Molotov's Magic Lantern: A Journey in Russian History

Начало книги

Life …  lives, people, revolutions, beloved faces have appeared, changed and vanished between the Sparrow Hills and Primrose Hill; already their traces have been almost swept away …

      ALEXANDER HERZEN, Past and Thoughts

… all our ideas have their origin in our idea of place …

      OSCAR MILOSZ, Les Arcanes

la forme d’une ville 

Change plus vite, hélas! que le cœur d’un mortel

      CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, ‘Le Cygne’

I can’t feel you anymore, I can’t even touch the books you’ve read

      BOB DYLAN, ‘Idiot Wind’

Maps

Map of Russia showing some of the places referred to in the book

Map of Moscow showing some of the places referred to in the book

Prologue

In one corner of Molotov’s drawing room stands a magic lantern.

With my back to the window that looks out over Romanov Lane, I wind the brass handle of the lantern, squinting down into the waist-high mahogany obelisk through a glass aperture as faint pictures click past on the revolving slide-carrier. A family group, ladies in old-fashioned bathing suits, smiles across from a rock on the Crimean seashore, hands shading eyes from the sun, then slips into the dark to make way for a staring shaman in torn trousers and a crooked hat; a circle of peasant women creaks past in a ritual dance, turning into three touched-up views of wooden houses and elegant public squares in the Siberian city of Irkutsk.

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