MY FELLOW PRISONERS

December 20, 2013 marked the release of one of Russia’s most notable political prisoners. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was given a presidential pardon and quickly moved to serve as an advocate for civil society in Russia through his foundation, Open Russia.  Since his release he has raised awareness of Russia’s perilous economic state as well as speaking out against President Putin. Khodorkovsky has put pen to paper and written the newly released My Fellow Prisoners, a memoir that addresses corruption in the penal system of Russia. After being wrongfully incarcerated for 10 years for charges of tax evasion, Khodorkovsky has become resolute in bringing to light the prisoner’s plight.

In his memoir, he addresses the issue of the skewed scale of justice; his anecdotes not only touch upon the lives of fellow prisoners but also the guards of the system and the prison society they create and help foster. Many hold the belief that his arrest was more politically motivated than anything else. Seen as a figure with growing strength in opposition of Putin’s personal agenda, plenty currently look to him to bridge the growing gap between the governing body of Russia and his fellow countrymen.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky has held various interviews with media outlets where one can discern what his intentions for his future as a free man will be. His most recent meeting with The Guardian offers advice even the non-persecuted should bear in mind, “Prison taught me that time does not have as much significance as we think. Just because something didn’t happen today doesn’t mean it won’t happen tomorrow.” There is no doubt that Khodorkovsky is a man with a plan filled with enough vigor for life that he will actualize them to the best of his ability. An article published by the Financial Times discloses that he holds a personal responsibility to Russia and is willing to take the mantle of “crisis manager” as an interim president of sorts in order to see a gradual change in the political environment.  Moreover, in an interview with Bloomberg, Khodorkovsky presents an option for the ruling power of Russia to cede power in order to ensure both sides safely continue to exist-- thus preventing either one from wreaking havoc on the other.

My Fellow Prisoners is available now.

Available Today: RUSSIA: A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East by Martin Sixsmith

From former BBC Moscow correspondent Martin Sixsmith comes Russia: A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East, a new single volume history of Russia, available today from the Overlook Press.

During the summer of 1991, a hard-line coup against reformist president Mikhail Gorbachev was undermined, as ordinary Russians protested in the streets to defend democracy and Boris Yeltsin famously mounted a Soviet tank to join the resistance movement. In the aftermath of the failed August coup and the eventual dissolution of the Communist Party, citizens of the world anxiously awaited Russia’s transition to a Western-style market democracy, only to be disappointed by runaway inflation, ethnic violence, and rampant political corruption.

More than twenty years later, Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin is facing the largest civil protests since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia looks at the events of 1991 and places them within the broadest historical context, highlighting the previous turning points in more than a thousand years of Russian history when the nation could have gone either way—down the path of reform and liberal democracy or totalitarian rule and autocracy. With decades of experience reporting for the BBC in Eastern Europe, Sixsmith settles the score in this accurate and engrossing story of Russia’s path, skillfully tracing the conundrums of contemporary Russia to their roots in its troubled past.

Martin Sixsmith recently contributed an original piece to the Los Angeles Review of Books on Russia’s “New Times of Trouble” and was profiled by Russian daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta’s supplement Russia Beyond the Headlines. To celebrate the release of Russia, we’re giving away one copy to a randomly selected subscriber to the blog. We’ll be drawing a winner tomorrow afternoon at 5pm (EST), so you still have twenty four hours to sign up for your chance to win.

Advance Praise for RUSSIA:

“Russia, a 1,000 Year Chronicle of the Wild East has all the ingredients to become the leading popular history of Russia. Colloquial, personal and anecdotal in style … well researched and factually sound.”

– The Times Literary Supplement

“Sixsmith exemplifies good storytelling. He writes with the cadence and comfort of a professional talker and all of Russian history seems to earn his complete interest.” – ForeWord Reviews

“Twenty years after the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, Russia remains a world-class power, and former BBC Moscow correspondent Sixsmith delivers a thoroughly satisfying history.” – Publishers Weekly

“Whip-smart … a compelling look at Russian history by a practiced Russia hand.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Sixsmith, formerly a BBC television reporter posted in Russia, immerses readers in the Russian landscape and peoples with descriptions of places he’s visited and quotations of poetry.” – Booklist

“Martin Sixsmith has put his experience as a longstanding reporter in Moscow for the BBC to very good use in this engagingly written account of Russia’s conflicted history.” – History Book Club

“Among the many contemporary books about Russia, general readers are likely to choose Sixsmith’s 600-page tome for its comprehensiveness and air of authority. As popular history, it is enjoyable and engaging.” – Russia Beyond the Headlines

Early Praise for Daniel Kalder's STRANGE TELESCOPES

Kirkus Reviews gives us a sneak peek at Daniel Kalder's Strange Telescopes: Following the Apocolypse from Moscow to Siberia: "Scottish writer Kalder (Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist) offers tales of weird, occult doings in the land of Rasputin. Unless you're a longtime reader of Outside—in which Erin Arvedlund did a more economical job of telling the same story—you might not know that the sewers of Moscow, Russia, are home to an odd tribe of postmodern bohemian intellectuals who, tired of the impossibility of utopias aboveground, are trying their hands at creating a paradise below. Some of the subterraneans are more normal than others, relatively speaking, but it's no easy matter to distinguish those who have lost their marbles and claim to work directly for Vladimir Putin via secret telephone from those who truly do work for Putin via secret telephone ("That connects me directly to the Ministry of Emergency Situations!"). