Russia Books

Since I am intensely interested in the subject of the American involvement in the intervention of North Russia just after the First World War (where the U.S. 339th Infantry fought against the 6th Red Army), I have a good many books on the subject, from "Fighting the Bolsheviki" to the more recent "Stillborn Crusade," and I have notes I made while researching original documents at the U.S. Library of Congress. But when I want to think in broader terms, I always pull out my copy of "The Decision to Intervene." It allows me to review the general situation at the time, including the activities of the Red Cross (who put the "Red" in the "Red Cross" Ha! Ha!), the U.S. troops in Siberia, and the Czechslovak situation at the time. I would be lost without this book. I highly recommend it!

The Decision to Intervene by George F. Kennan is Volume II of his History of Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920. (See my review of Volume I, Russia Leaves the War.)

The Decision to Intervene picks up in early 1918. The Bolsheviks had overthrown the democratically-oriented Provisional Government of Russia which came to power in February 1917 and had negotiated a separate truce with the Germans, taking Russia out of WWI. The details of a formal Russian-German peace treaty were undergoing tortuous negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. In the course of the war, Russia's allies, Britain, France, Italy, and, later, the US and Japan, had supplied significant quantities of strategic raw materials, arms, and munitions to Russia. Large stockpiles were still present at Vladivostok in the Far East and Archangel in the far northwest. Fearing that these strategic materials might be seized by or transferred to the Germans, the French, British and Italians favored landing allied troops to safeguard them. The Japanese supported this position, provided that they could unilaterally land their troops in Vladivostok, with American blessing, to create a bridgehead into Manchuria and Siberia.

At this time there was also allied great concern that large numbers of German troops would be transferred from the eastern to the western front for a major offensive. By introducing some allied troops into Russia, the allies hoped to tie down an even larger number of German forces who might otherwise be sent west.

For roughly the first half of 1918, President Wilson opposed intervention, and this opposition was sufficient to deter the allies. Around May of 1918, Raymond Robins, whom we met in Volume I as head of the American Red Cross mission to Russia and our informal point of contact with the Bolsheviks, was withdrawn from Russia. His self-appointed role as advocate of recognition of and aid to the Bolsheviks had come to naught, though he did not realize it for some months to come.

At almost the same time as Robins departure, the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia was attacked by Red Guards. Czechoslovakia was then part of the Austrian Empire but its population dreamed of independence. The Czech Legion, about 30,000 well trained troops, fought against the Germans and Austrians alongside the Russian Army until Russia left the war. The Czechs had no intention of making peace with the Germans and Austrians but could not continue fighting on Russian territory. Consequently, they attempted to make their way east to Vladivostok from which point they hoped the allies would provide sea transport to the western front. The Bolsheviks, perhaps in response to German pressure, demanded that the Czechs surrender most of their arms and repeatedly delayed their passage along the Trans-Siberian Railway. When the Czechs refused to disarm, Red Guards ambushed them at Irkutsk. The Czechs fought back quite effectively, eventually captured the Trans-Siberian Railway all the way from Vladivostok to the Urals, and were joined by various anti-communist Russian forces. This was the start of the Russian Civil War.

By this time, the Bolsheviks had acceded to all German conditions and signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, permanently taking Russia out of the war. Also, the British had landed a few troops in Archangel and Murmansk in the north and the Japanese had landed a major force in Vladivostok. Finally, the Bolsheviks had murdered the Tsar and all his family.

These combined events prompted the other allies to again approach President Wilson with another request for support for intervention. This time Wilson acceded, partly out of emotional support for the Czechs and partly because he feared he had refused the allies' requests too many times already. However, his decision was not coordinated with the allies or anyone else, including the rest of the US Government. His orders to US troops sent to Russia were incredibly contradictory. For example: (1) Support the Czechs but do not get involved in internal Russian conflicts. (How do you do that when the Czechs are fighting the Bolsheviks?) (2) Proceed to Murmansk and report to the senior British officer who is to command all allied forces there. However, do not leave the port area for the interior. (How do you respond when the British commander says "Go!"?)

