of the author, in exile.
Chapter after chapter, you can read, about the life of a noble, rich (and gay) man in Russia before the communism.There's even an entire chapter, about the death of Rasputin.In fact, the author killed Rasputin.
Last chapters are about the life, in after-revolution Russia.Including about the author's scape.Don't wait nothing gay-rights, even being the author a gay.The author blames the jews of Russia, for many bad things.
This book is about a time gone with the wind.
Lost Splendor.......2007-04-11
Lost Splendor is a wonderful firsthand account of Russia during the Romanoff dynasty. Prince Felix Youssoupoff was a member of one of Russia's richest families and tells a compelling story of what imperial Russia was like before the revolution. He goes into detail about the killing of Rasputin which he had a hand in. A wonderful book that is a page turner from start to finish.
An interesting glance into pre-revolutionary Russia.......2006-06-27
Like another reviewer I had visited the Youssoupoff palace and was amazed by the richness and beauty these people possessed. Unlike some others who might have sided with the revolutionaries for whatever reason Felix of course doesn't, as far as I could tell. I also think he misses the point of why exactly the revolution occurred although presents his side of events which I found fascinating when it came to Rasputin, the nobility, and even the royal family whom he was pretty intimate with.
It was his belief that by getting rid of Rasputin he could start Russia on a highway to reform and reorganization, this in my opinion he was very gullible in believing, but understandable as he was very distant from the population at large.
The reader is taken through Felix's childhood and we get a glimpse of how spoiled he was and how terribly difficult it was to keep him in line and make him understand what responsibility and civility mean, etc. And at the same time we see him sneaking off to find out what the poor live like which in the end changes how he views the world and those around him.
These are just some episodes from his memoirs, there are many others and many of them will make you laugh out loud, children will be children and their experiences of a century ago are very much alike to what goes on in our world today. A worthwhile read, very easy to get into and at times a real page turner, highly recommended for a side of things from the rich/nobility point of view.
"The trials you are going through will teach you that life is not just a pastime.".......2006-04-06
"I'll have you appointed minister, if you like," Rasputin tells Felix Yusupov as they began to get chummy with one another. But Yusupov, our author herein, had a far different motive for getting close to this "mystic." After all, he was the last remaining son of one of the wealthiest families in Russia (his family's palatial estates, pictured in this book, were downright royal). To boot, he was newly married to Tsar Nicholas II's niece Irina. The tsar was godfather to his first child as well. He didn't want for anything and certainly could have had a position in government had he been interested in one. But what he was interested in was getting close to the ever guarded Rasputin; ever watched over by the secret police, thanks to the tsarina. Rasputin, in Yusupov's words was "an uncultured, cynical, avid and unscrupulous peasant who had reached the pinnacle of power owing to a chain of circumstances." The sole son of the tsar had hemophilia & Rasputin was soon judged (by the Tsarina Alexandra) to be some comfort in alleviating the effects of the tsarevich's condition. Soon, however, Rasputin began to play on his influence with the tsarina (& through Alexandra's infuence with her husband) to engineer the likes of just what he had offered Yusupov---ie., effecting the political appointments of government personel. Then in 1914 war broke out with Germany. About a year after which Rasputin seems to have had an effect, as well, on persuading Alexandra to badger the tsar to take direct control over the war effort. Thus when the tsar did take command of the army (at field headquarters, which was far removed from the capital of St. Petersburg) Rasputin's hand in affairs of the state---including the army, through Alexandra, began to become quite pronounced. "Not a single important measure was taken at the front without his being consulted," Yusupov writes. But this wasn't just his impression. Russian society was awfully suspicious of German-born Alexandra's apparent closeness with an unwashed degenerate who had a reputation for engaging in orgies. It was an open scandal, costing the tsar much in the respect felt for the royal family; respect badly needed during wartime as the fighting continued to drag on, under conditions of societal hardship relating to food rationing and the like. Grand Duchess Elizabeth (whose husband had been assassinated), in particular, begged her sister Alexandra to acknowledge what damage her "blind confidence" in Rasputin was costing the country, but to no avail. The above is addressed through the first 229 (large type) pages in this autobiography as Yusupov paints a vanishing era of aristocratic splendor. Then he elaborately describes how he (supported by 4 other dignitaries) killed Rasputin in Yusupov's St. Petersburg mansion. The tsar's 1905 war with Japan, in Yusupov's words, was "one of the most terrible blunders made during the reign of Nicholas II." Another one was doing nothing in the wake of Rasputin's removal from the scene. "Rasputin's death made a new policy possible." Russians applauded Rasputin's removal, hoping that the tsar would now be emboldened to heed the cacophony of concerned advice & take needed measures before it was too late. But Nicholas seemed to be a "confirmed fatalist" who wasn't going to do much until he was forced to. A little more than 2 months later he was forced to abdicte. Perennial inaction by Nicholas, one of the most ineffective Romanov tsars, had finally cost him his crown. (PS: Yusupov-owned paintings can be seen in Russian museums now; his family's wealth/palaces having been confiscated by Lenin & Co not long after the Bolsheviks murdered Nicholas, Alexandra, their children, and as many relatives they could; after having usurped power from the Provisional Russian Government. Yusupov, in the company of Tsar Alexander III's widow---the Dowager Empress/mother of Nicholas---sailed out of the Crimea on a Royal (British) Navy ship 4-13-1919. Thanks for reading my review. Cheers!
A Glimpse Into A Vanished World.......2003-12-19
Prince Felix Yousssoupoff is best known as one of the murderers of Gregory Rasputin just before the Russian Revolution. He was a member of one of Russia's most aristocratic families, and in this memoir, originally published in the 1950s, he gives us a glimpse of life for a nobleman in pre-Revolutionary Russia.
Life was certainly rich, if not always good, for Prince Felix. As a younger son, he was given very little education and basically allowed to do as he pleased during his formative years. Most of the time what he was pleased to do was to get into trouble. I lost count of the number of servants, governesses, and other retainers who quit with nervous breakdowns after trying to look after Felix. Under the influence of his elder brother, whom he adored, Felix had an early initiation into sexual and other kinds of debauchery. He enjoyed dressing as a woman and living the high life in St. Petersburg, London, and Paris. Felix was reticent about his sexuality, claiming several affairs with women but speaking more warmly about his men friends, including Grand Duke Dmitri, who helped him murder Rasputin. When Felix's brother was killed in a duel Felix became the heir to a vast fortune. He married Tsar Nicholas' niece Irina, whom he claimed to adore but otherwise said little about.
The most interesting parts of this book deal with Rasputin, whom Felix met several times. Typically, Felix hints that there was a sexual nature to these encounters, but divulges few details. Felix describes the murder and his subsequent exile, which saved him from being in St. Petersburg during the February Revolution in 1917, and his internment in the Crimea with other members of the Imperial Family from 1917 through 1919, when he escaped on a British warship.
This book is interesting but highly reticent. Felix never loses a chance to glamorize himself and his activities, with the result that some undeniably brave actions, like his several trips to St. Petersburg to rescue treasures while the Bolshevik terror was at its height, tend to get less attention than they deserve. A more open and informative biography of Prince Felix, The Man Who Killed Rasputin, by Greg King, was published several years ago and will help fill in the gaps left by Felix's own work.
