Russia Books

Have you ever dreamed of flying yourself around the world in a small Cessna aircraft ?
No need for courage, you can experience this incredible voyage traveling vicariously through
the pages of Eastbound, Our Flight/Our Mission authored by Renny Shapiro. All
aboard with the crew, Renny and Bernie Shapiro and Evy and Martin Lutin!

After much preparations and anticipation, the two couples, who were in their
sixties, began their journey eastbound from Van Nuys, California. They
eventually returned to their home base in 65 hours and five minutes of flying
time, sixty-three days, and 18, 814.2 nautical miles later.

Dividing their adventures into four parts, Shapiro describes their extensive
preparations, their journey from Van Nuys, California to Istanbul and then onto
Russia and ultimately returning to California. The final chapter, Afterward,
presents Shapiro's afterthoughts.

With trepidation, we share the author's humor and excitement such as their
episode in Scotland where "every place is pronounced "Hle Gurgle Gurgle in
Kitchee by Taunt."

Peppered throughout the book are historical facts, sometimes entertaining while
other times quite tragic, such as their visits to the concentration camps where
their guide presented them with a copy of Elie Wiesel's poem:

"Never shall I forget that night The first night in camp, Which has turned my
life into one long night... Never shall I forget these things, Even if I am
condemned to live As long as God himself, Never."

The chapter decscribing Bodrum, a seaside resort, lifts the mood somewhat as
Shapiro narrates their delightful experiences cruising the Cleopatra Coast and
where they enjoyed the succulent meals prepared by their chef Sada. They even
had the opportunity to be treated to an Anniversary party complete with a belly
dancer!

It is in Istanbul they meet up with Ali Gutelkin and his driver
Hamish and they visit the luxurious Blue Mosque and the Aya Sophia. They also
had the opportunity to admire the 80 karat diamond and the Topkapi dagger, and
visited a real Harem.

As for the history of the Jews in Turkey, Shapiro reminds us that in 1492 with
the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Turkish Sultan Bayazid II welcomed them
saying: "Ferdinand has made his country poor and enriched ours!"

Unfortunately, today, The Synagogue of Neva Shalom is heavily guarded as the
result of a bombing committed by Arab terrorists in 1986, that resulted in the
death of the local rabbi, the cantor and twenty-two Jewish worshipers.

When asked what is the present relationship between Turkey and Israel, the reply
was that they both had differences but that as we are both democracies, we
maintain a relationship.

Next on the agenda was their trip to Russia. Despite the fact that the
Shapiro/Lutin crew previously traveled here at the beginning of 1993, the year of Jewish revival
in the Soviet Union, their spirits this time were somewhat shattered when they
visited Babi Yar, the site of the slaughter of thirty thousand of Jews.

Alex Bernstein, the couples' guide and who was the Director of JAFI, at the
time, narrates how his aunt, who was a survivor of Babi Yar, "was but a
schoolgirl when she was separated from her family during the roundup of Jews by
Ukranian police and Nazi sympathizers, and like the rest she was marched to the
ravine, stripped naked and shot. Then, while badly wounded, she managed to
survive by hiding amongst the bodies of the dead until she was able to crawl out
and find refuge with non-Jewish friends who helped her flee the country." And as
he points out to them, this is why he came to help the Jews of Russia.

During the course of their voyage, the couples never missed an opportunity to
reconnect with fellow Jews residing in several countries, particularly Ukraine
and Siberia. As they note, it was quite an experience! Although they discovered
that anti-Semitism is still prevalent in some regions, Jews are not as terrified
as in the past. At least they now have a choice of doing "Aliyah" (immigrating
to Israel) or to practice their religion in peace, if they chose to stay in
Russia.

The crew's experience in Russia is riveting and full of exciting happenings. The
presence of Israelis guiding Russian Jews to do Aliyah or helping the elderly
with food and medication was incredibly courageous. Especially commendable was
British-Born Israeli Stuart Saffer, Director of the Joint Distribution Committee
in Odessa which serves 250,000 Jews living in 'South Ukraine, Belarus and
Moldova. As the author states: "Without any question, what we've found most
memorable are the miracles being wrought by the JDC and JAFI. Evy and I have
spent years educating ourselves and others about these agencies and helping to
raise funds for their work. But nothing prepared us for seeing with our own eyes
how this work is being carried out here or for witnessing first-hand the immense
and dramatic impact it is having on the lives of their recipients."

When the crew happily returned home, they had their work cut out for them.
For one, they kept in touch with most of the people they met during their
ventures. And in 1994 Renny and Evy Lutin together with friends
and family returned to Kiev to attend the International Conference of Jewish
Women. It was an event whose objective was to bring together for the first time
ever 350 Jewish women from Ukraine, Russia, Siberia and the West in order to foster the
spirit of sisterhood, to promote connection, and to open an avenue of learning
that will flow both ways.

The Jews in Russia still survive in the face of anti-Semitism and are rebuilding
their lives in spite of overwhelming odds. Why they don't get out of Russia?Some are held back by family ties, some are just afraid of the unknown, some of them are courageous enough to make "Aliyah".


Eastbound, Our Flight-Our Mission by Renny Shapiro is a must read by those who
dream of flying and those who dream of peace.