During the entire period from the February 1917 Revolution through the intervention, Wilson never consulted with his ambassador in Russia. He ran a one-man foreign policy. Worse, his decisions were half-hearted, more often indecisions than decisions. Kennan summarizes Wilson's role in the intervention eloquently: "By failing, in this way, to follow through on the implementation of his own decision, the President contrived to get the worst of all possible worlds: he irritated the British and French with his obiter dicta and drew onto himself, ultimately, the blame for the failure of the entire venture (on the grounds that the United States contribution had been too little and too late); he did not prevent the US units from being used for precisely the purposes for which he said they should not be used; nor did he withdraw them, as he said he would, when they were thus used; yet he did prevent them from having any proper understanding of the purposes for which they were being used; finally, he rendered the US vulnerable to the charge, which Soviet propagandists have never ceased to exploit, of interfering by armed force in Soviet domestic affairs." (page 421)

That's some condemnation. The antidote for this type of disaster is the (Colin) Powell Doctrine: Don't enter into armed conflict unless you do so with an overwhelmingly superior force and the determination to see the conflict through to a successful conclusion.

Since I am intensely interested in the subject of the American involvement in the intervention of North Russia just after the First World War (where the U.S. 339th Infantry fought against the 6th Red Army), I have a good many books on the subject, from "Fighting the Bolsheviki" to the more recent "Stillborn Crusade," and I have notes I made while researching original documents at the U.S. Library of Congress. But when I want to think in broader terms, I always pull out my copy of "The Decision to Intervene." It allows me to review the general situation at the time, including the activities of the Red Cross (who put the "Red" in the "Red Cross" Ha! Ha!), the U.S. troops in Siberia, and the Czechslovak situation at the time. I would be lost without this book. I highly recommend it!

Taruskin's name is associated by the experienced reader of Russian music books with texts of in-depth treatment, rigorous demands of his texts for clarity and entertaining style for the non-scholar reader. Defining Russian Music offers through a series of essays a description very accurate of what Russian music is from the beginning of the formation of a Russian musical identity to the Soviet period and, what I think is more important, why it shows these characteristics. A passage I found very interesting explains the origin of a Pushkin's poem and compares settings of it by three composers from different periods. A non rough-reading text, fully illustrated with musical examples, this book is a must-have for people who appreciate Russian composers and their work as all Taruskin's books up to now.

Taruskin's name is associated by the experienced reader of Russian music books with texts of in-depth treatment (I bet nobody could research more exhaustively on Stravinsky), rigorous demands of his texts for clarity and entertaining style for the non-scholar reader. Defining Russian Music offers through a series of essays a description very accurate of what Russian music is from the beginning of the formation of a Russian musical identity to the Soviet period and, what I think is more important, why it shows these characteristics. A passage I found very interesting explains the origin of a Pushkin's poem and compares settings of it by three composers from different periods. A non rough-reading text, fully illustrated with musical examples, this book is a must-have for people who appreciate Russian composers and their work as all Taruskin's books up to now.

