{"title":"Donald Rayfield","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the world of Russian literature and history with Donald Rayfield. Explore insightful biographies and literary criticism, perfect for those seeking a deeper understanding of Russian culture. Start your discovery today.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"kolyma-stories-book-varlam-shalamov-9781681372143","title":"Kolyma Stories","description":"\u003cb\u003eA masterpiece of 20th-century Russian literature-now in its first complete English translation\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\"One of the greatest Russian writers of short stories\" chronicles life in a Soviet gulag, drawing on his own years in a USSR prison camp and laying bare the perils of totalitarianism (\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eKolyma Stories\u003c\/i\u003e is amasterpiece of twentieth-century literature,an epic array of short fictional tales reflecting the fifteen years that Varlam Shalamov spent in the Soviet Gulag. This is the first of two volumes (the second to appear in 2019) that together will constitute the first complete English translation of Shalamov's stories and the only one to be based on the authorized Russian text.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Shalamov spent six years as a slave in the gold mines of Kolyma before finding a less intolerable life as a paramedic in the prison camps.He began writing his account of life in Kolyma after Stalin's deathin 1953. His stories are at once the biography of a rare survivor, a historical record of the Gulag, and a literary work of unparalleled creative power, insight, and conviction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49512588017937,"sku":"GOR009743562","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49565218439441,"sku":"CIN1681372142G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49735841153297,"sku":"NGR9781681372143","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50296507859217,"sku":"CIN1681372142VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50907654390033,"sku":"GOR009772527","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51840162955537,"sku":"NIN9781681372143","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53191122059537,"sku":"GOR009918625","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1681372142.jpg?v=1751447634"},{"product_id":"stalin-and-his-hangmen-book-donald-rayfield-9780670910885","title":"Stalin and His Hangmen","description":"This work has a strong historical and political orientation but its main focus is the psychological chain that connected Stalin with those men he chose as executioners, in both the narrow and broad sense of the world. His successful manipulations depended on an attraction to figures like himself to laconic and ruthless controllers. To understand Stalin, the reader must understand the background of his life - abused child, trainee priest, resentful victim of imperial power, bandit and puppet master.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49519972319505,"sku":"GOR001864835","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50468215849233,"sku":"GOR004399485","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52107866439953,"sku":"GOR002164313","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0670910880.jpg?v=1751168256"},{"product_id":"stalin-and-his-hangmen-book-donald-rayfield-9780141003757","title":"Stalin and His Hangmen","description":"Stalin, like Hitler and other tyrants, won and held power because he had collaborators - hangmen. Drawing on newly released archival material, Donald Rayfield gives us a fuller and more colourful picture of Stalin's inner circle than ever before. Stalin was not the sole author of Stalinism. What motivated his chiefs of police, Feliks Dzierzynski, Viacheslav Manzhinsky, Genrikh Iagoda, Nikolai Ezhov and Lavrenti Beria? What did they want? What were their relations with the regime and its ruler? How did their upbringing and experience mould them? And how does the terror they create connect with the terror they felt? Stalin and His Hangmen reconstructs the psychological mechanism of a whole regime and what it held together. The extent of the misery caused by Stalin and his Hangmen can be compared in Europe only to that brought about by Hitler and his henchmen. But Stalin's heritage is, if possible, even worse than Hitler's. His rule enslaved three generations, not one, the horror of what he did has not yet been fully understood and his countrymen have not yet found the strenth to disavow him. All the more important, then, that this diabolical tale should be told.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49543147421969,"sku":"GOR001384808","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49636933763345,"sku":"GOR002367485","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49779471253777,"sku":"CIN0141003758G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49930767663377,"sku":"GOR001800807","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50345484943633,"sku":"CIN0141003758A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50725338218769,"sku":"NGR9780141003757","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0141003758.jpg?v=1751448896"},{"product_id":"anton-chekhov-book-donald-rayfield-9780002555036","title":"Anton Chekhov","description":"Chekhov's life was one long battle with his dependants and with the tuberculosis that was to kill him at the age of 44. 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Using documents and letters, this work investigates the emotions, conflicts and experiences which Chekhov transmuted into his stories and plays.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49548053250321,"sku":"GOR013738451","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49568073679121,"sku":"GOR005369205","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50892869632273,"sku":"GOR004568929","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52466731122961,"sku":"GOR004193935","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0002555034.jpg?v=1751003945"},{"product_id":"understanding-chekhov-book-donald-rayfield-9780299163143","title":"Understanding Chekhov","description":"Of all Russian writers, Chekhov is one of the  best liked and most easily appreciated. 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Understanding Chekhov  is enriched by revelations from previously unexplored archival  material, which deepen our understanding of Chekhov's sources,  preoccupations, philosophy, and his relations with theater, with fellow  writers, and with contemporary ideas.