Lenin
A rebellious childhood: Lowest Common Denominator, by Pirkko Saisio, reviewed
In droll, sardonic, dialogue-driven scenes, Saisio transports us to her youth in Cold War Finland and her longing to become a writer
Everyone who was anyone in Russia was spied on – including Stalin
In 1972,Vasili Mitrokhin oversaw the transfer of thousands of documents in the KGB archives and secretly noted the atrocities they revealed - though Stalin’s file was mysteriously empty
The Russian spies hiding in plain sight
A programme of deep-cover espionage, begun in the 1920s, is as important to Russia as ever with the expulsion of so many diplomats in the wake of the war with Ukraine
‘A group of deranged idiots’ – how the Soviets saw the Avant-Gardists
First welcomed, then vilified, by Lenin, Russian artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Kandinsky and Chagall would find their only real supporters in the West
Let there be blood
Between his return from exile and his death, Lenin launched – and perverted – the revolution that shapes world politics today
The Russian enigma
Nothing is certain in a country where the past is constantly rewritten, says Owen Matthews
An international civil war
Sara Wheeler describes the appalling brutality of the Russian Revolution and its far-reaching aftermath
Bolshevism: the enemy of democracy
From ‘News of the week’, 1 June 1918: Bolshevism is the negation of democratic government. There is no pretence on…
The art of persuasion
It’s hard to admire communist art with an entirely clear conscience. The centenary of the October revolution, which falls this…
High life
When the Germans smuggled arguably the world’s most evil man into Russia 100 years ago, they did not imagine the…
Fleeing Mother Russia
‘Ah! Scrubbing the deck! My childhood dream! As a child I had once seen a sailor hosing the deck with…
Reds against Whites
On the 24–25 October 1917 (according to the Julian Calendar, or 7–8 November according to the Gregorian) the political disputes which…
Rhodes’s statue should remain, on one condition
Lobengula was the second king of the Matabele people in what is now Zimbabwe. He was also the last. Cecil…
Bribery and seduction
‘No, we must go our own way,’ said Lenin. The whole world knows him as Vladimir, while he was in…
The little dictator
No actual birth certificate for Charles Spencer Chaplin has ever been found. The actor himself drew a blank when he…
Reds under the beds
Leon Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov, is a retired chemist in his early eighties. I met him not long ago in…
Hiding in plain sight
A building bearing testimony to the power of eternal Russia; a timeless symbol of the Russian state; a monument to…
The leader who followed
The historian of China Frank Dikötter has taken a sledgehammer to demolish perhaps the last remaining shibboleth of modern Chinese…