Lily Azerad-Goldman, Reviewer for Bookpleasures

Great detailed coverage of why the pogrom occurred, what led to it occurring, what happened while it was going on, and what the outcome was for both the victims and perpetrators. The book is a pretty small one, but it encompasses everything you need to know about this specific event in Russian history. The history of the city is given as well as the reason for why Jews were such a large part of the population. How the town was mainly run by anti-Semites and what they did to help push people over the edge and create violence toward the Jewish members of the city. Starting with the blood libel from another town which was disproved to have been the work of Jews but nonetheless held up as fact within Kishinev's newspapers which increased feelings against Jews and ending with all out violence that went unchecked until the second day when the military was given all power to handle the situation. A large portion of the city was damaged and men, women, and children were killed, raped, robbed, beaten, etc. Questions about how much was the government really involved are never clearly answered, there is evidence to support both arguments that it was and wasn't. But both are presented and the reader is given the choice of deciding on his/her own. Overall an excellent book, a quick read, and very informational and detailed.

This book offered an in depth look at how to travel through Europe by train. It's informative and very decisive. It helped with many desicion's that saved not only money but more importantly, time.

I have long been interested in finding a thorough yet broad source of eastern European history, and this book finally granted my wishes! Crampton has organized the book beautifully and sensibly into five time periods in the twentieth century, and in each section he devotes attention to individual countries. This book also contains a section on eastern Europe before the twentieth century, maps, and abbreviations of various organizations. Any serious student of eastern European history OR curious novice would benefit from taking a look at this book!

This small book is a very useful guide to understand the reasons and origins of the collapse of the state-socialist regimes in Eastern Europe. Particularly the sections on the "international debt crisis" and the negative impact of the IMF and the World Bank on the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe are thougt-provoking and very helpful. In this way, the book prepares the ground for a complicated argument in which long-term/ sytemic factors intermingle with the short-term factors, like Gorbachov's comimg to power in the SU, and presents a very readable and interesting account for the students of this important question of modern European history.

And excellent example of a regional study where politics and economics cannot be separated, and thus have been successfully analyzed in the context of each other. D'Anieri does a good job of combining general overview of the Ukrainian-Russian relations and their development throughout history with the detailed and in-depth study of the political and economic issues that Ukraine is currently facing as a result of a deep interdependence with Russia. I particularly enjoy the way this study ties the history of broken trust and fear of imperialistic aspirations into the process of decision making by Ukrainian leadership. The astute identification of essential areas of problems and the thoroughness in explaining their causes makes this book a great help for those interested in the future prospects of the region.

This is a big book that I might not have read unless I searched for it and found it after reading an article by the author which struck me as truthful in the sense that one says, "this guy is telling the truth," regardless of whatever literary or personal foibles he may have. To say that I was surprised is an understatement. This is on my list of the top 50 must reads. To understand how a large part of the civilized world has been hoodwinked by both the academic and political / economic powers that be in this world, one deserves to read something like this work. I suppose the author could have found no better title for it, for in a way he intended it to be autobiography. But it isn't really. Or it is besides something else; a lot of personal venting about historical facts that are well known to him and should be better known to the rest of the world. Doubtless some have already come to the conclusions this author has reached.

He should be read in any course dealing with Soviet history, Soviet-American relations, political science or Russian history.

Anyone after reading this work who honestly has the courage to call him/herself a communist, socialist or social idealist, including most of the talking heads in the media or those who manage to get their voices heard there, should be consigned (openly and in public) to even greater fusillades of ridicule and scorn until they and their opinions vanish from the public scene, unless of course they want to share responsibility for the murder of hundreds of millions of human beings, more in one century (the 20th just past, the bloodiest in history) than they claim for all the religious wars in all of history put together, which they wont since they are mostly cowards.

Hats off to Lev Navrozov! May he succeed in getting his next work published and may all the world (civilized that is) read it with appreciation.

Ronald Bergan shows that although Eisenstein was committed to the Bolshevik cause and contributed to its development, his films must, in no way, simply be dismissed as propaganda. Eisenstein pioneering visual techniques, explorations in montage and lyrical representations have earned him an indisputable position as among film makers.
The culminating scenes in `Strike!', for instance, are built on an alternating sequence of shots that show soldiers chasing and shooting the strikers while a butcher is slitting the throat of farm animals in the slaughterhouse. This allegorical interpretation of the Czar as a butcher wa not fully understood by a large portion of the viewing public, as Eisenstein himself witnessed when the film was shown in the rural areas throughout the country. Indeed, many farmers were unable to grasp the metaphor of the slaughtered beasts as an association of the Czar as a criminal, a butcher, a murderer of innocents because for farmers the killing of an animal did not constitute a crime.

The rally to arms in `Alexander Nevsky' culminated in the battle on ice scene (which runs for almost a third of the film). The scene, which Eisenstein duly prepared with the aid of sketches, appears as if inspired by the paintings of the Italian renaissance artist P. Uccello, as both show the violent clash of armor, horses, arrows, spears and iron.

this book is aimed at young readers, and it tells the story of Ekaterina Gordeeva and her late husband Sergei Grinkov's first meeting, first success as a pairs team, Olympic glory and to her life now without Sergei. An interesting topic and well worth reading as Gordeeva is talented and strong minded young women that young people can admire.

St. Sebastian lived an extraordinary life under extremely difficult circumstances. Fascinating reading here, with lots of eye witness accounts.