XXI Century, the history exam.
Q: “Who was Leonid Brezhnev?”
A: “A politician during the era of Alla Pugacheva.”

In the same sense as the joke meant to juxtapose the grandiose figure of the General Secretary of the 1970’s against the pop-star admired by the regular Russian folks, it may be related to Artemy Troitsky, the author of the Back in the USSR, The True Story of Rock in Russia. Anyone who had grown up in Brezhnev’s Russia, even with a little interest to the Western pop-music, could not have missed the articles squeezed into the back pages of the Soviet official youth magazines and papers. Bits and pieces of the pop-music news, short reviews of the bands and artists from the parallel universe had tremendous effect on us, the readers in our teen years. In fact I asked my parents to pay for a yearlong subscription to one of these magazines only to be able to catch up on what was going on in the music world beyond iron curtain.

Now, after receiving the Back in the USSR as a gift, first of all I looked at the year of publishing. 1989. Communist Party of the Soviet Union was still legitimate and in power. Soviet people were enjoying first free National election. Michail Gorbachov was about to become first Soviet President.

The book therefore covered the very beginning of what was then the Soviet Rock Music. Troitsky travelled extensively between Moscow, Leningrad, Tallin and Riga becoming not only the observer, but the active participant of the rock music movement back in 80′s. And he tells the stories of the first “festivals” and “contests”, anecdots about the modern icons who were making first steps in music back then.

First part of the book covers young mocsovite’s trends in fashion, music and dance, as a preamble to what had happened next. But the rest is a compressed history of the very start of the Russian pop-scene, embracing the names of Pugacheva, Makarevich, Grbenschikov, Tsoy and Naumenko.

I don’t know what happened between Makarevich (Mashina Vremeni) and Artemy Troitsky (the author), but everything in regards to the former seems a bit biased. Although it does not seem to take away too much from the big picture.

And although “Sverdlovsky Rock” had started as a stand alone phonomenon before 1989, Troitsky omits the topic almost entirely, except for the mentioning of the band named Sonans and led by Alexander Pantykin.

Other than that the book is great coverage of the few years of promising time, when musicians played mostly for fun and made the best of it. Troitsky has since become a guru and respected music critic, moving towards front pages and on TV.

Would I recommend the book? Definitely yes.

As death makes good stories, amusing the readers and inspiring the writers, the real life events make them bestsellers. Out of the series of books on the mysterious death of the former KGB officer (although as some are saying there is no such thing as “former” KGB officer), I have recently finished the two: The Litvinenko File: The Life and Death of a Russian Spy by Martin Sixsmith and The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder by Alan S. Cowell.

Both books are amazing examples of the thorough investigation journalism. Yet more amazing is that most of the characters of the drama are still well and living in this world, and both authors had managed to reach to the most of them. I would not want to score one book against the other, although the latter in my opinion sets more fundamental geo-political background for the action and reaches to the more versatile group of witnesses, if not the accomplices. Both books compliment each other.

Rest in peace, Alexander Litvinenko.

“Can you please schedule an appointment with the ear-eye specialist for me?”
“No, sorry, we only have an ear-throat specialist here. What is your problem exactly?”
“Oh, I constantly hear one thing but see something totally different.”

I don’t remember bumping into this joke in the Hammer and Tickle book. And although the author warned us the readers that he deliberately omitted all the jokes prone to losing in translation, I think this one makes perfect sense in both English and Russian. Seeing one thing and hearing the opposite, the phenomenon described by George Orwell as “double-speak”, although applicable to various social structures, has been an intrinsic feature of the Soviet life.

The book is written as a PhD thesis but hilarious nevertheless. The author seems to be genuinely searching for the answer to the egg-and-chicken kind of question, whether the Communist regime caused the heritage of the anti-soviet humor, or rather it fell the victim of the nation laughing it out loud.
Now, no matter if the author was serious in his search or not, the book is a joyful reading for anyone who lived through the ordeal as well as for those interested in Orwellian social psychology.

I am not joking.

“Truth is strange… stranger than fiction” reads the footer on the book cover. Hoodwinked: The Spy Who Didn’t Die is the book about one of the most fascinating events in Canadian history, last Century.

With all the spies and double-spies crossing the aisle, dying and managing to survive, the story of Igor Gouzenko stays apart among Canadians. Short summary is presented on the memorial plaque placed across the street from the house where Gouzenko lived with his family.

Apartment building at 511 Somerset St. West in Ottawa, where Igor Gouzenko lived with his family before surrendering himself to Canadian authorities.

I was working on the story for CHUM TV stations on the controversy about this plaque. Russian authorities publicly protested installation of the memorial plaque across former Gouzenko’s dwelling. We interviewed Gouzenko’s daughter, checked on declassified documents, shot on-cameras in front of the house where Igor Gouzenko lived with his family.

When I learned that Lowell Green, my favourite broadcaster, journalist and a book writer, had just published a book on Gouzenko affair, I asked him for a copy, we negotiated a good deal, and I’ve got an autograph as a bonus. Have I learned anything new from the book? Not really. But as it happened I was not supposed to.

The book is a perfect example of a pseudo-historical fiction, filled with fruits of author’s imagination, and some necessary facts added to make the story look half-real. The main character jumps from the plane, saves a beautiful woman, kills numerous enemies, travels across the world, sleeps with more women – typical James Bond story. If I was into this kind of books, I would have definitely enjoyed it. But I seemed to having been confused by the hard cover.

Fiction this time has become stranger than the truth.

Read this review in Russian.

The author had taken on exploration of the Wild East as a young post graduate and in 10 tumultuous years turned into an expert in post-Soviet business journalism. His adventure covers probably the most fascinating decade in the post-Soviet history – 1990′s.

For me, after having spent the years between 1991 and 1998 in the relative safety of the semi-military settlement in the Ural mountains away from the financial storms centred in Moscow, it was interesting to look back at that time from the point of view of the Westerner who reported from the front lines on the awakening of the Russian bear from the communist nightmare, on murky details of a quick split of country assets, and on naivety of the foreign investors trying to gamble on Russian roulette.

Brzezinski had a chance to meet and talk to the state leaders, financiers big and small, and to some shady characters. We both left Russia almost at the same time in 1998 upon different circumstances.

Great reading for all involved in Yeltsin’s Russia from inside and outside.

Read this review in Russian.