Izbavi Bog i nas ot etakikh sudei

A few weeks ago something strange happened. Someone sent me, through the post, ten million printed words – I’ll repeat that, in case you weren’t concentrating: ten million words – nearly half of them in a difficult foreign language. I was told to get reading them.

By David Parkinson
Returning for a second year, Academia Rossica's Russian Film Festival boasts a programme of 10 London premieres that even surpasses the excellence of the inaugural slate. With several actors and directors guesting to discuss their work, this is an outstanding opportunity to assess the current state of one of the world's great film industries.

by Alexander Pokrovsky
Translated by Noah Birksted-Breen
Glas; 2007; pp.113
Even in the absence of war, the army, anywhere, is a cruel, unsafe, and closed world, perhaps more so in Russia due to its outdated compulsory national service and poor economic conditions. Now, thanks to the growing movement of Soldiers' Mothers Committees around the country, the public is increasingly aware of the realities of life inside the army.

By David Parkinson
Returning for a second year, Academia Rossica's Russian Film Festival boasts a programme of 10 London premieres that even surpasses the excellence of the inaugural slate. With several actors and directors guesting to discuss their work, this is an outstanding opportunity to assess the current state of one of the world's great film industries.

By David Parkinson
Returning for a second year, Academia Rossica's Russian Film Festival boasts a programme of 10 London premieres that even surpasses the excellence of the inaugural slate. With several actors and directors guesting to discuss their work, this is an outstanding opportunity to assess the current state of one of the world's great film industries.

Russia, 2008, 26 min
Dir. Ivan Bolotnikov
A documentary film about an outstanding Russian filmmaker Alexei German. An honest and informal narrative told by the filmmaker about his life, his films and things that trouble him.

Christopher MacLehose was Literary Editor of the Scotsman and subsequently Editorial Director at Chatto & Windus. After four years as Editor-in-Chief at William Collins, he became the Publisher at the Harvill Press, in which role he spent the next 22 years until after 7 years of independence the Press was bought by Random House. In that time Harvill became the leading translation house in Britain, publishing some of the outstanding contemporary European writers (Saramago, Sebald, Perec, Halldór Laxness, Magris, Enquist, Marías, Høeg; along with a list of crime writers in translation, among them Mankell, Arnaldur Indridason, Vargas); as also a list of American authors which included Ray Carver, Richard Ford and Peter Matthiessen.

Alexander Ilichevsky was born in Sumgait, Azerbaijan in 1970 and graduated from a technological institute affiliated to Moscow University in theoretical physics. He worked in scientific research in Israel and California from 1991 to 1998, whereupon he returned to live in Moscow with his family. He is the prolific author of many literary works in various genres, both poetry and prose, all of which have been published in Russia’s most prestigious literary journals, such as Novyi mir (New World), Oktiabr (October) – all to great literary acclaim. His novel Matisse, dedicated to all those born in 1970, like the author himself, won him the Russian Booker Prize in 2007 – one of a record seventy-eight works submitted for consideration for the prize that year. This outstanding achievement is not only testament to Ilichevsky’s great talent as a writer, but also to the fact that Russian literature is alive and flourishing today, perhaps as never before.

The Seductions of Europe
Prince Yusupov and his Arkhangelskoe
This issue is dedicated to Prince Nikolai Yusupov and his magnificent estate Arkhangelskoe near Moscow. Prince Yusupov was one of the outstanding figures of the Age of Enlightenment.

The Seductions of Europe
Prince Yusupov and his Arkhangelskoe
This issue is dedicated to Prince Nikolai Yusupov and his magnificent estate Arkhangelskoe near Moscow. Prince Yusupov was one of the outstanding figures of the Age of Enlightenment.

19-20 April
Apollo Cinema, Piccadilly
Screenings of films based on Russian literature
With English subtitles

13 March
Royal National Hotel
19.00-20.00
Simon Sebag Montefiore is an outstanding chronicler of Russian history. He discusses the complexities of Russian history and the contrasts between the Imperial and Revolutionary courts.

Alexander Ilichevsky was born in Sumgait, Azerbaijan in 1970 and graduated from a technological institute affiliated to Moscow University in theoretical physics. He worked in scientific research in Israel and California from 1991 to 1998, whereupon he returned to live in Moscow with his family. He is the prolific author of many literary works in various genres, both poetry and prose, all of which have been published in Russia’s most prestigious literary journals, such as Novyi mir (New World), Oktiabr (October) – all to great literary acclaim. His novel Matisse, dedicated to all those born in 1970, like the author himself, won him the Russian Booker Prize in 2007 – one of a record seventy-eight works submitted for consideration for the prize that year.