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49578901537041,"sku":"GOR012615344","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50467543679249,"sku":"CIN0299163148G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000672813329,"sku":"NIN9780299163143","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52586943119633,"sku":"NLS9780299163143","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0299163148.jpg?v=1757414925"},{"product_id":"stalin-and-his-hangmen-book-donald-rayfield-9780375757716","title":"Stalin and His Hangmen","description":"Stalin did not act alone. The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin's dictatorship, were the result of a tight network of trusted henchmen (and women), spies, psychopaths, and thugs. At the top of this pyramid of terror sat five indispensable hangmen who presided over the various incarnations of Stalin's secret police. Now, in his harrowing new book, Donald Rayfield probes the lives, the minds, the twisted careers, and the unpunished crimes of Stalin's loyal assassins.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Founded by Feliks Dzierzynski, the Cheka-the Extraordinary Commission-came to life in the first years of the Russian Revolution. Spreading fear in a time of chaos, the Cheka proved a perfect instrument for Stalin's ruthless consolidation of power. But brutal as it was, the Cheka under Dzierzynski was amateurish compared to the well-oiled killing machines that succeeded it. Genrikh Iagoda's OGPU specialized in political assassination, propaganda, and the manipulation of foreign intellectuals. Later, the NKVD recruited a new generation of torturers. Starting in 1938, terror mastermind Lavrenti Beria brought violent repression to a new height of ingenuity and sadism.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e As Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading Soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeev, Alexei Tolstoi, Isaak Babel, and Osip Mandelstam were all caught in Stalin's web-courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and \"accomplishments\" of Stalin's key henchmen and their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power spanning half a century.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Though Beria lost his power-and his life-after Stalin's death in 1953, the fundamental methods of the hangmen maintained their grip into the second half of the twentieth century. Indeed, Rayfield argues, the tradition of terror, far from disappearing, has emerged with renewed vitality under Vladimir Putin. Written with grace, passion, and a dazzling command of the intricacies of Soviet politics and society, \u003ci\u003eStalin and the Hangmen\u003c\/i\u003e is a devastating indictment of the individuals and ideology that kept Stalin in power.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49609320366353,"sku":"GOR009784857","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49973969387793,"sku":"GOR009793481","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49999809052945,"sku":"CIN0375757716VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50853819416849,"sku":"CIN0375757716G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52498825871633,"sku":"CIN0375757716A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0375757716.jpg?v=1751391171"},{"product_id":"dead-souls-new-translation-book-nikolai-gogol-9781847496287","title":"Dead Souls: New Translation","description":"A biting satire of social pretensions and pomposity, Dead Souls, here presented in a brand new translation, is part of Alma Classics Evergreens series of popular classics.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49632350503185,"sku":"GOR011636758","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49636892803345,"sku":"GOR008704067","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734448283921,"sku":"NGR9781847496287","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50623927320849,"sku":"GOR010645516","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1847496288.jpg?v=1751313898"},{"product_id":"garnett-book-of-russian-verse-book-donald-rayfield-9780956468321","title":"The Garnett Book of Russian Verse","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49665875018001,"sku":"GOR013568346","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0956468322.jpg?v=1751172485"},{"product_id":"edge-of-empires-book-donald-rayfield-9781789140590","title":"Edge of Empires","description":"Georgia is the most Western-looking state in today’s Near or Middle East and, despite having one of the longest, most turbulent histories in the Christian or Near Eastern world, no proper history of the country has been written for decades. Eminent historian Donald Rayfield redresses this balance in Edge of Empires, focusing not merely on the post-Soviet era, like many other books on Georgia, but on the whole of its history, accessing a mass of new material from the country’s recently opened archives. Rayfield describes Georgia’s swings between disintegration and unity, making full use of primary sources, many not available before in an English-language book. He examines the history of a country which, though small, stands at a crossroads between Russia and the Muslim world, between Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and is a dramatic example of state-building and, also, of tragic political mistakes.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737768337681,"sku":"NGR9781789140590","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50279256097041,"sku":"GOR009742708","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50413873889553,"sku":"CIN1789140595VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53014979019025,"sku":"GOR011771128","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53027306307857,"sku":"NIN9781789140590","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1789140595.jpg?v=1766140996"},{"product_id":"anton-chekhov-book-donald-rayfield-9780006547679","title":"Anton Chekhov","description":"Donald Rayfield has spent over five years combing through the extensive Chekhov archives all over Russia, uncovering thousands of documents and letters from lovers, friends and family. These tell of a life far more entangled and turbulent than ever previously suspected. Chekhov's life was one long battle with his dependants and with the tuberculosis that was to kill him at 44. This biography strips the whitewash from the image of Chekhov. The result is not to denigrate him, but to show him in the full heroism of his short and prodigiously creative life at times made hell by a monstrous father, possessive sister and delinquent elder brothers. The drama of Chekhov's life has an extraordinarily rich cast of characters, and took him all over Russia and the world. There have been many biographies of Anton Chekhov before but this is the first to tell the story of his life as fully as we now realize is possible.