Amazon.com
While the term double agent implies contradiction, Adrian Havill's portrait of spymaster Robert Hanssen reveals a man truly driven by opposing demons. Hanssen was a consummate loner, "Walter Mitty squared," yet he approached the Soviets himself in quest of the thrill-filled life of a double agent. A staunch conservative and strict Catholic, he took money from communists--to give diamonds and Mercedes to strippers on one hand, and to send his six children to expensive Catholic schools on the other. Havill, a seasoned chronicler of criminals and celebrities, creates a taut and troubling portrait of a disturbed man who compromised the security of a nation. He also gives an inside look into the oft-inept FBI, the National Security Agency's futuristic surveillance systems, and the spy-versus-spy world of Russian intelligence. --Lesley Reed
Book Description
Robert Philip Hansen thought he was smarter than the system. For decades, the quirky but respected counterintelligence expert, religious family man, and father of six, sold top secret information to agents of the Soviet Union and Russia.A self-taught computer expert, Hansen often encrypted his stolen files on wafer-thin disks. The data-some 6000 pages of highly classified documents-revealed precious nuclear secrets, outlined American espionage initiatives, and named names of agents-spies who covertly worked for both sides.Soviet government leaders, and their successors in the Russian Federation, used the stolen information to undermine U.S. policies and to eliminate spies in their own ranks.Moscow did not allow their moles the luxury of a defense: at least two men named by Hanssen were executed; a third languished for years in a Siberian hard labor camp.For more than twenty years, Bob Hanssen was the perfect spy.He personally collected at least $600,000 from his Russian handlers while another $800,000 was deposited in his name at a Moscow bank.Along with the cash came Rolex watches and cut diamonds. The money financed both his children's education at schools run by the elite and ultra-conservative Catholic organization, Opus Dei, and an inexplicably strange fling with a former Ohio "stripper of the year."But he didn't just do it for the money; he did it for the thrill and for a mysterious third reason rooted in religious mysticism.He lacked the people skills to play office politics, and it seemed the aging FBI analyst faced a disappointing career mired in middle management.Instead, he chose to become one of the most dangerous spies in America's history.And no one suspected him until just weeks before his arrest.Robert Philip Hanssen thought he was smarter than the system.And until February 18, 2001, he was right.That's when federal agents surrounded him while he was attempting to complete an exchange with his handlers at a Virginia park.When the G-men captured their mark, they catapulted the once innocuous bureaucrat onto the front pages of every newspaper in America.The most notorious spy since the Rosenbergs had finally become a victim of his own undoing.Now, drawing on more than 100 interviews with Bob Hanssen's friends, colleagues, coworkers, and family members, and confidential sources, best-selling author Adrian Havill tells the entire story you haven't read as only he can.The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold tells not only how he did it, but why. AUTHORBIO: Adrian Havill is the author of While Innocents Slept and The Mother, The Son, And the Socialite: The True Story of a Mother-Son Crime.He has also written several biographies, including The Last Mogul: The Unauthorized Biography of Jack Kent Cooke, Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Man of Steel: The Career and Courage of Christopher Reeve, and contributed to Juice: The O.J. Simpson Tragedy.He lives in Virginia with his wife, Georgiana.They have two children.
Download Description
"Written with compelling detail,WHILE INNOCENTS SLEPT plunges readers into[a]murky world... Havill's thoroughly written account is a scientific spellbinder...that is even more frightening because it is true."Pete Earley,Edgar Award winning author of CONFESSIONS OF A SPY and THE HOT HOUSE
Customer Reviews:
Interesting double life of a "man of stature".......2007-06-12
Riveting, like a good novel and very hard to put down! Cold Eyes
Engrossing and well written.......2003-09-12
Havill, once again, has written an engrossing book. I will proclaim my own bias by pointing out something, though. On page 173, Havill mentions the Clinton years "begin with the shoot-outs at Ruby Ridge and Waco." Well, actually, no, George the first was president at the time of Ruby Ridge. And Havill's comment about "King William" make me wonder about his agenda when most of the spying going on is during the Reagan-Bush years. In books about policies or personalities you expect that: you know where the author is coming from and you digest the material accordingly. In a book that is SUPPOSED to be about Robert Hanson I find it telling that the only president he mentions in a derogatory manner is Clinton. Makes me wonder if there is other information he left out. . .Still, you can't fault the guy's talent for spinning a phrase. A worthy book.
Gets the Word Out.......2003-05-05
Post 9-11, how many people really know how deeply Robert Hanssen damaged national security? A recent dinner with several academics suggested, not a whole lot, if that sample counts in any way. Havill's book may not satisfy the connoisseurs of this niche of investigative journalism, but the book serves an important function; it exposes the depth of the betrayal and the nature of the agency that he ravaged. That system and the people who oversee it, have much to be ashamed of. The press has magnificently implied that the damage was minimal. The adopted supposition then by a large part of the citizenry was that it was "low level" information that he handed to the Russians. The press did a great job of keeping the public snookered. Havill does his darndest to refute that suggestion with the details of the top secrets that were handed over to the Russians.
As a psychological case study; Hanssen is the archetype of the Jungian shadow. The religious, dour and convinced patriot by day and the vulgar, ... depraved, traitor at night. Indeed Hanssen betrayed everyone, primarily his overworked and short-changed wife, but also his country, his church and of course, his employer. Why then, did people just fall for his act? They didn't according to the author; there were members of his own extended family, starting with his brother in law, a fellow agent and fellow employees who at least hinted at the deceptive and twisted nature of his allegiance or lack thereof.
How can we correct such ... neglect of self-policing in our governmental offices? Well, it will not be easy, if the educated voter and the concerned public is somehow "picking up" that the damage was superficial. There are, afterall too many government sponsored daily security news items to sift through and ponder. Havill's work needs to be read and if it is as a form of entertainment; which it can be, all the better!
Solid writing - Nothing fancy.......2002-07-04
This is a well-written and footnoted account of the Robert Hanssen spy case. Author Havill provides ample background information on Hanssen's early years and his involvement in Opus Dei that sheds some light on the spy's troubled personality. On the face, Hanssen was dedicated to his family, his religion and was a right of center flag waver. On the other side of the coin, Hanssen spent tens of thousands of dollars on a stripper he "adopted" while his family struggled financially, and was a traitor who sold out his country for ego strokes and money. Havill did a solid job of describing Hanssen's acts of espionage, but Hanssen's motivation remains an unexplained, contradictory jumble.
The biggest shocker in all of this is how a genuinely fouled-up personality like Robert Hanssen eluded the FBI's internal security apparatus for 25 years, rising quite high in the Counter-Espionage hierarchy. One can only hope that FBI Director Mueller and Attorney General Ashcroft will do a better job at policing the agency than their predecessors did.
With people like Robert Hanssen in the FBI it is no wonder that terrorists can have their way with us and we never find-out about it until they fly airplanes into buildings. On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists hijacked four airliners with horrific results. We all know the rest of the story. After you read this book you will not feel as safe as you beforehand. Hopefully there is not a Robert Hanssen in the Middle-East Section.
Yet Another Attempt to Understand Robert Hanssen.......2002-06-19
Here we go...another attempt to get a book out in time to sell it before the general public forgets who the subject is. Problem is with that theory is that we have seveal books that are way too much a like. If only one would have covered his chilhood better and paid epecial attention to Opus Dei, both of which I believe had more effect than anyone will ever know. I'd also like to know how an FBI Agent got his hands on all this supposed NSA and CIA information. Even in these days of "Homeland Security", these folks just don't share well at all. I think there is/was a middle-man (CIA?) in there somewhere. No way NSA or CIA would reveal info to the FBI, who they consider just to be the Federal police dept with no "need to know" anything important of an international nature. The whole thing sounds bogus to me. - Former NSA Employee
Amazon.com
In accordance with his belief that "it is often easier to become acquainted with the history of a period if it is seen through the lives of individuals," Dmitri Volkogonov's last book before his 1995 death addresses the lives of the seven men who ruled the Soviet Union during its seven decades of existence. Making full use of the access granted to him as a high-ranking officer of the Soviet Army (and later as military advisor to Boris Yeltsin) to the secret archives of the Communist Party, he amplifys and expands upon the themes of his full length biographies of Lenin and Stalin, then proceeds to take on their successors up to Mikhail Gorbachev. With painstaking details drawn from a true insider's perspective, he recreates both the stagnation of the Soviet bureaucracy and the collapse set in motion by perestroika. "Perhaps the only thing I achieved in this life," Volkogonov wrote, "was to break with the faith I had held for so long." That is untrue; he also brilliantly chronicled how that faith came to impose itself upon an entire society.
