Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
30
them. Following the antiestablishment
myth-busting of the
perestroika
era, many
authors have taken on a more nationalist
tone in recent years, focusing on Russia's
beauty instead of its flaws, though it's still
nothing like the propaganda-infused writ-
ings of Soviet times.
An exception to this is
Tatyana Tol-
staya,
a great-grandniece of Tolstoy's and
acerbic commentator on Russian and West-
ern life.
Viktor Pelevin
's cynical and philo-
sophical novels toy with fantasy and the
dangerous combination of Russian fatalism
and modern technology. Pelevin was the
first to play with the concept of manipulat-
ing media via advertising instead of political
propaganda. The concept has taken flight
with
Sergei Minayev
's recent and more
rugged
Media Sapiens
series, a disturbing
lesson in PR for the modern age.
the young nation it wounded, Harrison
Salisbury's
The 900 Days
is a must.
Mos-
cow: An Architectural History
by Kathleen
Berton gives insight into why St. Basil's
Cathedral looks nothing like its contem-
poraries. Tamara Talbot Rice's
Concise His-
tory of Russian Art
is rather superficial but
serves as a good introduction, covering
early Kievan Rus up through the Soviet
era. Osip Mandelstam's
Noise of Time
por-
trays life in St. Petersburg in the early 20th
century, before the author's persecution
and death in 1938.
Post-Soviet topics about Russia tend to
focus on the negative, painting a bleak or
sinister picture of its economic, political,
and environmental prospects. David Rem-
nick is one of the more optimistic observ-
ers in
Resurrection
and its predecessor,
Lenin's Tomb,
about the fall of the USSR.
Prostitution, narcotics, organized crime,
and corrupt judges are laid bare in
The
Exile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Rus-
sia
by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya's topics
are a fierce look at Putin's Russia, and took
on extra force after she was killed in
unclear circumstances. They tell only part
of modern Russia's story, however, and
shouldn't scare you away from visiting this
vast and complex place.
The long airline flight may be the per-
fect time to discover—or rediscover—Tol-
stoy and Dostoyevsky. Russia's world-
famous authors plumb their nation's
violent side and its ponderous one, bring-
ing Russia alive through the icy battlefields
of
War and Peace
and the foggy St. Peters-
burg canals of
Crime and Punishment.
Alexander Pushkin holds a dearer place in
Russians' hearts, with his lyrical poems
infused with love and dissent. The stories
of Anton Chekhov and Nikolai Gogol are
satires of the Russian sort, often more
tragic than comical, and their descriptions
of aristocratic feasts are as delectable and
voluminous as the meals they depict.
RECOMMENDED
READING
Histories of Russia tend to be either
murky or politicized, depending on pre-
vailing worldviews at publication time.
The Icon and the Axe
by Library of Con-
gress director James Billington is a broad
and readable history. For a peek into czar-
ist life that reads like historical fiction, try
Robert Massie's lively
Peter the Great
and
Nicholas and Alexandra.
The most
renowned reference on the Stalin era is
Robert Conquest's
Great Terror,
and his
very anti-Soviet
Reflections on a Ravaged
Century
is based on decades of meticulous
research for his numerous topics. For a
view from the other side, try Karl Marx's
Das Kapital,
which still provides food for
thought even for the most die-hard capi-
talist. John Reed's
Ten Days That Shook the
World
is an intricate report on the 1917
revolution by an American radical journal-
ist, who is the only foreigner buried along
the Kremlin wall. For a chilling account of
the nearly 3-year siege of Leningrad by
Hitler's army, and the broader context of
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