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49980373434641,"sku":"GOR002716309","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50820706435345,"sku":"GOR002148820","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52108653756689,"sku":"GOR004746410","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0006547672.jpg?v=1751355240"},{"product_id":"stalin-and-his-hangmen-book-donald-rayfield-9780375506321","title":"Stalin and His Hangmen","description":"Stalin did not act alone. 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Written with grace, passion, and a dazzling command of the intricacies of Soviet politics and society, \u003ci\u003eStalin and the Hangmen\u003c\/i\u003e is a devastating indictment of the individuals and ideology that kept Stalin in power. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrom the Hardcover edition.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50025861873937,"sku":"CIN0375506322G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50211933618449,"sku":"GOR013889515","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50884051403025,"sku":"CIN0375506322VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0375506322.jpg?v=1751006719"},{"product_id":"anton-chekhov-book-donald-rayfield-9780810117952","title":"Anton Chekhov","description":"Anton Chekhov's life was short, intense, and dominated by battles, both with his dependents and with the tuberculosis that killed him at age forty-four. The traditional image of Chekhov is that of the restrained artist torn between medicine and literature. But Donald Rayfield's biography reveals the life long hidden behind the noble facade. Here is a man capable of both great generosity toward needy peasants and harsh callousness toward lovers and family, a man who craved with equal passion the company of others and the solitude necessary to create his art. Based on information from Chekhov archives throughout Russia, Rayfield's work has been hailed as a groundbreaking examination of the life of a literary master.A new biography of the great author and playwright.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50115457417489,"sku":"GOR009200805","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50414820851985,"sku":"GOR013941295","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51166453465361,"sku":"CIN0810117959VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51461436702993,"sku":"CIN0810117959G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53094555058449,"sku":"CIN0810117959A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0810117959.jpg?v=1751233489"},{"product_id":"understanding-chekhov-book-donald-rayfield-9781853994265","title":"Understanding Chekhov","description":"This work is designed to enhance the understanding of those who read Chekhov's stories or watch his plays. It reveals the levels of meaning and intention, the interpretations that author, reader, theatre director or critic can make, and brings out Chekhov's many connections to European prose and drama. It is a systematic study, in chronological order, showing how Chekhov was formed by his own literary models and cultural background. It places stories and plays in context with each other as well as with Chekhov's reading and his public's and publishers' expectations. Early work receives special attention as the crucible in which later fiction is smelted; each of the major plays has a chapter devoted to it. Chekhov's own elusive intentions are elucidated, as well as the critical reactions of his contemporaries and of posterity. This study concentrates on Chekhov's innovations in both the story and in drama: the use of inconsequentiality, the avoidance of denouements, non-verbal effects (eg. smell and light), intertextuality. Much new archival material, private and family, is drawn on to show the origins of Chekhov's ideas and source of his motifs. Attention is paid to Chekhov's influence on the short story and on drama in Europe and America, as well as in Russia.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50131197591825,"sku":"GOR006472450","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/185399426X.jpg?v=1750724723"},{"product_id":"anton-chekhov-book-donald-rayfield-9780571253739","title":"Anton Chekhov","description":"The description 'definitive' is too easily used, but Donald Rayfield's biography of Chekhov merits it unhesitatingly. To quote no less an authority than Michael Frayn:  'With question the definitive biography of Chekhov, and likely to remain so for a very long time to come. Donald Rayfield starts with the huge advantage of much new material that was prudishly suppressed under the Soviet regime, or tactfully ignored by scholars. But his mastery of all the evidence, both old and new - a massive archive - is magisterial, his background knowledge of the period is huge; his Russian is sensitive to every colloquial nuance of the day, and his tone is sure. He captures a likeness of the notoriously elusive Chekhov which at last begins to seem recognisably human - and even more extraordinary.'  Chekhov's life was short, he was only forty-four when he died, and dogged with ill-health but his plays and short stories assure him of his place in the literary pantheon. Here is a biography that does him full justice, in short, unapologetically to repeat that word 'definitive'.  'I don't remember any monograph by a Western scholar on a Russian author having such success. . . Nikita Mikhalkov said that before this book came out we didn't know Chekhov. . . The author doesn't invent, add or embellish anything . . . Rayfield is motivated by the Westerner's urge not ot hold information back, however grim it may be.' Anatoli Smelianski, Director of Moscow Arts Theatre School   'It is hard to imagine another book about Chekhov after this one by Donald Rayfield.' Arthur Miller, Sunday Times   'Donald Rayfield's exemplary biography draws on a daunting array of material inacessible or ignored by his predecessors.' Nikolai Tolstoy, The Literary Review  'Donald Rayfield, Chekhov's best and definitive biographer.' 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