Autopsy of an Empire is a fitting conclusion to that legacy.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Overview of the Rise and Fall of the USSR.......2005-02-21
In 1937, when Dmitri Volkogonov was 9 years old his father Anton was swept up in Stalin's purges, branded a traitor, and never seen again. Despite, or perhaps because of, his father's alleged criminal activities, Volkogonov enlisted in the Soviet army in 1945. Rising to the rank of Colonel-General, he was appointed the director of the USSR's Institute for Military History, a position he held from 1985 through 1991. From 1991 through 1993 he served as the head of the commission responsible for declassifying Soviet state papers located in their numerous archives. As a result of these appointments Volkogonov had access to the archives of the Ministry of Defense, the Central Party, the General Staff of the Armed Forces and virtually every other Soviet institution where party ad military records were stored. In addition, he had access to Western documentary material not generally available in the USSR. Relying heavily on those resources, Volkogonov penned well received biographies of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Autopsy for an Empire, The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime, was written while Volkogonov fought a last, losing battle against cancer. He died shortly after the completion of this manuscript.
Autopsy for an Empire contains seven sections, each section analyzing the reign of one of the seven Soviet leaders: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and, finally, Gorbachev. Although Volkogonov's writing is down-to-earth and covers a lot of ground in an efficient manner, he was not a historian by training nor was he a writer. There are portions of the book that do not read as fluently as one would hope. I think, however, that Volkogonov's use of previously unknown source material more than makes up for any deficiencies in his prose style.
Volkogonov's Autopsy tracks the arc-like trajectory of the Soviet Union. He shows Lenin achieving and consolidating power both in the USSR and within his party while establishing the police state that reached its apogee under Stalin. Subsequent to Lenin's death we are exposed to Stalin's rise to power, the consolidation of total power, his great purges and the fear and horror of the first days after the Nazi invasion. It is clear, however, that Soviet power reached its peak during Stalin's years. The segment on Khrushchev takes a critical and relatively sympathetic look at a man who sat at Stalin's right hand during the last years of his regime but who managed to denounce the cult of Stalin and institute same slight reforms that came to represent what became known as "the thaw". By the time we get to Brezhnev the ossification of the Soviet state seems to proceed at a pace similar to the increasingly visible ossification of Brezhnev himself. The short-lived reigns of the already aged and decrepit Andropov and Chernenko are disposed of in short order. Finally, we get to Gorbachev, the onset of Perestroika, and the ultimate dissolution of the Soviet empire.
No single section of the book contains a fully formed biography of any individual Soviet leader and as such the book may be disappointing to some. Certainly there is a vast body of literature available about the lives of Lenin, Stalin, and to a lesser extent Khrushchev. Yet, because the leader loomed so large in Soviet life, a nation effectively run from the top down, Autopsy for an Empire represents an excellent starting point for anyone looking for a good general overview of Soviet history.
Forgive the translation.......2003-04-01
A wonderful read. Volkogonov has written other biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky which I also highly recommend. THis book is a waltz through the lives of the leaders of the soviet union. VOlkogonov takes for granted that you have some background. He takes you on a jurney into the private lives of the dictators.
For those that say he rambbles the reality is that he is Russian, he is not a writer by trade and yet he overcame geat obstacles to write the books he did before he died. They should be viewed as treasrers and not condemned for their lack of clarity which stems more from the russian mind then from the authors inability to contrust a coheren argument.
Factual and Informative Political History.......2001-08-01
This is one of the most informative books ever written about the people who ruled the Soviet Union. Being a highly centralized, totalitarian state, the Soviet Union acquired and lost much of its character as its rulers came and went. And the rulers were General Secrertaries of the communist party. Stalin brought crush indurstrialization, famine, and purges--millions of innocent people died, inclduing some of the most devoted communist revolutionaries. Khruschev tried reform, with some success in political liberalization, but his agricultural policy failed miserably. Brezhnev was compromise incarnate and, in his later years, aloof and passive. Andropov had a vision of reform based on social discipline and strict control, and economic accountability. Chernenko, who was a tireless bureaucrat in his youth, was simply a cripple almost the moment he assumed power. Then came Gorbachev and changed the course of history.
The book makes for a fascinating read. The leaders of the Soviet state were all too human, with this exception, that perhaps they craved power more than ordinary people do and could play politics like Paganini could play the violin. However, Stalin's lust for power, combined with his paranoia, may put him in a qualitatively different category--that of the world's most cruel dictators.
The book can be challenging at times, because it presents so many facts. Its highly archival nature does disrupt the smooth flow of the narrative. But for the fact starved Russians at least this may be a welcome change. The Soviet Union, outside the most elite circles, was almost devoid of any meaningful information about politics and political history. Ideology and propaganda ruled. Rhetorical arguments and logical exercises always came before fact, and before feelings of real living Soviet people. Thus in a way, even Volkogonov's factual excess is a welcome change.
interesting history for those who care to read it........1999-05-06
Volkogonov has not produced his best work here, but a work which is wholly approachable, entertaining and interesting...the way a good history should be written. Reading an historical text need not be like washing down a bowl of cornflakes with sand rather then milk. Volkogonov has become the "Suetonius" of Soviet Russia....and his text with its humor and occasional intimate details and also personal experiences is as interesting a read as the former's "Lives of the Twelve Caesars."
A big disappointment........1999-02-18
Unfortunately Volkogonov's book fails to live up to its publisher's and other reviewers' claims. First of all its structure is incoherent and the writing is rambling; that makes it look like a hurried undergraduate essay not a well researched book. It also lacks good biographical data on the leaders it purports to preview.
My other issue with the book that it really does not provide any new information. It is but a repetition of well-known facts, self-evident truth (eg. Stalin was evil... Communism is bad). On a professional level there are major deficiencies as well:
1. There is nothing (really) on the power struggle that followed Stalin's death.
2. Volkogonov does not mention the reassessed view on Beria - this must have been known to him since the research went on in the archives that he supervised.
3. Presents a shallow and wrong picture of Khrushchev as a reformer.
4. Contrary to his claims (misinformation?) Imre Nagy was NOT an NKVD agent and material that used to back up this claim is well known to be fabricated by the KGB
5. What about the role of the VPK (The military industrial complex of the Soviet Union)? After all Volkogonov was a member of it. Nevertheless he tries to purvey the impression that it was the Party or a dictator like Stalin who controlled everything.
To sum it up: Not worth reading it. Those who know the subject will gain nothing just be presented with a barrage of outdated and false information. Those who are not well acquainted with the Soviet Union will be deceived and because of the book's poor structure it does not lend itself as a good introduction even to the basic facts.
Ultimately it seems that Volkogonov's role was that of the gatekeeper at archives. He was there not to monopolize them for himself but to keep real sensitive information from other (real) researchers.
Amazon.com
A successful illustrator of children's books, Ilya Kabakov rose to international prominence in the 1970s when he became the leading member of a group of dissident artists known as the Moscow Conceptualists. Art critic Amei Wallach follows the important steps in Kabakov's development as an artist, from his colored-pencil narrative works of the 70s to his "total installations" in the 80s that consisted of, among other things text, sounds, photographs, illustrations, kitchen items, and garbage. In the 90s, Kabakov's work has been seen at the Museum of Modern Art.