Musical scholarship today is like a dialogue within itself as well as informing the larger populace, sometimes you don't know which comes first. But here Taruskin must draw battle lines in the sand so to stake a claim,like the one against his benign enemy Peter van den Toorn. Taruskin is this side of the scholarship that shuns the guild system of note to note musical analysis the kind the Schenkerian ideologies have spawned in academia today. This is why his insights are so fascinating. It is incredible to think of all the Russians you hear at primary concert venues throughout the United States it seems we have had virtually nothing to guide our listening habits The music of Shostakovich is a great example,what we have had to guide our listening is his music was a veiled critique of the tyrannical Stalinist system that brutalized and pulverized culture,no one disagrees here. But one important question we never seem to have answered including Taruskin here, was Shostakovich a socialist,what did he actually think of the economic systems of the West?. Taruskin in two brilliant essays one on Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth" and the other on the "Fifth Symphony" we have insights we have heard before, again Shostakovich the culture hero victim.. We also learn of Stravinsky's reactionary cast. I really didn't know he was an anti-Semite. Well you might say how does this effect his composition?. Well Taruskin makes a good argument for Stravinsky's treatments of subject matter, as in the obvious anti-social dimensions in the "Rite of Spring" where the virgin is sacrificed as an inevitability, no resortment to struggle, a concept anathema to Stravinsky. What this kind of social scholarship unleashes is at the very heart of the music's value It is easy to see now Stravinsky's brutalization of sound,not only in the obvious choice of the "Rite of Spring" but Stravinsky's taming his voices subjecting them to a passivity,to a one-dimensional function, as part of a texture,And where has Stravinsky found his voice when there is one?, in borrowings,particulary Russian folk. These four last hermeneutical essays are for me the high point of this volume. Also Scriabin and Tchaikovsky complete it. I never understood any scholarship for Tchaikovsky, what's there to discuss,his relations with the Tsar's aristocracy? Except that Taruskin works at another level of contemplation,in saying things as this music has an immediacy that is borne through lived experience, it is not premeditated music, the kind we find in the West with an obsession for global order and pitch configurations. You will always find something to think about(even in Tchaikovsky)t with this kind of social and political scholarship which Taruskin espouses.

Imperial Russia was visited by early aviators and was instantly fascinated by airplanes. Because Russia was the most backward of the great nations, its leaders, beginning with Peter the Great, sought to modernize the country to compete with other Western European nations. Could aviation give Russian leaders the right tool to spark modernization?

Airplanes were sent into rural areas for the first time to be inspected by villagers. Pilots answered questions, passed out literature and gave free flights to amazed peasants.

Dr. Scott W. Palmer explains how "rural believers were taken into the air by pilots in order to prove that there was no God, angels or other celestial spirits in the heavens. Anti-religious flights proved so successful that they quickly became standard practice."

Dr. Palmer describes aviation's powerful propaganda value. "The mastery of the airplane would make possible backward Russia's rapid transformation into the world's most advanced and powerful nation."

Russia's leaders were in a hurry to gain legitimacy from mastering aviation. Russia set about acquiring airplanes and manufacturing methods from other countries in her haste to build legitimacy in the world's eyes.

For years, the Russian aviation industry struggled to do more than make poor copies of airplanes from other nations.

Dr. Palmer relates, "They embellished actual accomplishments, exaggerating, and at times inventing, Russian achievements when, in fact, much less progress had been made."

Record setting flights were carried out to bring world attention to Russian aviation through goodwill. Soviet leaders deliberately insisted on developing the largest airplanes in the world, even if the had no practical value other than propaganda.

Soviet leaders praised their air crews as heroes that flew to better their homeland and "benefit their fellow countrymen" -- not for money and fame -- like Charles Lindbergh had.

With the country stuck in depression, the American aircraft industry eagerly sought sales anywhere it could. In an effort to find customers , the Soviets were invited to visit American factories. As delegation after delegation came and went, Soviet industrial spies quickly set about stealing manufacturing secrets and techniques.

In the Spanish Civil War, Russian military aircraft were proved to be most inferior, and she entered World War II poorly equipped. After the war, German designers and manufacturing technology were taken back to Russia for assimilation into the aviation industry.

By 1947, Russia was able to reverse-engineer a fair copy of the American B-29 Superfortress. Then, at last, Russia was able to surprise the west during the Korean War by developing the Mig jet fighter series by incorporating state-of-the-art British jet engine technology.

Readers interested in aviation or Russian history will find "Dictators of the Air" a fascinating study of one area of Russia's age-old struggle to surpass the west.

"Dictators of the Air" contains sixty illustrations. Dr. Palmer has included many aviation posters that incorporate specific symbols and images for propaganda purposes by the Soviets. The selection of primitive Russian aircraft photographs is very entertaining.

