From the reign of Tsar Nicholas II to the brutal cult of Stalin to the ebullient, uncertain days of perestroika, nowhere has the inextricable relationship between politics and culture been more starkly illustrated than in twentieth-century Russia. In the first book to fully examine the intricate and often deadly interconnection between Russian rulers and Russian artists, cultural historian Solomon Volkov (who experienced firsthand many of the events...

Written in 1921, We is set in the One State, where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist. The novel takes the form of the diary of mathematician D-503, who, to his shock, experiences the most disruptive emotion imaginable: love.

"Solzhenitsyn's memoir deals with events, episodes, and individuals of great historical and political significance. In Between Two Millstones, Solzhenitsyn gives an account of his first few bewildering months in the West after being forcibly exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He discusses his personal meetings with Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. Included in this work too, are Solzhenitsyn's views on the Cold War, Gorbachev's reforms,...

Written when he was only 24, this is Nabokov's earliest major work and his only full-length play, presented here for the first time in English, the story of which involves an incognito king whose love for the wife of a banished revolutionary brings on the chaos the king has fought to prevent.

"Vasily Grossman's three war novels are recognizably the work of the same writer; all display his sharp psychological insights and his gift for descriptive passages that appeal to all our different senses. Nevertheless, the goals he set himself in these novels are very different. Life and Fate is not only a novel but also a work of moral and political philosophy, focusing on the question of whether or not it is possible for someone to behave ethically...

"Vassily Grossman (1905 - 1964) has become well-known in the last twenty years - above all for his novel Life and Fate. This has often been described as a Soviet (or anti-Soviet) War and Peace. Most readers, however, do not realize that it is only the second half of a dilogy. The first half, originally titled Stalingrad but published in 1952 under the title For a just cause, has received surprisingly little attention. Scholars and critics seem to...