8 April 2016
I spent the final weekend of the Easter vacation at the BASEES annual conference in Cambridge. As the current BASEES Membership Secretary and a founder member of the new BASEES Women’s Forum, this turned out to be a…
14 January 2016
To add to the list of programmes posted earlier, Start the Week on BBC R4 on Monday 11 January is ‘Russia: Tsars to Putin’. Guest speakers include Simon Seebag Montefiore and Amanda Vickery. Interestingly, Vickery talks a little…
6 January 2016
On the TV, BBC2’s showing of ‘Leningrad and the Orchestra that Defied Hitler’ examines Dmitry Shostakovich’s 7th (Leningrad) Symphony, performed in 1942 when the city was under siege and credited with helping to break the blockade. Amanda Vickery…
17 February 2015
On 31 December 1991, the Soviet Union was officially declared dissolved. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was officially created on 30 December 1922, following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The USSR was not immediately recognised by…