Dictatorship of the Air is an innovative, thoroughly researched and very well-written book on a fascinating subject: the meaning and influence of aviation in Russian history. The author, Scott Palmer, uses an impressive number of archival materials and contemporary sources to build the case that the Russian approach to aeronautical modernization (combining state initiative, crash campaigns, and the acquisition of foreign technology) ultimately achieved far less than Imperial and Soviet leaders claimed. The book's treatment of technology transfer is particularly effective. Palmer does an terrific job explaining the internal economic and ideological factors that forced Russian officials to use espionage to keep up with competitors in Western Europe and the US. The book also contains (among other things) a fascinating discussion of the various "prestige" flights of the 1930s, insightful analysis of the religious foundations of Soviet-era aviation propaganda, and more than four dozen photographs and illustrations that readers will find nowhere else. This is certain to become the point of departure for future work on the history of Russian aviation. ***Highly recommended***

Palmer's book isn't another treatise about the design of Russain
aircraft or WWII military air campaigns. Instead readers will find a sophisticated treatment of original Russian sources, including newspapers, propaganda, poetry, and insitutional state directives that provides a myriad of perspectives on a single, but monumental, event in the history of mankind: human flight. The story of flight in Russia is more compelling and offers a greater understanding of Russian-Soviet life than similar histories of European and American aviation because it
coincided with another unprecendent and no less monumental event: the establishment of the Soviet Union.

Palmer argues that state officials in both Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union latched on to aviation as symbol and tool of their nation's progress and as proof of their standing in the modern world. Importantly, while the Russian autocracy failed to successfuly create a nation of fliers through voluntary associations (as was acheived in Western Europe and the United States), the Soviet Union also failed to do so, and rather spectacularly. As in many other endeavors, Soviet officials refused to face the difficulties inherent in their undertaking. They sought to create both a modern state and a modern aviation culture by fiat. Palmer rather dramatically explains how the
tragic story of the Soviets' failed attempt unfolded to the detriment of their citizens.

The book's numerous photographs, prints, and propaganda posters as well as Palmer's original translations of poetry, literature, and state archival material make this a book that stands out from its scholarly peers. Between these fascinating materials and Palmer's elegant prose one almost forgets that this is a work from an academic press.

Palmer's history is well researched and his depiction of avaition under the Imperial and Soviet regime is convincing. My only quibble is with the final chapter wherein Palmer makes a nod to the post WWII era of Russian history arguing that subsequent events demonstrate continuity with the patterns he has described for the first half of the 20 century. It is only in hindsight (and after 1991, save Robert Conquest) that one
could refer to the Soviet period of Russia's history as a complete failure. Given the obstacles and backwardness that so many historians, like Palmer, have described in the Imperial and the Soviet eras, it may be worth examining in more detail the relative success, however ugly the means, that the Soviets achieved in space flight and creating an air fleet second only to the United States during the height of the Cold War.

Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871

"It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half."
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Literary biography is a tough genre. The challenge for the biographer is to avoid doing a hatchet job on the one hand, and being a shill on the other (Max Brod's panegyric to Kafka comes to mind). Among the best at the genre are Richard Ellman (James Joyce, Oscar Wilde); Ron Powers (Mark Twain) and Joseph Frank, whose massive, five-volume biography of Dostoevsky is a marvel.

The son of an abusive alcoholic father and a tubercular mother; a compulsive gambler, introspective and melancholic; given to epileptic seizures; sentenced to a Gulag and forced to serve in a Russian regiment; chronically broke and peripatetic; variously lionized and demonized by his critics and supporters -- there's enough material in Dostoevsky's life for a five volume biography, which, written over a 30 year period, Frank provides.

