In a prisoner-of-war camp in western Ukraine, a former miner from the east is being interviewed about how he ended up fighting for Russia. His speech is slurred and one arm paralysed: the results not

A Russia of trees and liberty and peace: ...

Sometimes, a single narrative comes to dominate how we remember a year. So it is with 1776. This, as every history lover knows, was the date that the American colonies declared their independence, beg

Andrew Kahn and Mark Lipovetsky, editors All the World on a Page A critical anthology of modern Russian poetry 560pp. Princeton University Press. £35 (US $39.95). Russian modernist poetry has long bee

Is this the age of dictators?” asked veteran journalist Sir Sidney Low. He was writing in September 1923, the month in which a military coup brought Miguel Primo de Rivera to power in Spain. At the sa

ENGINEERING THE END OF MEDIEVAL WARFARE