This book, first published in 1950, is a balanced examination of Chekhov’s life and work, a critical analysis of his stories and plays set against the background of his life the Russia of the day. Using Chekhov’s works, biographical details, and, more importantly, his many thousands of letters, this book presents a comprehensive critical study of the writer and the man.

This book, first published in 1981, examines the dramatic and tragic stories of four of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century, their struggle to survive the Stalin years, and their dedication to their art despite considerable personal danger. Interweaving the stories of Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetayeva, the noted Russian scholar Ronald Hingley traces their education, the literary schools and traditions with which they were associated, the...

This book, first published in 1977, begins with a close look at the lives of nineteenth century Russian writers, and at the problems of their profession. It then examines their environment in its broader aspects, the Russian empire being considered from the point of view of geography, ethnography, economics, and the impact of individual Tsars on writers and society. A discussion of the main social ‘estates’ follows, and concluding is an analysis in their literary context of the activities ...

This book, first published in 1978, demonstrates how Dostoyevsky’s novels grew directly out of the pressures of their creator’s tormented experience and personality. Ronald Hingley draws upon important fresh source material, which includes the definitive Soviet edition of Dostoyevsky’s works with drafts and variants, Soviet research on the circumstances of his father’s death, and a newly deciphered section of the diary of his second wife, Anna. Hingley considers with his analysis all Dosto...

This book, first published in 1970, is an important study of Russia’s security services from their earliest years to the mid-twentieth century. Ronald Hingley demonstrates how the secret police acted, both under the Tsars and under Soviet rule, as a key instrument of control exercised over all fields of Russian life by an outstandingly authoritarian state. He analyses the Tsarist Third Section and Okhrana and their role in countering Russian revolutionary groups, and examines the Soviet ag...

This book, first published in 1959, contains passages with commentary from 12 of the most important Soviet authors. They are lively and typical passages, written in varying styles, depicting historical events such as the 1917 Revolution, collectivisation and the death of Stalin, as well as the everyday side of Soviet life. They are a key introduction to the Russian language used in the Soviet period, an analysis of the language used by its leading writers, and a snapshot of life in Russia ...

This book, first published in 1979, provides a systematic anatomy of Russia’s modern authors in the context of their society at the time. Post-revolutionary Russian literature has made a profound impact on the West while still maintaining its traditional role as a vehicle for political struggle at home. Professor Hingley places their lives and work firmly in the setting of the USSR’s social and political structure.

This biographical study, first published in 1985, draws on extensive newly available material and illuminates the life and work of a man who lived through one of the most turbulent periods of Russian history to produce some of his country’s greatest poetry and its most significant modern novel.

Koba the Dread is the successor to Amis's celebrated memoir, Experience. It addresses itself to the central lacuna of twentieth-century thought: the indulgence of communism by Western intellectuals. In between the personal beginning and the personal ending, Amis gives us perhaps the best one hundred pages ever written about Stalin: Koba the Dread, Iosif the Terrible.The author's father, Kingsley Amis, was 'a Comintern dogsbody' (as he would come to put it) from 19...

"Fascinating . . . full of insight and a perceptive portrait of Lenin's single-mindedness and his relentless, all-consuming drive towards revolution in Russia." — The GuardianCombining Young Lenin and On Lenin in one volume, this is a fascinating political biography by Lenin's fellow revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. Trotsky on Lenin brings together two long-out-of-print works in a single volume for the first time, providing an intima...

Russia is a country of contradictions: a nation of cultural refinement and artistic originality and yet also a country that rules by 'the iron fist'. In this riveting history, Martin Sixsmith shows how Russia's complex identity has been formed over a thousand years, and how it can help us understand its often baffling behaviour at home and abroad.Combining in-depth research and interviews with his personal experiences as a former BBC Moscow correspondent, Sixsmith skilfully traces ...

Stalin, like Hitler and other tyrants, won and held power because he had collaborators - hangmen. Drawing on newly released archival material, Donald Rayfield gives us a fuller and more colourful picture of Stalin's inner circle than ever before. Stalin was not the sole author of Stalinism. What motivated his chiefs of police, Feliks Dzierzynski, Viacheslav Manzhinsky, Genrikh Iagoda, Nikolai Ezhov and Lavrenti Beria? What did they want? What were their relations with the regime and its ru...