Of course he has a lot to work with: Dostoevsky left reams of material, including diaries, notebooks, letters, and manuscripts. His collected works, in Russian, run to 30 volumes. Frank makes ample use of this material, especially in his analysis of Dostoevsky's major works in this period, "Crime and Punishment," "The Idiot," and "The Devils." Like a bipolar person, Dostoevsky swung from deep depression to exalted heights. He could plumb the depths of human depravity one minute, and celebrate the heights of the human spirit the next.

An example is one of his frequent gambling binges. "(The letter) also contains a frank admission of his recent gambling escapades, which Dostoevsky explains, in his usual fashion, in terms of the lure of freeing himself from debt in one miraculous stroke. "In one fell swoop to get out of all these proceedings with his creditors, provide for myself for a time and for my family. "But Dostoevsky is honest enough to add that gambling contains its own vertiginous attraction ("You know how that draws you in") (Frank, P. 224)

Frank's scholarship is exemplary, his writing lucid, and his subject mesmerizing.

Joseph Frank, generally considered the world's foremost expert on Dostoyevsky, provides all the background you would ever need to truly understand the great mind that was Dostoyevsky. An indispensable guide to the master's great works.

Joseph Frank's biography of Dostoievsky is a picture of the artist in the context of his century. It is not only a brilliant portrait of a great man but an image of nineteenth century Russia. It is neither patronizing nor overly analytic, but provides a taste of Dostoievky's life - making his thoughts, actions, and writings fuse into a coherent whole. I have probably read hundreds of biographies in my life and this one is the best.

If somebody want to know more about the history of central Asia, to read about the Great Game is a must. This excellent book explain, in a very engaging way, the latest events in the relations between Britain and Russia, concerning Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet after the 1907 entente. This relation was very complex in nature since Russia was pushing forward to broaden its empire and influence, fact that directly affected British interest in the zone, always thinking in India. So by using those "buffer" states Britain was able to contain Russia advances to a certain limit, in particular Persia that become of major strategic importance for Britain because of its oil resources. It is obvious then, that the entente didn't finish the game, it was just the best way for both empires to conduct their policies in Central Asia at the time, a fragile understanding but mostly peaceful and only finished by the Great War in Europe. All in all, a great book.

Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia won the 2003 Barbara Jelavich Book Prize awarded annually for the most distinguished monograph published on any aspect of Southeast European or Habsburg studies since 1600, or nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ottoman or Russian diplomatic history.

The book prize selection committee wrote the following about this book:

Possibly the most significant contribution to Russian diplomatic history in a decade, Siegel's work richly deserves the Barbara Jelavich Book Prize. Endgame revises our understanding of the dynamics of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia, the struggle better known to its contemporaries as the Great Game. Historians traditionally believed that this Victorian Cold War ended with the Convention of 1907, as the erstwhile adversaries now joined to face the spectre of rising German power during the years leading up to the First World War.

Based on meticulous work in Russian and British archives, Siegel effectively disproves this teleological approach to early 20th century international relations. Instead, she demonstrates that the Great Game's final round came after the 1907 Convention, only to conclude as the guns of August began to sound in 1914. In the best tradition of diplomatic history, Endgame also has considerable relevance for the present by shedding light on a region that, while largely sidelined in the literature, has sadly reclaimed a central place in the news. Written with panache and confidence, Endgame is a pleasure to read.

This book reveals much to anyone who is interested in the relationship between Britain and Russia in the pre First World War period.

It focusses on the power struggle for Central Asia, an area of the world which, particularly today, is the arena for some of the most complex and important questions of international security. This work provides fascinating background to a key historical period in a region which has been so analysed in recent months.

It is obviously the result of detailed research into archives, only recently opened to the West, some of which I believe may shortly be closed once again for many years to allow renovations to take place. I can only take my hat off to Dr Siegel, for enduring what must have been many cold months in Russia, combing the various archives to produce such a detailed work.

A fascinating and thoroughly absorbing book by Dr Siegel, whose next work I await with eager anticipation.

Nobel Prize recipient Elias Canetti defined the "concentration" of a secret as the ratio between the number of people who know it, and the number of people it might affect. Canetti noted that modern technical secrets were the most concentrated type of secret because they have the potential to affect everyone, but are known only to a few.

