The Last Man In Russia And The Struggle To Save A Dying Nation

Examines the economic collapse, declining populations, and alcohol-related abuses that the author believes are indicative of Russia's communism-related decline, as the author follows the life of a dissident Orthodox priest, Father Dimitry Dudko.

From Oliver Bullough, the acclaimed author of the Orwell Prize-shortlisted, Let Our Fame Be Great, a study - part travelogue, part political analysis - of a nation in crisisIn the 1960s, when the Soviet Union said it was building heaven on earth and the brave, non-conformist dissidents lived like free men in the midst of this enormous prison, the Russian nation began to drink itself to death. For a while, government income from vodka surpassed their income from oil. Now, fifty years later, with the Soviet state dismantled, this is still a country where Muscovites might drink a bottle of vodka before breakfast, where demographers look with astonishment as the population of the world's largest country continues to fall, far beyond the rate of decline in the West.In The Last Man in Russia, award-winning writer Oliver Bullough uses the life of an extraordinary Orthodox priest, with equal passions for writing and for saving his fellow citizens from the KGB, to find out why. Following in the footsteps of Father Dmitry, Bullough reconstructs the world he experienced: the famine, the occupation, the war, the frozen wastes of the Gulag, the collapse of communism and the giddy excesses that followed it. While the story of Russia's self-destruction is shrouded in secrecy and denial, with no contemporary documents to acknowledge or explain why so many Russians were seeking oblivion, Dmitry's diaries and sermons are that rare thing: an insight into life in a totalitarian state, unmediated and raw, exposing the deep spiritual sickness born out of the country's long communist experiment. Offering a portrait of Russia like no other, one that traces the current contours of the Russian soul, Oliver Bullough shows that in a country so willing to crush its citizens, there is also courage, resilience and - at last - small, flickering glimmers of hope.'Brisk, lucid style ... skilful interweaving of historical context with his own rich experience of Russia. [Bullough] has a talent for sketching the people he meets, often administering a welcome dose of humour ... and he appreciates the absurd, in the best Russian tradition ... an ambitious and wide-ranging journey' Arthur House, Sunday Telegraph'An extraordinary portrait of a nation struggling to shed its past and find peace with itself' Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times'[A] superb hybrid of travel and social analysis ... raw, poetic prose ... The Last Man in Russia is distinguished by the excellence of its writing and its lucid, unsparing gaze' Ian Thomson, Daily Telegraph'[Bullough] is particularly good at conjuring key moments, vivid characters and credible dialogue, and at flipping between the small incident and the big picture ... Imagining [the whole country of Russia] is a whole lot easier with such a lively, well-written and commanding narrative to guide us' Anthony Sattin, Observer[Praise for Let Our Fame Be Great]: 'Raw, romantic' Guardian'A haunting portrait of a people blown to the winds by a forgotten storm' Economist'Brilliant ... Bullough draws you irresistibly into his narrative, fusing reportage, history and travelogue in colourful, absorbing prose ... The book is a pleasure' Spectator'Wonderful ... compelling' Financial TimesOliver Bullough studied modern history at Oxford University and moved to Russia after graduating in 1999. He lived in St Petersburg, Bishkek and Moscow over the next seven years, travelling widely as a reporter for Reuters news agency. He is now the Caucasus Editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. His first book, Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus, received the Cornelius Ryan award in the United States and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in Britain. Oliver Bullough received the Oxfam Emerging Writer award in 2011.

In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides a deeply reported, bottom-up explanation of Putin's aggressive foreign policy and his support among Russians.

Two centuries ago, the Russians pushed out of the cold north towards the Caucasus Mountains, the range that blocked their access to Georgia, Turkey, Persia and India. They were forging their colonial destiny, and the mountains were in their way. The Caucasus had to be conquered and, for the highlanders who lived there, life would never be the same again. If the Russians expected it to be an easy fight, however, they were mistaken. Their armies would go on to defeat Napoleon and Hitler, as well as lesser foes, but no one resisted them for as long as these supposed savages. To hear the stories of the conquest, I travelled far from the mountains. I wandered through the steppes of Central Asia and the cities of Turkey. I squatted outside internment camps in Poland, and drank tea beneath the gentle hills of Israel. The stories I heard amplified the outrages I saw in the mountains themselves. As I set out, in my mind was a Chechen woman I had met in a refugee camp. She lived in a ragged, khaki tent in a field of mud and stones, but she welcomed me with laughter and kindness. Like the mountains of her homeland, her spirit had soared upwards, gleaming and pure. Throughout my travels, I met the same generosity from all the Caucasus peoples. Their stories have not been told, and there fame is not great, but truly it deserves to be.

"The epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president-- of his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history." --

NAMED ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE PAST 100 YEARS A visionary novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Little Failure. The Russian Debutante's Handbook introduces Vladimir Girshkin, one of the most original and unlikely heroes of recent times. The twenty-five-year-old unhappy lover to a fat dungeon mistress, affectionately nicknamed "Little Failure" by his high-achieving mother, Vladimir toils his days away as a lowly clerk at the bureaucratic Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society. When a wealthy but psychotic old Russian war hero appears, Vladimir embarks on an adventure of unrelenting lunacy that takes us from New York's Lower East Side to the hip frontier wilderness of Prava--the Eastern European Paris of the nineties. With the help of a murderous but fun-loving Russian mafioso, Vladimir infiltrates the Prava expat community and launches a scheme as ridiculous as it is brilliant. Bursting with wit, humor, and rare insight, The Russian Debutante's Handbook is both a highly imaginative romp and a serious exploration of what it means to be an immigrant in America.

A former ambassador to the United Nations explains his controversial efforts to defend American interests and reform the U.N., presenting his argument for why he believes the United States can enable a greater global security arrangement for modern times. Reprint.

A New York Times bestseller, this definitive history of Ukraine is “an exemplary account of Europe’s least-known large country” (Wall Street Journal). As Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence, celebrated historian Serhii Plokhy explains that today’s crisis is a case of history repeating itself: the Ukrainian conflict is only the latest in a long history of turmoil over Ukraine’s sovereignty. Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine has been shaped by empires that exploited the nation as a strategic gateway between East and West—from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. In The Gates of Europe, Plokhy examines Ukraine’s search for its identity through the lives of major Ukrainian historical figures, from its heroes to its conquerors. This revised edition includes new material that brings this definitive history up to the present. As Ukraine once again finds itself at the center of global attention, Plokhy brings its history to vivid life as he connects the nation’s past with its present and future.

From one of America's preeminent historians comes a magisterial study of the development of open societies focusing on the United States and New Zealand

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions—a history of the soul.” Alexievich’s distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres—but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. “Through the voices of those who confided in her,” The Nation writes, “Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil—in a word, about ourselves.” A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Financial Times, Kirkus Reviews