Amazon.com
British journalist and historian Brian Moynahan does not spare details of the lechery and drunkenness that Rasputin brought with him on his journey from the squalor of rural Siberia to St. Petersburg, where he captivated the tsar and tsarina with his mysterious ability to ease their hemophiliac son's hemorrhages. Yet Moynahan also credits "the mad monk" with intelligence, generosity, even a weird spirituality. In elegant prose, he retells with panache the saga of an illiterate peasant's rise to a position of fearsome power in the waning days of the Russian monarchy.
Book Description
First time in paperback: The acclaimed life of the "mad monk" who wielded immeasurable influence over the last Czar and his family
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin-drinker, thief, womanizer-arrived in St. Petersburg in 1903 as if from the medieval past...tattered, black-clad, muttering. By the time of his sensational murder thirteen years later, the peasant was the "beloved Friend" of Czar Nicholas and Empress Alexandra, with a seemingly supernatural power to stop the bleeding attacks of their hemophiliac son, Alexis.
Drawing on confidential police reports, cabinet meeting memos, and many documents only now available, Moynahan sheds new light on Rasputin's life and disputes some of the widely held details of his death. The Detroit Free Press hailed the book as "truly mesmerizing....The text is based on carefully documented historical research, but the story rolls along like a good novel with rising suspense and an array of colorful action as vast as Russia itself."
Customer Reviews:
Excellent!.......2006-07-30
Instead of a book that is only re-telling really what we know or have heard of Rasputin, this is remarkable in its history and life of a very interesting person.
Kitty Kelly Lives!.......2005-10-03
The reason Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra became a modern classic was because it presented its story through the dispassionate historian's eye. The sensational tone of this book makes one think that 70 years of Soviet disinformation on the Romanovs all found a home in this volume. One would do better to stay with Massie (no lover of the Romanovs) and read books like A Gathered Radiance to get a more nuanced picture.
fun read.......2004-07-08
Although it has its errors, this is an engrossing biography about Rasputin. Full of new information and little-known facts, it's not afraid to shy away from the nitty-gritty, it's not afraid to give us the dirt on this guy, without all the false romanticism about Rasputin being so saintly and such. But this is an honest portrait of Rasputin, giving him credit where credit is due. I like this gritty lurid style of writing, which doesn't downplay or leave out the salacious sensationalistic stuff. There is no doubt that you will be convinced of Rasputin's iron hold on the Russian royal family due to his supposed supernatural powers, which included healing the Tzar's hemophiliac son and heir to the throne, Alexei. But, alas, there would never be a new Tzar, as through his scandalous public and priavte life Rasputin unwittingly contributed to the Romanov dynasty's fall. I recommend this book especially to people who enjoy reading a good bio about unusual personalities from the past.
David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"
Titilating Tale..........2003-12-22
...but worthless as a historical biography. This book is a collection of the most salacious gossip from the latter days of the Romanov Empire. It is both entertaining and gives some insight to the "mood" of St. Petersburg at that time, but is filled with "inaccuracies", from references to Rasputin's youth as a time of living in primitive poverty to refering to him as a monk to descriptions of a life style of unrestrained, wild debauchery. In fact, his father was a land owner, Rasputin grew up in a nice home in a town that benefited from being located by rivers (making commerce an important part of the town), was never a monk, remained married to the same woman, brought his two daughters to live with him in St. Petersburg so they could have an education, and for a complex set of reasons, allowed himself to be a scapegoat. While he admitted to "falling into sin", those incidents were a very small part of a very complex and interesting person/life.
Biased, foul-mouthed trashy biography.......2002-07-02
There used to be (or still is if you are a conspiracist) a lot of mystery surrounding Rasputin and the collapse of the Russian Empire during WWI. I became intrigied after seeing the HBO version of Rasputin and swept away by the magic of Rasputin in Edvard Radzinsky's account (be it true or false...). I felt compelled to find out more and this book came highly recmmended at Amazon so...
Moynahan starts off with the clear, descriptive and simple writing style of the brilliant book on the last Romanov's by Robert K. Massie. Then somewhere in the middle of the book, he descends abruptly into a vitrilic foul-mouthed tirade at Rasputin - which is in shocking contrast to the start of the book. As the chapters kept on unfurling with this pure vitriol, my respect for the biographer and patience with the book deteriorated. Then suddenly, towards the end, Moynahan suddenly finds compassion for Rasputin in his (sensationalised) theory for Rasputin's death. However, Moynahan had lost my respect by then and the book was thrown into the bin - I couldn't bring myself to even subject it to the people at my local library where I usually donate books.
... If you want to read a masterpiece on a good biographer turned bad - this is the book for you. If you want to learn about Rasputin, there are other books on the market which are infinetely more informative!
Book Description
Stalin did not act alone. The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin’s dictatorship, were the result of a tight network of trusted henchmen (and women), spies, psychopaths, and thugs. At the top of this pyramid of terror sat five indispensable hangmen who presided over the various incarnations of Stalin’s secret police. Now, in his harrowing new book, Donald Rayfield probes the lives, the minds, the twisted careers, and the unpunished crimes of Stalin’s loyal assassins.
Founded by Feliks Dzierzynski, the Cheka–the Extraordinary Commission–came to life in the first years of the Russian Revolution. Spreading fear in a time of chaos, the Cheka proved a perfect instrument for Stalin’s ruthless consolidation of power. But brutal as it was, the Cheka under Dzierzynski was amateurish compared to the well-oiled killing machines that succeeded it. Genrikh Iagoda’s OGPU specialized in political assassination, propaganda, and the manipulation of foreign intellectuals. Later, the NKVD recruited a new generation of torturers. Starting in 1938, terror mastermind Lavrenti Beria brought violent repression to a new height of ingenuity and sadism.
As Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading Soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeev, Alexei Tolstoi, Isaak Babel, and Osip Mandelstam were all caught in Stalin’s web–courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and “accomplishments” of Stalin’s key henchmen and their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power spanning half a century.
Though Beria lost his power–and his life–after Stalin’s death in 1953, the fundamental methods of the hangmen maintained their grip into the second half of the twentieth century. Indeed, Rayfield argues, the tradition of terror, far from disappearing, has emerged with renewed vitality under Vladimir Putin. Written with grace, passion, and a dazzling command of the intricacies of Soviet politics and society, Stalin and the Hangmen is a devastating indictment of the individuals and ideology that kept Stalin in power.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
A book not afraid to call evil by that name..........2007-09-19
This simply a very well written book.
The author doesn't write in a dry and detached way. He allows his righteous hate for these killers to shine through.
Too often, Hitler's equal has been given relative scant attention for the tens of millions of lives ruined and for the millions actually murdered.
The left, AKA academia has had a difficult time coming to grips with what the Soviets were. It truly was an evil empire and Stalin ruled it at its zeneth.
Also well covered all many of the people who helped Stalin achieve what he did. If there is anything to be enjoyed, it's the justice that most ended up being victims themselves, often tortured and killed by the very underlings they trained and it done so in locations they established.
Again, this book is written with the outrage and hate towards these people that is long overdue. If Hitler and his camp deserve their own hell, and they do, the author of this book makes the case for Stalin and his Hangmen.
Stalin: The Red Satan and his unspeakably evil minions are indicted before the Bar of Human Justice and condemned to infamy.......2007-05-02
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) was Ivan the Terrible with a copy of Karl Marx in his hand. In fact, Stalin (Russian for "steel") was much worse than Ivan. Under Stalin's dictatorship the Soviet Union underwent years of murders; shootings; forced removal of millions of ethnic and other groups; persecution of a wide array of groups:
(Jews; physicians, professors, religious leaders, non-ethnic Russian citizens, artists; writers; actors; lawyers-you name it!)