Engineering Communism is about concentrated secrets, and the ties shared secrets create between people who hold them. More particularly, the book is about one of the most successful espionage rings to operate in the U.S., and the U.S.S.R, during the 20th century; how Communism provided meaning, purpose, identity, power, and hope for a small group of people (some still living); and how they managed to continue to Believe once that utopian dream faded for almost everyone else.

One secret I shouldn't keep is that I've known the author for many years, and read early drafts of the book. I was relieved to see it come out so well, as having a secret opinion about the work of a friend can be uncomfortable. There's a video of a talk by the author about the book at
http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1128992115

A wonderfully written, exciting, unbelievable but true story that keeps your attention with new developments on every page. Imagine a defector hunted by the FBI who creates a new life in the Soviet bloc, learns the language, marries, rises to the top in his professional field, and 40 years later returns to the US. What was his life like for the 40 years behind the Iron Curtain? Why did he spy and defect? Imagine a woman who abandons her husband and children for a lover and defects with him, not knowing that she will not be able to return to her kids for decades, and then she reunites with them. This books combines elements of a spy thriller, a historical documentary, and a romantic novel, covering a variety of topics, from the roots of communist ideology among Americans and the history of computer and weapons development, to a spy's personal life that involved a Russian mistress and a Czech wife. This book shows life in Russia during the Cold War from the perspective of American communists. Well-researched and thoroughly documented, I think this book would make a great movie.

This book may be one of the most important, if under-appreciated, contributions to Cold War literature. It deserves wide readership. The book breaks vital new ground, thanks to Usdin's talents as a reporter, and provides elemental clarity, thanks to his skill as a writer, to the larger drama of espionage and technological competition between the US and USSR.

Usdin's writing and reporting are both of the highest possible standard.

This compelling story is set first in the mephitic atmosphere of the Brooklyn shtetls of the 1930s, where the bacillus of communist ideology was able to grow, then moving on to the grievance-fueled hothouse of CCNY. When you think of Julius Rosenberg, Greenglass, Sobell, these were men of little talent, who perfectly fit Stalin's description of "useful idiots". But, Barr and Salant -- the two men profiled in Usdin's book -- were clearly of far higher caliber, and so able to do far greater damage to US security. Radars, fire-control mechanisms and proximity fuses aren't as sexy as atomic bombs, but they arguably did more to tilt the balance of terror towards the Soviets during the 1950s.

The two American-born Soviet spies were able, through treachery, to truly alter the course of Cold War history. And yet, as the book discloses, they escaped punishment - not just of the judicial sort, but from within, freed of any guilt for having helped sustain a system that mutilated the lives of so many millions of people.

Practicable English_Russian Ecology dictionary, new terms and phrases presented. Helpful for interperter, students and ecology-managers.

English Russian Dictionary of Ecology.
Author: Kovalenko Ye. [1929 - 1999]
ISBN 5864550647
Release: 3rd issue 2000 (1st - 1997, 2nd - 1999 )
Published by: ETS Publishing House
About 32000 terms.
hard cover, 14x19 centimeters
784 pages.

English-Russian Dictionary of Ecology contains more than 35,000 terms and phrases on major fields of knowledge and practical activities connected with ecology and environmental protection: biosphere; ecological systems; natural zones, elements and factors of the natural environment; types of resources; monitoring of the environment; antropogenic influence on the living nature; protection of rare species; sources and types of environmental pollution; protection of soils, water resources, and air; production, agricultural, and consumer wastes and disposal thereof; sewage disposal constructions; water preparation and disposal stations; land improvement; diseases and pathological conditions caused by environmental pollution; economics and legal problems of ecology and environmental protection; quality standards of the environment; environmental protection education; international co-operation in environmental protection activities; organizations activity of which is directly or indirectly connected with environmental protection. The dictionary also contains stylistic expressions which are used while dealing with the topics above.

