It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a love of history, must be in want of a blog.
At the collapse of the USSR, all the public paraphernalia of Soviet rule - statues, mosaics, frescoes - still lay scattered across Russia and beyond. Marxism-Leninism may have been kicked out of office, but what were people supposed to do with the public propaganda artworks which, for many Soviet citizens, were an unwelcome symbol of …
Continue reading Russia’s dumping grounds for Soviet sculpture
Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia from 1682-1725, is one of the most compelling yet brutal rulers I have ever read about. On the one hand he was strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, a champion of science and a great builder of state and public institutions. On the other, he was a capricious autocrat who …
A slim volume called Colloquial Persian recently came my way; a basic language primer published in 1941. The book was published at a rather fascinating political juncture. In 1941, in response to Germany's relentless eastward push into the USSR, Britain and the USSR launched a joint invasion of Iran, which was then ruled by Mohammad Reza Shah. …
Continue reading How to speak Persian like a colonial Englishman