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Stuart M. Kaminsky
A Siberian investigation tests Rostnikov’s judgment against political expectations.
Crime fiction
Richard Pipes
Pipes examines the events and decisions behind Russia’s revolutionary transformation.
History ·
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Rostnikov investigates deaths surrounding a Moscow circus aerialist.
Crime fiction
Amor Towles
Confined to Moscow’s Metropol Hotel, Count Rostov discovers a wider life through the people who pass through it.
Historical fiction
Joel Carmichael
A historical survey traces the development of Russian society and state power.
History
Nicholas V. Riasanovsky
A broad history connects Russia’s political transformations with institutions and cultural life.
History
Peter Neville
An accessible historical introduction connects Russia’s past with the traveller’s present.
HistoryAn American Family in MoscowJerrold and Leona Schecter and family
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Jerrold and Leona Schecter and family
Parents and children recount everyday life in Moscow during the Brezhnev years.
Memoir
Mikhail Sholokhov
Don Cossack families face war, revolution and divided political loyalties.
Historical fiction
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
An extraordinary flower becomes a satirical image of Russia’s spiritual crisis.
Fiction
Andrew Wachtel and Eugene Zykov
Photographs and interviews portray Soviet life at the beginning of glasnost.
Reportage ·
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Russia’s 1914 military disaster is set beside the lives of those it unsettles.
Historical fiction ·
Jerrold and Leona Schecter and family
A family’s return to Moscow reveals changes under Gorbachev.
Memoir
Harrison E. Salisbury
Russia’s imperial order moves toward collapse in the Revolution of 1917.
History · · · · ·
Bernice Rubens
Generations of a Jewish family confront persecution, migration and the demands of survival.
Historical fiction ·
Anatoli N. Rybakov
Young Muscovites’ lives are caught in the growing machinery of Stalinist repression.
Historical fiction
Alan Bookbinder, Olivia Lichtenstein and Richard Denton
Personal portraits explore the work, hopes and beliefs of Soviet citizens.
Reportage · · · ·
Robin Milner-Gulland and Nikolai Dejevsky
Maps and images connect the region’s cultural history with cities, landscapes and political change.
HistoryUnnamed state modelled on the Stalinist Soviet Union
Arthur Koestler
A jailed revolutionary confronts the moral cost of loyalty to a totalitarian regime.
Novel · ·
Andrey Kurkov
Kurkov’s wartime dispatches follow everyday life and displacement during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Diary · · ·
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Alaska and Siberia become neighbouring northern worlds in a poet’s paired portrait.
Travel writing
Boris Pasternak
Yuri Zhivago’s family and attachments are tested by Russia’s revolutionary upheaval.
Historical fiction ·
Marq de Villiers
A river journey follows the landscapes and people of a changing Russia.
Travel writing
Marquis de Custine
An 1839 Russian journey becomes Custine’s critical examination of autocratic power.
Travel writingFall Out of Heaven: An Autobiographical JourneyAlan Cheuse
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Alan Cheuse
A journey with his son leads Cheuse back into his father’s Soviet past.
Memoir · ·
Richard Lourie
A translator’s loyalties are tested by an espionage plot spanning America and Russia.
Spy fiction
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A threatened school reveals the gap between official purpose and ordinary people’s work.
Fiction ·
Galina Vishnevskaya
An opera singer’s life connects artistic achievement with Soviet political pressure.
Memoir
Andrei Sinyavsky (Abram Tertz)
An exiled writer revisits Russia through memory, satire and imaginative departures.
Fiction · ·
Martin Cruz Smith
A Moscow murder investigation draws Renko into a case with international consequences.
Crime fiction
