Matthew Janney

The diary of a tortured man: Deceit, by Yuri Felsen, reviewed

20 August 2022 9:00 am

Yuri Felsen, born in St Petersburg, was an exile in Riga, Berlin and Paris and died at Auschwitz in 1943.…

An innocent abroad: a Dutch tour operator in 1980s Russia

12 February 2022 9:00 am

‘One morning in late October 1988,’ begins TheLong Song of Tchaikovsky Street, ‘this dapper-looking guy from Leiden asked me if…

‘Mother Volga’ has always been Russia’s lifeblood

16 January 2021 9:00 am

‘Without this river the Russians could not live,’ remarked Robert Bremner in his work, Excursions in the Interior of Russia.…

‘I was frightened every single day’: the perils of guarding Stalin

1 August 2020 9:00 am

In Russian, the proverb ‘Ignorance is bliss’ translates as ‘The less you know, the better you sleep’. For those who…