No country embodied the turbulence of twentieth century Europe more dramatically than East Prussia. The scene of Stalin's 'terrible revenge', it was carved up between Poland and the USSR after World War II -- and passed abruptly into history. Many of its refugees are still alive and with astonishing[...]
East Prussia is no longer on any map, though it was once a thriving land, famously military, deeply forested, artistically fertile, and the birthplace of Immanuel Kant. As the scene of Stalin's 'terrible revenge' it came to embody the turbulence of the twentieth century, was carved up between Poland[...]
Until the end of World War II, East Prussia was the German empire's farthest eastern redoubt, a thriving and beautiful land on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Now it lives only in history and in myth. Since 1945, the territory has been divided between Poland and Russia, stretching from the[...]
Ivan Turgenev's first literary masterpiece is a sweeping portrayal of the magnificent nineteenth-century Russian countryside and the harsh lives of those who inhabited it. In a series of sketches, a hunter wanders through the vast landscape of steppe and forest in search of game, encountering a vari[...]