Stalin seized power by ruthlessly murdering his opponents. As he emerged with total power in 1927 "Koba" (to use a nickname) ruled the Soviet Union with cruelty, stupidity and crimes so immense it takes Rayfield 500 small printed pages to describe them in searing detail!!
Lenin had established Soviet rule but it was Stalin with such loathsome cronies as Iagoda; Estov and the repulsive Lavria Beria who launched a reign of terror on the very people they governed! Millions were slaughtered by bullet, ax or starvation. In the Great Purge of 1937-1938 millions were relocated to distant lands; sent into slavery in the GULAG in the far east or murdered after a short kangaroo court proceeding.
Justice was absent from the Soviet lexicon under the evil Stalin.
Stalin trusted no person. He executed those who had worked hard to establish him in power. Most of the powerful men who were vassals of Stalin's whims died betrayed by him.
On the eve of World War II Stalin purged the Red Army of gifted generals. When Nazi Germany launched its attack against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 the Soviets were woefully unprepared. Generals were murdered: Pows returning from German captivity were executed as spies. In all over 20 million Soviet citizens would die in the war. Many of these victims died at the hands of the evil sorcerer of the Kremlin.
Donald Rayfield teaches Russian and Georgian at the University of London. His book on playwright Anton Chekhov was well received. In this book he shows us the Soviet hell on earth world of sudden death; betrayal; cruelty beyond belief; hatred; racial and ethnic hatred that boggles the mind of anyone with a claim to be a member of the human race!
Stalin and his hangmen were thugs; bullies and merciless killers of all that is decent and good in the human soul. Rayfield suggests at the end of his book that he fears democracy in the new Russia under Putin is very fragile.The ghosts of Stalin may again materialize in the Russia of the 21st century.
Anyone who lives in a Western democracy should thank God that they did not first see daylight in the Soviet Union in the black days of Stalin and his cruel cronies.
Rayfield's book is well written. Though he is a scholar the book can be
read by one who has little familiarity with the history of this sad chapter of human history (the chapter on the Katyn Forest of Polish officers is just one case among countless tales told in the book which will break your heart). Stalin killed women, children, the old and the poor, the wealthy and the smart. He was an indiscriminate murderer of all he feared in his paranoic isolatiion inside tall Kremlin walls. He also was adept at turning people against one another. Several cases are related where a husband would volunteer to murder his own wife if this was the ukase ultimatum from Stalin which would prove the man's loyalty!
As one who has read several books on Stalin I would give this book five stars. Every page has something to shock the reader. We should know what Stalin did as we honor his millions of helpless victims.
A sorry line of miserable degenerates .......2007-01-08
Brilliantly researched and written this is a vital and substantial contribution to the sorry and depressing history of life in the former Soviet Union under the rule of the psychotic, evil Stalin and his miserable bunch of hyena type acolytes. After out scheming and removing the old Bolsheviks, Stalin was able to put himself up as the top hyena at the top of the pack and corrupt his close associates and eventually the Cheka to inflict his paranoiac ideas and schemes on the Communist Party and Soviet Union.
The book commences with the long road to power for Stalin and deals with his early life, the experience of his religious education in the Tbilisi seminary and the ideas he probably gained from it and his Bolshevik revolutionary life. Chapters are then devoted to the history of each of the leaders of the Cheka with details of their pre-Cheka life and how they performed in the top job.
Dzierzynski with the agreement of Lenin and his men formed the Cheka within 6 weeks of the October revolution and was immediately up to his armpits in blood; the period 1918-1921 saw the Cheka involved in widespread arrests, brutal interrogations and mass shootings of some real and many thousands of imagined enemies. Dzierzynski was similar to Stalin with a religious background that was savagely shattered at age 19 in a conversion to atheism and revolution and these two got on well together. In 1922 Dzierzynski swung a half million paramilitaries from Trotsky to support Stalin and was a crucial influence in Stalin's rise to power. He died in 1926 but directed his efforts to combat counter revolution, espionage etc outside of the party not inside, l got the impression he would have opposed many of Stalin's later crazy schemes as party unity was vital to him and he personally disliked fabricating evidence (of all things!) and was not willing to suppress party members.
Dzierzynski was followed by the very able Menzhinsky who during the period 1928 to 1934 ably assisted Stalin to neutralize his opponents inside and outside the party and of course controlled the Cheka as it moved against the rural inhabitants and actioned the grain requisition of 1928 and the brutal forced farm collectivization which lead to the subsequent famine. Menzhinsky also worked with Stalin on the first show trials.
This sorry trend of brutal suppression and misery continues and gets worst as the book continues. Besides the main hangmen this books also presents the history of the other Cheka operatives i.e. the strategists, crackdown and arresting officers, interrogators, executioners, guards etc.
Many sadists, psychotics and cruel operatives performed the dirty work of Stalin and his hangmen.
New Perspectives On An Old Evil.......2006-05-24
This painstakingly thorough compendium of knowledge on Stalin, the Communist movement, Bolshevik leaders and the enslaved masses is one of the best books available on its subject. Rayfield tells you all the news you already know about the Red Terror, and some you didn't- he began his research shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when many secret documents and personal possessions of Stalin's became publicly accessible. These resources allowed him to paint a more complete picture of the Stalinist government than was previously possible, untangling endless webs of intrigue.
Rayfield occasionally writes too long on insignificant subjects, but his generally focused and thorough style works. It's a bit reminiscent of "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by Shirer, and almost as masterful. Rayfield restrains himself from sensationalism throughout, then concludes with a brief and needed social critique on Russia's failure to acknowledge the criminal nature of the Cheka, the NKVD and the other deadly machinery of Russian Communism.
This is one of the best places to start reading about Stalin, and may have just enough new information to satisfy seasoned readers. I especially recommend it to those who have read books focused on Stalin himself, but haven't yet examined the hangmen who made his slaughter possible.
We Must Not Forget.......2006-02-12
There are many books detailing Stalin's horrendous crimes, but this one does a very good job telling us about the lackies and cronies who actually did his dirty work, and how--time and time again--they did not hesitate to shoot dozens or hundreds of people they deemed disloyal. But perhaps the most haunting part is the book's last two pages--I just finished it--where the author reminds us that Russia has still neither fully acknowledged nor atoned for the crimes of the Cheka and its successor organizations.
We can see much the same thing here, I'm sorry to say. Nazi crimes are justly condemned, but few risk being called a "McCarthyist" by saying that the KGB murderers still alive should be called to account. Thousands of former Russians now live in New York City alone. But no effort has even been made, as far as I know, to try to even gather information from them about these crimes. I'm no lawyer, but couldn't a KGB goon living on our soil be prosecuted here for such crimes against humanity? On TV's LAW & ORDER, "Hang 'em High Jack McCoy" has prosecuted a Chilean fascist (no, I'm not kidding), two different serving U.S. Naval officers in two different episodes, plenty of ex-Nazis and neo-Nazis, and (in a two-parter) a special prosecutor who was supposed to be a parody of Kenneth Starr (hint, hint). I never saw an episode of him wondering about how many ex-KGB men are living in his jurisdiction, with the blood of thousands on their hands. Instead I see them being interviewed on the HISTORY CHANNEL (that's right, INTERVIEWED)--and not a little finger is lifted to bring these murderers to justice.
Rayfield should have spent more time making the point that it was not only the Bertolt Brechts and the Walter Durantys and the George Bernard Shaws of the world who were morally culpable for fawning over Stalin, but also all those living today who are willing to forget about the USSR doing things that Nazi Germany could not be--and was not--forgiven for. Some double standards may have to be tolerated in this world, but the kind that apologize for mass murder cannot be.
