Category: Eastern Europe

Premature Evaluation: Yalta by S.M. Plokhy

Did FDR give away too much at Yalta? Was Churchill sketching out percentages of influence in Eastern and Southeastern Europe with Stalin? How far did Stalin’s plans for annexations run? And was the Cold War inevitable? In Yalta: The Price of Peace, S.M. Plokhy goes to the literature and the archives with these questions, and …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2011/05/05/premature-evaluation-yalta-by-s-m-plokhy/

White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies

Just a few short weeks after the end of World War I on the Western Front, Poland and Soviet Russia started fighting again, skirmishing on their poorly defined border that built into full-scale invasions over the next year. Davies’ book White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-1920 tells this complex story clearly and incisively. …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/05/12/white-eagle-red-star-by-norman-davies/

Sentence of the Day

For a small break from Brussels and the economic crisis: Nothing fades so quickly or so tackily as a Soviet resort. One of the lighter observations (on p. 139) from The Spirit-Wrestlers by Philip Marsden, a journey across southern Russia and the Caucasus in search of various religious non-conformists who fell afoul of both Russian …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/03/01/sentence-of-the-day/

Aid Worker Shashlik

From Geert Mak’s visit to Sarajevo in 1999: Batinic leans over and looks me straight in the eye. ‘Tell me, Geert, honestly: what kind of people are you sending us anyway? The ones at the top are usually fine. But otherwise, with only a few exceptions, the people I have to deal with are third-class …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/02/19/aid-worker-shashlik/

The Orientalist by Tom Reiss

Ali and Nino, the closest thing that modern Azerbaijan has to a national novel, was first published in German in 1937, sold in various translations, hit US bestseller lists in the early 1970s and bears the name Kurban Said as its author. But the question of the author’s identity had never been resolved. All anyone …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2007/02/11/the-orientalist-by-tom-reiss/

Under the Frog

Novermber 1955: Tired of trying to crack the problem of the informer, Gyuri settled down to think about being a streetsweeper while he gazed out of the window at the countryside that went past quite lazily despite the train’s billing as an express. The streetsweeper was a sort of cerebral chewing gum that Gyuri popped …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/10/23/under-the-frog/

Premature Evaluation: Khrushchev by William Taubman

Wish an 876-page biography could be longer? Not often, but definitely with this one. I don’t know the literature well enough to say for sure, but it sure feels like a definitive take on an important figure of 20th century history. William Taubman combines the virtues of journalist and scholar in his biography of Nikita …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/09/26/premature-evaluation-khrushchev-by-william-taubman/

Premature Evaluation: The Hungarians

I suppose I should be happy that there is a recent, one-volume general history of the Hungarians. Their history is not exactly the stuff of bestsellers, even if Hungarians were crucial in everything from computers to the atomic bomb to Hollywood studios. Ten million people, give or take, speaking a non-Indo-European language in and around …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/04/18/premature-evaluation-the-hungarians/

Wisdom of the Ages

The Roman Empire has won significance, and its rulers became famous and mighty, because numerous nobles and sages from various countries congregated there […] As settlers come from various countries and provinces, they bring with them various languages and customs, various instructive concepts and weapons, which decorate and glorify the royal court, but intimidate foreign …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/03/16/wisdom-of-the-ages/

Joseph Vissarionovich and the People Who Loved Him

Because some of them undoubtedly did, even people who knew him quite well. In his heyday, millions professed their love, sang his praises. Even those he had condemned in show trials, or in no trials, wrote to him of their devotion, wrote of their faithfulness, wrote of their belief. Perhaps they meant it, perhaps it …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/06/24/joseph-vissarionovich-and-the-people-who-loved-him/