Memoirs, diaries, essays on politics, music, and art.

It's an almost unbelievable story. The author, who was only discovered in her eighties, became one of the most successful and translated Czech writers almost overnight. He won the State Prize for Literature for his short story collection Želary, and a highly successful film was made based on Joz Hanula''s novella, which was nominated for an Oscar. But who is Kveta Legátová (real name Vera...

Pyotr Alekseevich Kropotkin (1842-1921) is an amazing, but in some ways very typical figure in Russian history: a prince from an old family who became a revolutionary, a scholar and encyclopedist immersed in politics, an anarchist who sharply criticized violence and the ‘Red Terror’. He became famous as a geographer and explorer of the North, a historian and philosopher, a literary critic and...

Kokkinaki was perhaps the leading Soviet test pilot setting many world and Soviet records. He worked for several design bureaus, including theIlyushin Design Bureau , where he served as its chief test pilot. He also established the shortest flight route between Europe and the United States. He died in 1985.

From Amazon: John Fowles gained international recognition in 1963 with his first published novel, The Collector, but his labor on what may be his greatest literary undertaking, his journals, commenced over a decade earlier. Fowles, whose works include The Maggot, The French Lieutenant's Woman, and The Ebony Tower, is among the most inventive and influential English novelists of the twentieth...

Nadezhda Akinfova was enthusiastically loved by the Russian minister of foreign affairs, Prince A. M. Gorchakov. Moreover, Fedor Tiutchev devoted his verses to her; and then there's the story of her love for N. M. Leikhtenbersky, which was reflected in Tolstoy's novels 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina.' Now, unpublished confidential archival material has allowed the author to reconstruct the...

Vasilii Chapaev was one of the most active participants in Russia's Civil War; in our time, he is known as the hero of many jokes. The real story of his life is interwoven with fabrications from the well-known movie about his life. Before the fall of the USSR, the name Chapaev was surrounded by an aura of heroism and whole-hearted devotion to the Revolution. This book is based on archival...

Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov wrote their report ‘Luzhkov: The Results’ at the end of 2009. Luzhkov and his wife, billionaire developer Elena Baturina, sued Nemtsov over it, but they failed to refute most of the facts presented by the ‘perpetually dissenting’ opposition figure. And when Yuri Luzhkov began to obviously irritate President Medvedev – especially after the mayor refused to...

A serious research of the last year of Dostoevsky's life. It sheds light on the drama of his life, death and the mystery of his departure.

Vlas Doroshevish. The Fate of The Feuilletonist. A full biography.