Book Description
A moving, utterly captivating love story: Romeo and Juliet as if told by Chekhov or Dostoevsky. In the remote Russian village of Mirnoje a woman waits, as she has waited for almost three decades, for the man she loves to return. Near the end of World War II, 19-year-old Boris Koptek leaves the village to join the Russian army, swearing to the 16-year-old love of his life, Vera, that as soon as he returns they will marry. Young Boris, who with his engineering battalion fights his way almost to Berlin, is reported killed in action crossing the Spree River. But Vera refuses to believe he is dead, and each day, all these years later, faithfully awaits his return. Then one day the narrator arrives in the village, a 26-year-old native of Leningrad who is fascinated by both the still-beautiful woman and her exemplary story, and little by little falls madly in love with her. But how can he compete with a ghost that will not die? Beautifully, delicately, but always powerfully told, Andre Makine delineates in masterly prose the movements and madness that constitute the dance of pure love.
Customer Reviews:
might have been better in French..........2007-02-10
On first glance, this book is about a women, who waits 30 years for the return of her fiancee at war. She lives among the dying widows, the old, faithful ones in a life punctuated by startling moments of beauty and tenderness. The use of language is exceptionally beautiful in this book. The story takes on a dream like quality; colorful, vivid yet almost surreal at times. On a deeper level, The antagonist symbolizes the silent death of Russia, "the winner of the War"- caught in between the empty lure of Communist regime and the propagation of western filth.
Emotions or Logic...You Decide .......2006-04-02
Makine has given us quite a thought-provoking novel...touching on life choices...the emotional aspect of our choices...and the logical aspect of our choices, and the borders that are crossed with both choices. Some of us choose with our hearts, while others choose the logical (or what seems to be logical) path to live our lives.
The 26-year old narrator in this novel is given an opportunity to travel to a remote area of Russia near the White Sea, in order to write about the culture and traditions of the women in the town of Mirnoe, a town that is a dot on the geographical map, and also a dot on the map of time. He arrives with preconceived notions, and a sense that the small town, borders on the edge of limbo, and is inhabited by those with simple minds.
It is a town that has stood still, has not moved forward...one with barely enough children to fill a one-room schoolhouse...and a town whose residents are mainly women...who have lost the men in their lives, to war. These women all have one common ground...they wait for their loved ones to return. The wait outlasts their lives. The women are aging...and dying quickly...and one woman...Vera...is committed to overseeing their burials...out of respect for their determination, and out of a deep-rooted sense of obligation.
Vera, herself, is in the same situation...waiting for her sweetheart to return from war...waiting for 30-years...from the time she was 16-years old. She made a verbal committment to him that she would wait for him, and wait for him, she does. She has built her entire life upon his return..including the placement of the chair to her dining table...which faces the window that overlooks the path he would have to walk upon his return...she wants to be able to see him immediately. She has become a creature of habit, within her world, a world that the narrator sees as simple, ridiculous, illogical, and a world full of surprises that opens his eyes, and awakens him, eventually. She has chosen to emotionally survive, in the best way she can. She is not the sum of her exterior, not the sum of her desire and need to wait for a man who has not yet returned...she is much more complex, than this 26-year old narrator ever imagined.
Deep within her is a vibrant soul, and a woman of great substance, dignity, intelligence, intensity, confidence and fear.
She is literally, a woman of beauty, from the inside out. Her choices have been thought out, concise and clear, and she has knowingly made them, realizing that they might not be logical to others, and even at times to herself. She has chosen to live where she does for reasons in addition to the waiting for her sweetheart. I will not divulge the contents of the book, in order to explain those reasons.
The narrator makes many assumptions about Vera, unfounded assumptions not based on fact. The narrator, himself is waiting, in a sense, waiting for the woman he loves to acknowledge him. But, he does not see that he is basically in the same situation as Vera, due to his shallow emotional shell. His life is based upon superficial behavior, as an artistic person, his lifestyle borders on the theory of passion, lust and the bizarre. The narrator eventually begins to see Vera for the complete person she is...and he falls in love with her.
The end has a surprise or two...and the novel is completely realized. Emotions or logic, you decide which is the better path, or if life is a blend of both.
Her honour is an essence that's not seen.......2006-03-21
William Shakespeare, Othello.
Andrei Makine's newest offering is "The Woman Who Waited". It is the story of a man pining for a woman he can never have, a woman living a life of "grievous beauty" waiting senselessly for a man who will never return. As with much of Makine's other works it is an elegiac prose-poem on loss and yearning. Although "The Woman Who Waited" did not have quite the same impact on me as some of Makine's earlier works ("Music of a Life" and "Dreams of My Russian Summers" come to mind) it is, nevertheless, a wonderfully realized piece of writing.
Makine, for those not familiar with his work, was born in the Soviet Union in 1958. He emigrated to France as a young man. He writes in French. (The Woman Who Waited was superbly translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan, Makine's translator of choice). Makine's work for me combines the grace and elegance of the best French writers and the sad dark soul of the best Russian writers.
The unnamed narrator of Woman Who Waited is a cynical 26-year old resident of Leningrad. It is 1975, the midst of the Brezhnev era, and the narrator is part of a circle of artists and writers who chafe under the leaden weight of the regime. They smoke, drink, and scoff at notions of Soviet (and petit bourgeois) morality by adhering to notions of "free love". Random, emotion free couplings are the order of the day.
The narrator takes an opportunity to leave St. Petersburg to research customs and folk lore in the sub-Artic town of Mirnoe. Located close to the White Sea, near Murmansk and Archangelsk, Mirnoe is as close to a ghost town as you are likely to find. It is populated mostly by old ladies, a few old men, and just enough children in the area to support a one-room school house. Upon arrival in Mirnoe the narrator sees Vera. She is 46, self-composed and for the narrator a vision of some ideal version of grace and beauty. The narrator quickly hears that Vera, the local school teacher, said goodbye to her husband in 1945 at the town railway station. Sixteen at the time, Vera last words to her 18-year old husband promised to wait for him to return. Within weeks, during the successful battle for Berlin the husband is reported missing and presumed dead. Despite the virtual certainty of his death Vera has spent the next 30-years waiting chastely for the husband who will never return. As one cynical character, Otar, says to the narrator, Vera may be the only woman in Russia worth loving. The novel moves on from there in the form of the narrator's growing obsession with Vera. The life of Vera is revealed slowly to the reader as the narrator seeks to learn everything he can about her life. Along the way we see that many of his assumptions (and a few of my own) about Vera stand on shaky ground. As the novel nears its end we are treated to a fine example of being careful what we wish for.
Makine's writing is sparse and to the point. He has said repeatedly that he does not write to tell the reader what to think. He writes to tell a story as sparsely and concisely as he can and leave the thinking to the reader. That is one of the great challenges of reading Makine and one of the continuing great pleasures. You have to be actively engaged in the inner life of his characters, Makine does not do that work for you.
As I read The Woman Who Waited it reminded me of Jean Jacque Rousseau's wonderful epistolary novel "Julie or the New Heloise". In that novel the two main characters exchange a series of letters in which feelings conflict with intellect and where passion confronts purity and noble sentiment. The writing is dramatically different but some of the themes of each seem to bear more than a passing resemblance.
Early in the book Makine notes of Vera, as she walked along the shoreline only to stop at the same mailbox she had stopped at every day for thirty years that "what remained was the essence of things". Ultimately, the essence is the dish served by Andrei Makine, one without frills or adornments. I think it clear after reading "The Woman Who Waited" that Makine has provided us with a character in Vera whose honour is an essence that is seen.
This is yet another book by Andre Makine that deserves a wide audience.
