Ivan Maisky’s account of his life in London provides a detailed and personal account of life at the epicentre of the dramatic events leading to World War II.
Ivan Maisky was Russia’s ambassador to the Court of St James from 1932 to 1943. By charming his way into Britain’s inner circles he arguably passed on more secrets than the infamous Cambridge Five.
Loren Graham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Some Russians are looking back admiringly to a tyrannical scientist from Stalinist times – and using the new field of epigenetics to bolster their case.
American Presidents tend to use the commencement address to address the audience outside than within the graduation hall. This changes though if they go on to a second term.
Tensions are high along the Nagorno-Karabakh/Azerbaijan border in the South Caucasus. But despite longstanding ethnic tensions, examples of cultural cooperation show a capacity for peace.
The remnants of the Cuba-Soviet relationship are still very much part of Cuban culture – a fact on display at this month’s Miami International Film Festival
Plummeting oil prices, conflict over Ukraine and the West’s imposition of sanctions have contrived to send the Russian economy into a tailspin. But it is not just Russia that is suffering – the economic…
Gabe Polsky’s documentary Red Army opens with the film’s main subject – former NHL and Soviet hockey great Viacheslav (Slava) Fetisov – giving the finger to Polsky while checking his phone. At the film’s…
The documentary Night will Fall tells the story of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, a film made by the Allied forces who filmed the scenes of the Nazi concentration camps as they liberated them…
The release of a documentary film in the Czech Republic earlier this year caused much controversy. It is about a dissident named Pavel Wonka who fought against the totalitarian regime in Communist Czechoslovakia…
The action by President Obama to move toward the normalization of US-Cuba relations is long overdue. The US ruptured ties with Cuba in early January 1961, under President Eisenhower, not only in the context…
At the top of Wencelas Square on the front of the Czech National Museum in Prague hangs a giant poster depicting the playwright dissident and former president Vaclav Havel. The poster has been hung, in…
On Thursday July 17, 298 people lost their lives when Flight MH17 was downed in eastern Ukraine. Almost immediately accusations were made that the aircraft had been shot down by pro-Russian separatists…
Since Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over rebel-held Ukraine, there has been much finger-pointing between Russia, pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian government. While the UK and US…
“It all started with a word,” said Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski at the opening of a memorial to freedom of speech, “and the word was ‘freedom’”. The event completed three days of commemorations…
Spies were a glamour news item in Western (and Soviet) press in the 1960s; it was the age of Kim Philby, British spymaster-cum-Soviet spy, and the endless media hunt for the “fifth man” of the Cambridge…
The referendums on independence from Ukraine in Donetsk and Luhansk, defying Putin’s call to postpone, pose deep questions about what “independence” would actually mean – and whether it can actually be…
In a historic speech to both houses of the Russian parliament on 18 March in support of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin drew a bold comparison between the Crimean crisis and the recognition…
These are dangerous times in Crimea. While the ongoing crisis in Ukraine has exposed the division between the country’s pro-Western and pro-Russian populations, another divide is more clear-cut and arguably…
Associate Professor of Instruction in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies, Affiliate Professor at the Institute for Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies, University of South Florida