Moscow
What hope is there for Syria today?
After two brutal regimes and a devastating civil war, there’s fear of renewed corruption under President Ahmed al Sharaa, a former al Qaeda terrorist
The reluctant spy: The Predicament, by William Boyd, reviewed
Sucked further into the quicksand of 1960s espionage, Gabriel Dax is sent to Guatemala, and then on to West Berlin, where he uncovers a plot to assassinate President Kennedy
Everyone who was anyone in Russia was spied on – including Stalin
In 1972,Vasili Mitrokhin oversaw the transfer of thousands of documents in the KGB archives and secretly noted the atrocities they revealed - though Stalin’s file was mysteriously empty
Red-letter days for Gilbert & George
After a successful show in Moscow in 1990, the odd couple went on to even greater triumph in China three years later, as the long-suffering curator of both exhibitions describes
Besieged Odesa is still caught in a conflict of identities
Older citizens have identified with Russia all their lives – and Russian is still commonly spoken everywhere. But young Odesans are now using more Ukrainian as a symbol of resistance
The spy who came back from retirement: Karla’s Choice, by Nick Harkaway, reviewed
Given a new lease of life by John le Carré’s son, George Smiley gets embroiled in a murky affair involving the Circus’s key Stasi asset and a missing Hungarian literary agent
Sarah Rainsford joins the long list of foreign correspondents banned from Russia
After decades of writing about Russian affairs, Rainsford now finds herself persona non grata – but admits she no longer feels nostalgia for the country
My summer of love with God’s gift
Studying in Russia in 1994, Viv Groskop falls in love with a Ukrainian rock guitarist named Bogdan Bogdanovich and accompanies him on a visit home
All human life is here
When is a life worth telling? The Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky’s six-volume autobiography The Story of a Life combines high…
It is not the masterpieces that were lost, but the collectors, Natalya Semenova rights a wrong
It is not as surprising at it sounds that two of the greatest collectors of modern art should have been…
The plight of the returnee: A Terrible Country, by Keith Gessen, reviewed
If the 20th century popularised the figure of the émigré, the 21st has introduced that of the returnee, who, aided…
Playing Stalin for laughs
Christopher Wilson’s new novel is much easier to enjoy than to categorise. And ‘enjoy’ is definitely the right word, even…
Moscow rules
Moscow To the Union Jack pub on Potapovsky Lane for a US election night party. The jolly Muscovite Trump supporters…
Fleeing Mother Russia
‘Ah! Scrubbing the deck! My childhood dream! As a child I had once seen a sailor hosing the deck with…
Through the eyes of spies
Spying is a branch of philosophy, although you would never guess it from that expression on Daniel Craig’s face. Its…
Waiting for Utopia
The Soviet Union was a nation of bus stops. Cars were hard to come by, so a vast public transport…
Putin and the polygamists
The Kremlin is tying itself in ideological knots as it tries to make new friends in the Muslim world
It’s dark days for dogs and their owners
So who is poisoning all the doggies, then? I assumed, when the first horrible reports came through from Crufts, that…
Diary
Moscow Here we go again. The rouble slides, then tumbles, and slides again. For those of us who remember the…
A ladies’ man in Moscow
Right at the outset of this autobiographical novel — in fact it reads more like a memoir — Ismail Kadare…
Rise of the mayors
The power to effect real change may lie with dynamic city halls rather than ossified national governments
Hiding in plain sight
A building bearing testimony to the power of eternal Russia; a timeless symbol of the Russian state; a monument to…
Ashes to ashes
‘I cannot describe to you what a curious note of brutality a bomb has,’ said one woman who lived through…
No use crying over spilt blood
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s One Night in Winter begins in the hours immediately following the solemn victory parade that marked the…