Book Description
In a memoir more chilling than a John le Carre novel, we meet the senior KGB officer who recruited and handled two of America's most dangerous traitors, and whose career spanned four continents
In his four decades as a KGB officer, Victor Cherkashin was a central player in the shadowy world of Cold War espionage. From his rigorous training in Soviet intelligence in the early 1950s to his prime spot as the KGB's head of counterintelligence at the Soviet embassy in Washington, Cherkashin's career was rich in episode and drama. In a riveting memoir, Cherkashin provides a remarkable insider's view of the KGB's prolonged conflict with the CIA.
Playing a major role in global espionage for most of the Cold War, Cherkashin was posted to stations in the United States, Australia, India, and Lebanon. He tracked down U.S. and British spies around the world. But it was in 1985 that Cherkashin scored two of the KGB's biggest-ever coups. In April of that year, he recruited disgruntled CIA officer Aldrich Ames and became his principal handler. Six months later, FBI special agent Robert Hanssen contacted Cherkashin directly, eventually becoming an even bigger asset than Ames.
In Spy Handler, Cherkashin offers the complete account of how and why both Americans turned against their country, and addresses the rumors of an undiscovered KGB spy-another Hanssen or Ames-still at large in the U.S. intelligence community. Full of vivid detail and dramatic accounts that shed stark new light on the inner workings of the KGB, Spy Handler is a major addition to Cold War history, told by one of its major players.
Customer Reviews:
A Real Life Spy Tale.......2007-08-18
This book is excellent. It reads like an Ian Flemming story but only better. The better part for me is that it was real. This book almost seems like a movie. The author, Victor Cherkashin is sort of like the Forest Gump of the spy world. I say that only because he seems to be in on every major case of US people spying against US. This guy saw it all, the Ames Case, Richard Hansen of the FBI, and several other cases he writes about in the book. The big and the small cases are covered. He was even in on the Clayton Lonetree case. (Marine Embassy Guard in the 80s). It was spell bounding to hear about those cases from the other side. In the book he does detail some of the information that these US spys gave up. This is information that US sources has not reported on. He goes into detail about what Ames and Hansen did to the United States. After reading the book the reader might be a death penality supporter. Those guys gave up some very, very damaging information. You also get to hear about some of the good things the CIA did in the book. You learn about the vast numbers of spies that they collected in Russia. Also he talks about some of the innovative techniques the CIA employed which the KGB caught. These are things that either the press here in the US doesn't want to talk about or the CIA won't talk about in the interest of secrecy. You also get a good does of background knowledge on how spying is conducted today. It isn't James Bond stuff but it isn't normal duties either. If you read this plan on reading it all at once. You won't be able to put the book down.
Interesting but scattered.......2007-03-27
Getting an insiders view of spying throughout the past 40 years was interesting - Cherkashin's accounts of cold war spy vs spy tactics are personal and credible. I found especially interesting his stories of high tensions within the USSR during the Reagan 80's, and his perception of the Russian weaknesses that caused the fall of the wall throughout Europe. The quotes and stories from US intelligence agents were good.
I was disappointed the writings seemed very scattered. Cherkashin sounds like he had a big chip on his shoulder about his government. Not one of my favorite reads.
Viktor Cherkashin lets us know the Soviet side of the story ..........2007-03-27
Fascinating history of espionage activities by the KGB against the United States in the Cold War. Focuses on the Hanssen and Ames cases and with Soviet counterintelligence activities and methods.
When paired with Milt Bearden's book "The Main Enemy", it provides a pretty comprehensive behind the scenes look at US v Soviet intelligence activities though the latter half of the Cold War.
One of the things I found curious about both books is the polite, almost fraternal, way in which these intelligence professionals write about the other side. I doubt that any of the histories to come from post Soviet Russia, or Iran, or Syria or Saudi Arabia or Egypt, maybe even Israel will have the same collegial tone.
Handling Spy Handler.......2006-08-31
I find this book very interesting as it relates to the infamous American spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansson. However, I find the details can be cumbersome at times even though it is written with obvious knowledge. All in all, if one is interested in the dark world of spying, it is a good read.
Starts Good, Goes Downhill.......2006-08-05
This book is worth reading. You'll get the strong impression that Cherkashin definitely knows his subject, and there are some good tales told.
Unfortunately, as the book wears on, you begin to sense a hint of bitterness and and self-service. While Cherkashin does criticize the KGB, he seems more inclined to protect it and to wax remorseful over the demise of the USSR. By the end of the book, I was beginning to doubt the honesty within significant portions of the book.
It is worth a read, but you'll not want to put it on your shelf to keep.
Book Description
Glamorous and intriguing, packed with hundreds of incomparable pictures and marvelous anecdotes about some of the flamboyant personalities of the first half of the 20th century, this stylish volume illuminates as never before the pivotal Russian influence on 20th-century European and American culture and fashion.
Alexandre Vassiliev, a well-known Russian-born costume and set designer, gives an insider's account of the artists and aristocrats who fled Russia after the 1917 Revolution and went on to play key roles in the European fashion scene. Wonderful stories abound about such noted emigrs as Serge Diaghilev and Anna Pavlova, fashion illustrator Ert, photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, and couturier Prince Felix Yusupov, better known as Rasputin's assassin. With its wealth of documentary source material and photographs of stars from Greta Garbo to Marlene Dietrich wearing couture designed by Russian emigrs, this exotic fashion book will have broad appeal.
ALEXANDRE VASSILIEV is a fashion historian, a costume and set designer, and a collector of antique clothing. He graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre Studio before moving to Paris in 1982, where he established his international career. He lectures regularly on the history of fashion, costume, and theater design and writes for Russian Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.
840 black-and-white illustrations, 91/2 x 121/8"
Customer Reviews:
Great book on history of fashion!.......2005-12-19
I loved Beauty in Exile. A friend told me about it. I was researching my aunt, who was a model in Paris. I discovered her world through the information this book contains. I had no idea to what extent fashion was dominated by Russian emigres in the 20s and 30s. I knew they were seamstresses and models, but had no idea they started fashion houses as well. Anyone interested in the history of fashion should own Beauty in Exile. The photos are sensational. I bring the book out to show friends who come over. I tell them to get their own, rather than borrow it. This book is too precious to risk lending. I might not get it back!
The lost world of Russian Exiles.......2003-07-06
This book covers the now vanished world of Russian exiles from the Revolution till the 1950-60's. It covers such areas as the influence of the Ballets Russies in Paris prior to the revolution, the clothes the exiles bought with themselves, and the importance of the Kokoshnik to Russian fashion design.
We are also given the history of the now vanished Russian émigré communities in Constantinople in Turkey, Berlin in Germany and Harbin in China, with a smaller amount of discussion of the communities in Paris and London.
London and Paris mostly get discussed in context with fashion, as many émigrés, both noble and poor made a living in the various parts of the fashion industry in exile. There is a whole chapter devoted to the house of Kitmr with its exquisite embroideries and beading, which was run by Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna the younger in the 1920's.
The author has also unearthed other Russian émigré fashion houses which were well known and respected in the 1920's but are mostly forgotten now, houses such as Anely, Mode, Paul Caret, Tao, Yteb and Irfe which was run by the Youssoupoff family.
The majority of the book concentrates on fashion, but there is also discussion of the theatre, cafe's and other craft oriented activities which the Russian communities produced, especially in the 1920's. Many years of painstaking research as been conducted by the author to reconstruct this lost world. The book is full of black and white photos, which I imagine would not have been easy to find. However, if you are looking for nice colour photos of Russian costume, you will not find it here, but if you are trying to find something out on the background on émigré communities or the Russian fashion industry in the 1920's this book will be the standard work for many years to come.
Paleolithic Reviewers.......2001-04-27
An appraisal of European culture from an old maid somewhere in Western Kentucky knits a ludicrously inappropriate Horatio Algerish review to satisfy her puritan work ethos, that went out of date with the blue collar culture of 50's America, Honeymooners, Flintstones etc. She could be Pat Buchanans speech writer.
