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Forever Flowing (European Classics)
Vasily Grossman
Northwestern University Press, 1997
Moving, Thoughtful & Important
+ Important statement about the Russian soul
+ Alexander Shuster
+ Moving Account of horrors of Bolshevism and Leninism
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An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano
S. Bachkyrova, Yuri Bogatyryov
Connoisseur Video, 1996
Perfect portrayal of Chekhov's world
+ A great revival of a Chekhov original.
+ If you want to understand Chekhov, see this film.
From the opening moments of gay laughter and silliness to the closing shots of a lost Russian social class fading into time, Nikita Mikhalkov's film 'An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano' is perfect Chekhov. Drawn from 'Mr. Platonov', the story circles around a group of relatives and friends at a ...
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The Thief
Vladimir Mashkov, Yekaterina Rednikova
Sony Pictures, 2000
beautiful portrait of a land, a nation and a family
+ Fantastic
+ A Film Well Worth Re-Visiting
+ One of my all-time favorites
+ Forget the Kleenex, get a towel
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Omon Ra
Victor Pelevin
New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1998
Pelevin is a modern mystic
+ Great Book
+ this country needs heros even if they never new they were there
+ Requires an index that isn't there
+ shattered self-identity
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Petty Demon
Fyodor Sologub
Indiana University Press, 1970
Annotated Edition
+ good, but.....
+ Intricate maze of selfish motives in a Russian village.
This edition includes an Introduction and Foreword by the translator, various Forewards by the author, a section containing the textual variants of passages that were removed from the original published editions, and an appendix of 8 critical articles about the book.
From the book's back cover:
...
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Cement (European Classics)
Fyodor Vasilievich Gladkov
Northwestern University Press, 1994
Sex, love, and Bolshevism
The 1920s was a great decade for Soviet literature: the works published during this era are thematically- and ideologically-diverse. Yes, there are better-written novels that came out during this period. Nevertheless, Gladkov's Cement is under-rated. I find it fun to read and re-read (which is ...
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The Silver Dove
Andrei Bely, Antony Wood
Northwestern University Press, 2001
Steeped in the social and religious culture of prerevolutionary Russia, Andrey Bely's first novel is inspired by theosophy, the myth of Dionysus, and the author's own thoughts on the relationship between artistic and religious creation. The story of an idle intellectual who pursues transcendence, The Silver Dove is also Bely's study of the unbridgeable chasm between his country's Westernized ...
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The Rasputin File
Edvard Radzinsky
Nan A. Talese, 2000
The best book on Rasputin so far!
+ The Rasputin File
+ a worthy read
+ OK
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The Burn
Vassily Aksyonov
Villard, 1985
The "V" of Russian Literature
+ The Saddest Story
+ is it possible?
While few fictional books stand the weather of time (in this case, the Cold War, its thawing before then warming into something entirely new), Vasily Aksyonov's "The Burn" has manaaged to, and I expect will always, endure. The author, whose mother was the famous and very courageous Elena Ginsburg ...
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The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia
David King
Metropolitan Books, 1997
A rare gem
+ Soviet pictures don't always tell the truth
+ First rate
+ Fabulous
+ WOW.
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Siberiade
Natalya Andrejchenko, Sergei Shakurov
Kino Video, 2000
One of the last great Russian historical dramas.
+ exquisite, catchy
+ wow
+ Oh, to be exiled to this Siberia!
+ Extraordinary
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The White Guard
Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov
Academy Chicago Publishers, 1995
moving tale by a master of tales
+ Good but not a masterpiece
+ Great and terrible was the year of Our Lord 1918
+ You'll Be Amazed at How this reads like a Modern Book
+ Great book!!
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We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, 1993
Forget 1984 or Brave New World
+ "We" is "1984"-lite (another reader's thoughts)
+ The square root of negative one
+ Minimalist masterpiece of real genius
+ We All Live in a Glasshouse
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Prisoner of the Mountains
Oleg Menshikov, Sergei Bodrov Jr.
MGM (Video & DVD), 2000
Marvelous acting by Menshikov
+ Prisoner of the Mountain
+ Appreciation
+ Tovarich
+ A Tragic and Triumpante Forgien Film!
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The Faculty of Useless Knowledge
Yury Dombrovsky
Harvill Press, 1997
Kafka as told by Dostoevsky
+ Brilliant! : In the Tradition of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn
+ worth the effort
+ Bulgakov, Dombrovsky, and Bitov
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