Stalin, like Hitler and other tyrants, won and held power because he had collaborators - hangmen. Drawing on newly released archival material, Donald Rayfield gives us a fuller and more colourful picture of Stalinâs inner circle than ever before. Stalin was not the sole author of Stalinism.[...]
A landmark history of the Soviet Union under Stalin offers a vivid portrait of the Soviet leader and his trusted henchmen, capturing the lives and careers of the five ruthless politicos who presided over the diverse incarnations of Stalin's secret police and became responsible for the deaths of twen[...]
Anton Chekhov's life was short, he was only forty-four when he died, and dogged with ill-health but his plays and short stories assure him of his place in the literary pantheon. Drawing on an array of material, this biography captures a likeness of the notoriously elusive Chekhov.[...]
The first comprehensive and objective history of the literature of Georgia, revealed to be unique among those of the former Byzantine and Russian empires, both in its quality and its 1500 years' history. It is examined in the context of the extraordinarily diverse influences which affected it '- fro[...]
Georgia is the most Western-looking state in today's Near or Middle East and, despite having one of the longest, most turbulent histories in the Christian or Near Eastern world, no proper history of the country has been written for decades. Donald Rayfield redresses this balance in Edge of Empires, [...]
This is, in brief, the story of a swindler, a Georgian Felix Krull, or perhaps a cynical Don Quixote, named Kvachi Kvachantiradze: womanizer, cheat, perpetrator of insurance fraud, bank-robber, associate of Rasputin, filmmaker, revolutionary, and pimp. Though originally denounced as pornographic, Kv[...]