The Compatriots

The authors of The Red Web examine the shifting role of Russian expatriates throughout history, and their complicated, unbreakable relationship with the mother country--be it antagonistic or far too chummy. The history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, from a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017. Russian émigrés have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem. Russians began leaving the country in big numbers in the late nineteenth century, fleeing pogroms, tsarist secret police persecution, and the Revolution, then Stalin and the KGB--and creating the third-largest diaspora in the world. The exodus created a rare opportunity for the Kremlin. Moscow's masters and spymasters fostered networks of spies, many of whom were emigrants driven from Russia. By the 1930s and 1940s, dozens of spies were in New York City gathering information for Moscow. But the story did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some émigrés have turned into assets of the resurgent Russian nationalist state, while others have taken up the dissident challenge once more--at their personal peril. From Trotsky to Litvinenko, The Compatriots is the gripping history of Russian score-settling around the world.

Silent Empowerment of the Compatriots, winner of the 1997 Tanzania Best Book Prize, is a powerful historical novel which forces us to re- think the whole notion of independence and the construction of a new society. It scans 50 years of Tanzania history through the lives of two families differently endowed. The family of Saidi son of Jabiri, which represents the poor workers, is running away from death which has decimated his family, the only thing of value, while that of Nzoka Mwanakulanga, representing the rising national bourgeoisie is in search of position, wealth and pleasure. These two families are juxtaposed as their lives mirror the countryís struggles with the economy and politics, colonialism and demand for independence, commitment to nationalism, to give us a scathing picture of the fates of the classes they represent: the sinking into abject poverty of the working class and the rising into wealth and adoration of the national bourgeoisie.

During the past decade northern Europe has started to assume an identity of its own. Categories of East and West have become blurred, challenging as well the idea of what it means to be Nordic. Post-Cold War Identity Politics maps this process in Scandinavia. Looking at projects designed to help regional development in the Nordic countires, it assesses whether a new way of defining 'Northern-ness' is emerging. The book highlights the existence of co-existing and - to some extent - competing region-building projects in northern Europe. It demonstrates how they are all efforts by existing nations to redefine their role in Europe at a time of change, and points to how they might develop in the future.

A penetrating investigation into how the KGB rose from the ashes of the Soviet Union and reinvented itself at the heart of the Russian state during Vladimir Putin's rule

The authors of The Red Web examine the shifting role of Russian expatriates throughout history, and their complicated, unbreakable relationship with the mother country--be it antagonistic or far too chummy. The history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, from a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017. Russian émigrés have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem. Russians began leaving the country in big numbers in the late nineteenth century, fleeing pogroms, tsarist secret police persecution, and the Revolution, then Stalin and the KGB--and creating the third-largest diaspora in the world. The exodus created a rare opportunity for the Kremlin. Moscow's masters and spymasters fostered networks of spies, many of whom were emigrants driven from Russia. By the 1930s and 1940s, dozens of spies were in New York City gathering information for Moscow. But the story did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some émigrés have turned into assets of the resurgent Russian nationalist state, while others have taken up the dissident challenge once more--at their personal peril. From Trotsky to Litvinenko, The Compatriots is the gripping history of Russian score-settling around the world.

Father Lee traces some of Wagner's extraordinary influence for good and ill on a century of art and politicsand argues that Wagner's ambivalent art is indispensable to us, life-enhancing and ultimately healing.