Gadfly in Russia : A Story of Travel, History, People, and Places

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The only essay I remember writing at school was about the German advance into Russia during the Second World War. After mentioning the Napoleonic Campaign of 1812 I said that the aim of the current offensive in the Ukraine was to acquire the oil wells in the Caucasus, to fuel the Nazi economy. I was thirteen, but had probably taken most of it from a newspaper.

The first topographical map I owned was sent from Stanford’s to me in Nottingham, a sheet covering the Stalingrad region, on which to follow the fighting. It cost two shillings and three pence, and came rolled in a cardboard tube. I still have it.

Fascination with Russia remained, even after the final victories. In 1963 I stayed a month in the country, and wrote a book called Road to Volgograd. In the summer of 1967, impelled to get away from my writing for a while, I sent a letter to Oksana Krugerskaya in Moscow, whom I’d met on the prior trip:

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