This book had been widely recommended by a few friends, and it’s right up my alley, so I gave it a read. I would definitely recommend it especially to a general reader. It gives a good big picture overview of how geography has impacted the history of all the world’s regions, and how it continues […]
There was a rumour on one telegram channel on April 11th that Vyacheslav Surkov was under house arrest. The allegation is that he has been arrested on charges related to those applied to Sergei Beseda, the head of the 5th Service of the FSB. Unconfirmed rumours have it that Beseda was arrested shortly after the […]
I’m not a huge fan of Bruno Macaes, as I feel that he’s a bit of a tourist, academically speaking. One of those white European men who feels that he can spend a bit of time in a country like Russia or China and then pronounce on all aspects of its history and culture. I […]
The death of Vladimir Wolfovich Zhirinovsky was announced last week. It was the third or fourth time he had been pronounced dead since he fell ill, so it wasn’t unexpected. His death was headline news, and he got a huge showing at his funeral, probably the largest for a politician since Boris Yeltsin. This is […]
This is an excellent book which taught me a lot about certain historical events that I should probably have known about. Before I read this book, I thought I was relatively well educated, but I didn’t know about things like the struggle in Jerusalem around 1848 for access to a holy site for Good Friday […]
What I loved about this book was its subject matter, both Mathilde herself, and the world that she lived in. The biography brings it all to life. This book gives a fresh perspective on the often re-told story of the reign of Nikolai II and the 1917 revolution, and also the aftermath for those who […]