The dictionary is made for a wide circle of users.

The famous dictionary of the famous Author. The dictionary has published in the last 5 years 4 issuings. Unique dictionary. More than 32000 terms. It is issued also as computer dictionary Polyglossum. This dictionary have me recommend at the Moscow ecological university. I have purchased this dictionary and is very much pleased.

What can I say about this book? It's the best material about Error Control, that you can find nowhere......... Try it, and I hope that this book will help you

What can I say about this book? It's the best material about Error Control, that you can find nowhere......... Try it, and I hope that this book will help you

Dr. Wicker has a rare gift: a genius who can write!

I must say that this is one of the most interesting books I've read so far concerning the experience of everyday (Soviet?) socialism. By reconsidering such an important subject through a solid (and novel) theoretical lens and providing high quality ethnographic data, Yurchak does what every good ethnographer should do: (laconically speaking) bring something new. This is a must-read for anyone who is interested in (post)socialism. Last but not least, it is very fun to read.

This is a very good ethnographic account of some important aspects of everyday life in the later years of Soviet Union. It is interesting, well written, the quality of the research is high, and the account is truly enlightening. As a researcher actively interested in East European ethnography I woud very much like to recommend it to readers looking for interesting and non-banal accounts.

The anthropological account of post-modern society offered in this book is certainly one of the best I encountered in recent years. By brilliantly and engagingly analyzing the late soviet society, the author provides us with original analytical insights into the peoples' relations with ideology, discourse and ritual. A perennial social laboratory for all kinds of cultural experiments, Russia in its soviet phase served A. Yurchak as an empirical field whereby to conceptualize the paradoxical, non-dichotomous and multi-layered post-modern social condition. Moreover, Yurchak joins the exclusive club of genial authors who succeeded in touching the intangible uniqueness of the "soviet experience" - i.e. everyday life, way of thinking, forms of language and power, performance of dream and fake. Thus, this reading is necessary for both the favorites of lively intellectual reading and for everyone who pretends to understand something about "Russians", even if they are already post-Soviet and therefore similar and close on the one hand, but different and inconceivable on the other.
As anthropologist and Russian by origin, I try, in my everyday experience, to explain to my colleagues and friends the world I came from and to show how relevant this world is to any cultural and intellectual account of contemporary life. Yurchak's book is a great contribution to this challenge.

This story of the forgotten victims of WWII is told from a unique perspective. Two friends--the author and the subject--were personally touched by the war in very different ways. One, a german child, victimized only by the disemination of misinformation and, the other, a polish child, victimized both physically and psychologically, enslaved by the Russian allies, separated from family, seizes the opportunity to search for better life for himself and his sister. The author artfully intertwines history and real life experiences. The story is, in many parts, heartbreaking and, in all parts, facinating.

Exiled To Siberia: A Polish Child's WWII Journey is the engaging biography of a ten-year-old Polish boy deported by the Soviets at the outbreak of World War II. From Henryk Birecki's childhood in a Polish village to his ultimate integration into American society after the war, the reader is treated to a candid and informative story of the hardships and cruelties brought about by the forcible deportation of Polish men, women and children to the bleak and hazardous interior of the Soviet Union. Thousands of Poles died during transport and in the penal and forced labor camps, remote settlements, and the Kolkhozes to which they were banished. After the end of the war Henryk and his sister made it out of the Soviet Union (where his mother died), through Iran and Iraq, then Mexico, and finally to America. Exiled To Siberia is sobering reading and brings those times and events vividly to life for new generations of readers to know and understand the inhumanity and tragedy that afflicted the civilian populace of Eastern Europe during those dark and deadly days.

When I initially read this book just after it was published I called the author and thanked him for writing the book. Most of my mother's family was killed in Ark Angel, Russia and my mother grandmother, and great-aunt were all interned in many of the same places that were described in the book. It is well researched and should be necessary reading for all school aged children. it is both inspiring and educational.