Leonard Fleisig

"Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, 22. Februar 2006

a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self."

W.H. Auden's aphorism forms an appropriate framework for reviewing The Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Volume I. Although the Memoirs have more Don Quixote than Sancho Panza they are compelling, informative, and insightful.

Volume I consists of two sections: Khrushchev's Memoirs from the early days of the Russian Revolution through the end of the Second World War and Sergei Khrushchev's (Nikita's son) essay on the creation of the memoirs and the decades long struggle to see it published in the USSR.

Khrushchev's memoirs are fascinating for a number of reasons. As set out in Sergei's essay, these Memoirs were dictated and not… Mehr dazu

"I kneel behind the soldier's trench, 15. Februar 2006

I walk mid shamble smear and stench, The dead I mourn." John Finley.

The Soviet journalist and author Vasily Grossman did more than kneel behind the soldier's trench. He lived with the Red Army from the catastrophic summer of 1941, through the defense of Moscow, the apocalyptic carnage of Stalingrad, the hard-won liberation of Soviet territory, the horrible discoveries of Nazi genocide in Madjanek and Treblinka, and the final bloody, triumphant march into Berlin. Anthony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova's "A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945" is a marvelous examination of both "Grossman's war" and the war itself.

Vasily Grossman is something of a… Mehr dazu

"Oh war! Thou son of hell, 10. Februar 2006

whom angry heavens do make their minister, thrown in the frozen bosoms of our part hot coals of vengeance."

These words from Shakespeare's King Henry VI, Part II sum up with unfortunate precision the hell that descends from the angry heavens described in Gert Ledig's recently `rediscovered' story of a horrific WWII daylight bombing raid on Germany in his book "Payback". In fact the title of the book in German, "Vergeltung" translates into English as vengeance. There was no small amount of irony in the title when one considers that Hitler had promised that his "V" or "Vergeltung" rockets would pay back the English for their raids on Germany. The hot coals of vengeance… Mehr dazu