Among the Russians
Colin Thubron
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0060959290
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Here is a fresh perspective on the last tumultuous years of the Soviet Union and an exquisitely poetic travelogue.With a keen grasp of Russia's history, a deep appreciation for its architecture and iconography, and an inexhaustible enthusiasm for its people and its culture, Colin Thubron is the perfect guide to a country most of us will never get to know firsthand. Here, we can walk down western Russia's country roads, rest in its villages, and explore some of the most engaging cities in the world. Beautifully written and infinitely insightful, Among the Russians is vivid, compelling travel writing that will also appeal to readers of history and current events—and to anyone captivated by the shape and texture of one of the world's most enigmatic culture.
The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov: A Russian National Myth
The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov: A Russian National Myth
Intourist telephone-desk. Her tone was tense and deferential. She was answering questions. ‘A lone British tourist?…yes…with his own car?…he arrived at 5.30….’ As she put down the receiver I asked, still untroubled: ‘Did somebody want me?’ She jumped. ‘You’re Mr Thubron?…yes…they, we….’ She was blushing, staring down and scrabbling furiously with her papers. When she looked up again her voice was loud and bright: ‘If there’s anything you want, we’re absolutely at your service.’ I took a mental
smell their perfumed wigs and eavesdrop on their pompous and obscene chatter. The generous Orlovsky and cadaverous Suvorov, the bluestocking Princess Dashkova fondling a book, Derzhavin declaiming poetry (and nobody listening), the bear-like and sensual Potyomkin—they sat in her shadow, as they had in life. It was not Catherine’s humanity or liberalism, I imagine, which preserved her effigy from the anger of the Revolution. In nothing is the inconsistency of Soviet Communism greater than in the
afterwards the restaurant closed, and we were stumbling out under the stars. The air was soft and warm. Good-nights sounded in the dark. I walked gingerly to the camp gates. My feet felt numb on the path. Misha kept blundering against me. ‘You can’t drive home in your state,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he slurred. ‘The police won’t do…anything to me.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I work….’ He floundered again, recovered; but I suddenly knew what he was going to say. ‘Because I work…for the KGB.’ My
the indignity of it….’ I could think of nothing comforting to say. The place fell into my journey like a monstrous caesura, violated, meaningless. By noon I was going south on the Georgian Military Highway—‘one of the most beautiful mountain roads in the world’, says the old Baedeker—which winds across the deep heart of the Caucasus to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Through the first half of the last century the Russians pushed the great artery southwards as they subdued the upland tribes,
fretted capitals and round-arched, secret windows, reproduced traditional Armenian motifs with an oddly moving faithfulness. Yet it was the quality of stone which personified it above all—walls of tufa and basalt, pink and black. Sunk in their airless cleft of river, they drank the light without refracting it. They looked still hot from the volcano—visceral, searing stones glinting (you might think) with minerals or blood. The once-pitiful city is not a centre a industrial skills: electronics,