Анна Рейд — новинки

Це історія блокади Лєнінграда, найсмертоноснішої блокади міста в історії людства... Мета цієї книжки - не кинути світло на звірства, які досі не помічалися, не розвіяти совєтську пропаганду чи встановити справедливий рахунок між двома великими диктаторами. Її мета, як всіх книжок про людей in extremis, - нагадати самим собі, що означає бути людиною, згадати про високе й низьке в людській поведінці.

When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, he planned to capture Leningrad before turning on Moscow. Stubborn Soviet resistance forced him to change tactics: with his forward troops only thirty kilometres away, he decided to surround the city and starve it out. Over the next two and a half years, three quarters of a million Leningraders - almost a third of its civilian population - died of cold and hunger. To blame, Anna Reid argues, were the Soviet regime's brutality and incompetence, as well as Nazi contempt for human life. Using newly available diaries and government records, Reid describes a city's descent into hell, but also extraordinary individual endurance and self-sacrifice.

The Ukraine is one of the most neglected countries in the world. It has a population of 52 million - larger than Britain's - and a land mass the size of France; it also has Chernobyl and after Russia the largest nuclear power. The word "Ukraine" means "borderland" and for most of its history the lands that make up present-day Ukraine have been a collection of other countries' border regions. Prior to Stalinism and Nazism, Ukraine was ethnically extremely diverse, including Russians, Poles, Jews, Greeks and Armenians. Their ghosts linger in language, literature, and architecture, quite distinct from Russia's.