Amazon.com
Long before he entered politics, when he was just in his early 20s, South Dakotan George McGovern flew 35 bomber missions over Nazi-occupied Europe, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery under fire. Stephen Ambrose, the industrious historian, focuses on McGovern and the young crew of his B-24 bomber, volunteers all, in this vivid study of the air war in Europe.
Manufactured by a consortium of companies that included Ford Motor and Douglas Aircraft, the B-24 bomber, dubbed the Liberator, was designed to drop high explosives on enemy positions well behind the front lines--and especially on the German capital, Berlin. Unheated, drafty, and only lightly armored, the planes were dangerous places to be, and indeed, only 50 percent of their crews survived to the war's end. Dangerous or not, they did their job, delivering thousand- pound bombs to targets deep within Germany and Austria.
In his fast-paced narrative, Ambrose follows many other flyers (including the Tuskegee Airmen, the African American pilots who gave the B-24s essential fighter support on some of their most dangerous missions) as they brave the long odds against them, facing moments of glory and terror alike. "It would be an exaggeration to say that the B-24 won the war for the Allies," Ambrose writes. "But don't ask how they could have won the war without it." --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
The very young men who flew the B24s over Germany in World War II against terrible odds were an exemplary band of brothers. In The Wild Blue, Stephen Ambrose recounts their extraordinary brand of heroism, skill, daring, and comradeship.
Stephen Ambrose describes how the Army Air Forces recruited, trained, and chose those few who would undertake the most demanding and dangerous jobs in the war. These are the boys -- turned pilots, bombardiers, navigators, and gunners of the B24s -- who suffered over 50 percent casualties.
Ambrose carries us along in the crowded, uncomfortable, and dangerous B24s as their crews fought to the death through thick, black, deadly flak to reach their targets and destroy the German war machine or else went down in flames. Twenty-two-year-old George McGovern who was to become a United States senator and a presidential candidate, flew thirty-five combat missions (all the Army would allow) and won the Distinguished Flying Cross. We meet him and his mates, his co-pilot killed in action, and crews of other planes -- many of whom did not come back.
As Band of Brothers and Citizen Soldiers portrayed the bravery and ultimate victory of the American soldier from Normandy on to Germany, The Wild Blue makes clear the contribution these young men of the Army Air Forces stationed in Italy made to the Allied victory.
Download Description
Stephen Ambrose is the acknowledged dean of the historians of World War II in Europe. In three highly acclaimed, bestselling volumes, he has told the story of the bravery, steadfastness, and ingenuity of the ordinary young men, the citizen soldiers, who fought the enemy to a standstill -- the band of brothers who endured together. The very young men who flew the B-24s over Germany in World War II against terrible odds were yet another exceptional band of brothers, and, in The Wild Blue, Ambrose recounts their extraordinary brand of heroism, skill, daring, and comradeship with the same vivid detail and affection. Ambrose describes how the Army Air Forces recruited, trained, and then chose those few who would undertake the most demanding and dangerous jobs in the war. These are the boys -- turned pilots, bombardiers, navigators, and gunners of the B-24s -- who suffered over 50 percent casualties. With his remarkable gift for bringing alive the action and tension of combat, Ambrose carries us along in the crowded, uncomfortable, and dangerous B-24s as their crews fought to the death through thick black smoke and deadly flak to reach their targets and destroy the German war machine. Twenty-two-year-old George McGovern, who was to become a United States senator and a presidential candidate, flew thirty-five combat missions (all the Army would allow) and won the Distinguished Flying Cross. We meet him and his mates, his co-pilot killed in action, and crews of other planes. Many went down in flames. As Band of Brothers and Citizen Soldiers portrayed the bravery and ultimate victory of the American soldiers from Normandy on to Germany, The Wild Blue makes clear the contribution these young men of the Army Air Forces stationed in Italy made to the Allied victory.
Customer Reviews:
Save your money unless you love Mc Govern.......2007-07-20
This book is not about the men and boys who flew the B 24 it is a book about Mc Govern. Reading the book sort of makes you feel like he was the only man in the war. I purchased the book to read about all the men. The author could have even shown some about other men that did basicaly the same that became famous: Kennedy, Jimmy Stewert and others. He focused only on McGovern and I certinaly wonder how much he paid to get Stephen to write this book or is Stephen that much in love with Mc Govern. I can not stand the man now and will not ever knowingly buy another book of his.
Mary Jo PottsThe Wild Blue : The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45
The Wild Blue .......2007-04-21
The Wild Blue is about the young men who flew the B-24 over Germany in World War 2 against all odds. Mr. Ambrose describes the heroism, courage, and skill with a lot of detail. He successfully makes you feel like you are in the great lumbering bomber in the hostile skies over Germany. He also describes how the Army Air Force (only after the war were the army and air force separate) recruited, trained and then chose those few that would undertake the most dangerous job in the war. The pilots, bombardiers, navigators and, the gunners of the B-24s suffered a 50 percent casualty rate.
This book follows the lives of ten men from different towns and different backgrounds and watches them come together and form a team. The trust was important because up in the skies of Germany it was good to know that someone had your back. I believe that Mr. Ambrose captures that perfectly. He takes the reader along in the crowded, uncomfortable planes as the men aboard fought to the death through smoke and terrifying flack to reach their industrial targets in the Rhineland. Their goal was to destroy the German war machine.
The Heroic Tales.......2007-03-30
Stephen Ambrose's The Wild Blue: the Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s over Germany tells the heroic tales of the B-24 Liberators and their crews from the 15th Army Air Force in Italy flying over Nazi Germany in World War II. The Wild Blue begins with the stories behind each crewman who will eventually fly aboard the "Dakota Queen" and a few crewmen who will fly aboard other B-24s. The stories behind the crewmen are a very nice addition to the book as it is the crewmen who make the majestic B-24s fly and fight. The reader actually gets to meet George McGovern who eventually flies the "Dakota Queen". McGovern was born on July 19, 1922, and was attending his second year at Dakota Wesleyan when he heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. The combat stories are complete to the detail of what it is like to fly over Nazi Germany against flak and the occasional fighter, what it is like to be shot down, and what it is like to watch a fellow B-24 get shot down. Ambrose was able to give this amount of detail because of his interviews with approximately fifty B-24 crewmen and their families. Without those interviews, this book would be bland and very unreal. But it is enjoyable and very real. The Wild Blue is a book that I would re-read and recommend to those who are interested in history, World War II, aircraft, or to those who just want to know the feeling of being taken up into a B-24 and flown over Nazi Germany.
More Bio than Battle .......2007-01-08
Mr. Ambrose wrote a unabashed tribute to George McGovern, too bad he tried to pass it off as a story about something else.
A SOLID READ - IF NOT THE AUTHOR'S BEST.......2006-07-16
While I enjoyed this one, it certainly was not the author's best work. It did draw attention to a group of very brave men, the B-24 crew members in the European Theater, which was good as this group and this plane is often overlooked. It did seem to me though that the author, on one side was trying to write a biography of George McGovern, or if he was trying to cover the air war during the last part of WWII. I did enjoy his trade mark technique of telling the stories of different men who participated, but he would always go back to McGovern. Perhaps if he had stuck to one or the other the book would have had more of an impact. Parts of this work did drag and were rather repetative. On the other hand, the author did not try to over dramatize McGovern's part in the war. The work was well crafted and you certainy would not waste your time in reading it. I suppose it is not quite fare to compare this work with other works by this author. After all, no one bats a thousand all the time. Overall, recommend this one with reservations. It is about very brave young men and we do need to know as much about them as possible.
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