70x100/1/ 16, hard cover, ill., 648 pp., 2007
ISBN 5-86793-509-4

What is theater in the Soviet Union? It is theater forced to live by the rules of the state, theater caught in the clasp of the machine of censorship, which has been mechanically configured to interfere with the theater as much as possible. Why did they ban productions? Not because they thought they were seditious — they were simply afraid. They were afraid of original, surprising and new art — the kind of art produced at the Taganka Theater. Looking through the censorship files, one is amazed that theater managed to remain alive and create new productions. It was saved by one thing alone: the support of the audience. The fascinating story of the Taganka Theater is told through the minutes of the discussions about the productions held by the censors, and by the artistic board of the theater. Also examined are letters “upstairs,” articles by critics, notes by the spectators and other documents, many of which are published for the first time.

This book is an attempt at chronologically systematising all the facts known about the great Russian poet. More than half of all the dates mentioned in the Chronicle either have never been publicised earlier or have been made more precise. All the documented meetings with Pushkin, Delvig, Vyazemsky, Zhukovsky, Kireyevsky and other writers of the early 19th century are described. The Chronicle also contains complete texts of all of Boratynsky’s letters uncovered to date.

Swedish historian Peter Englund's vivid account of three violent days of the Battle of Poltava relieves the drama from the viewpoint of the ordinary man in the defeated Swedish army. His narrative looks beyond national politics and the tactics of the commanders: it addresses wider issues of humanity – the suffering, slaughter and enslavement. The Battle of Poltava is an indictment of the savagery of wars, and the forces that cause them.

Written by the outstanding Russian scholar this book is a unique and animated encyclopedia in which Ancient Greek politics and everyday life, art and philosophy, war and theatre, poetry and religion are presented as a complex and inseparable entity.

The two popular publicists and essayists, who emigrated from this country in 1977, examine various aspects of Soviet society in the 60s. The authors focus their attention not so much on the events then current as on the mode of life, mentality and style inherent to the period. It is the first ever attempt at rendering the general atmosphere of the epoch, which, according to Vail and Genis, opened with the 22nd Communist party congress in 1961 and closed with the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The book is richly illustrated.

It is the first biography of Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (1867–1951) to be published in Russian. An eminent military and state leader, President of the Finnish Republic and commander-in-chief in three wars, was also a scholar and a traveller as well as a writer and a trendsetter in fashion and etiquette. Following the ups and downs of Mannerheim's life in the stormiest decades of the 20th c., the author strives to get beyond the facade of this outstanding personality and see him first and foremost as a living being.

The first publication in Russia of a contemporary classic in the field of arts studies – a book on Soviet totalitarian architecture and art which has laid foundation for a variety of approaches on this subject.

Yevgeny Pasternak, the elder son of the famous poet and his first wife, Yevgenia, an artist, has compiled his parents’ correspondence, with a supplement of the letters he himself received from his father. Included also are Yevgeny’s own reminiscences of his childhood environment in a collective flat in Moscow. The poverty of the 1920s, coupled with the requirements for creative anatomy of both parents, made their life together fairly difficult and caused their separation in 1931.
Yet the letters never conceal the intensity of their love for each other. Later on, the long years of homelessness and grievances which both experienced transformed their relation into a trustful friendship, which lasted until death intervened. In this book their correspondence acquires a third party, their maturing son, who recollects his talks and walks with his father and who has now become Boris Pasternak’s publisher and biographer.

This unique book comprises all the letters and other messages to the tsarist secret service department written by Faddei Bulgarin, a popular journalist and prose-writer, in 1826–1856. The messages serve as a "hidden camera", recording Russian life of the period, as well as facts and rumours, which for the most part not only remained unknown to Bulgarin’s contemporaries, but remain so to this day. The book contains useful information on the world of literature, journalism, and theatre, on censorship, public opinion, the army, the secret police, the bureaucracy, etc.; among the characters shown are Nikolai I and Pushkin, P. Vyazemsky and N. Polevoy, M. Pogodin and A. Yermolov, M. Speransky and A. Griboyedov. Also included are a long introduction, detailed commentaries, and an annotated proper name index, which make valuable appendices to the book.