Turgenev, I. S.Livre Rare Book
Fitzpatrick SheilaMareMagnum
A Spy in the Archives: A Memoir of Cold War Russia
8vo, hardcover, First edition, first impression. In 'as new' condition, not price clipped (no published price), no inscriptions, looks unopened, unread. 346pp, illustrated. In 1968 historian Sheila Fitzpatrick was 'outed' by the Soviet newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya as the next thing to a spy for Western intelligence. A graduate student at Oxford, Fitzpatrick had spent time in Moscow to access several of its archives for her doctoral research on A V Lunacharsky, the first Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Moscow, the world capital of socialism, was renowned for its drabness. The buses were overcrowded; there were endemic shortages and endless queues. This was the era of Brezhnev, of a possible 'thaw' in the Cold War, when the Soviets couldn't decide either to thaw out properly or re-freeze. Yet, despite KGB attention, and the impossibility of finding a suitable winter coat, Sheila felt more at home in Moscow than anywhere else- a feeling cemented by her friendships with Lunacharsky's brother-in-law, Igor and daughter, Irina. Punctuated by letter to her mother in Australia and her diary entries from the time, and borne along by Fitzpatrick's wry insightful narrative, A Spy in the Archives captures the life and time of Cold War Russia and provides a unique insight into everyday life in the Soviet Union
Pali s.r.l. · Italie30,00 €
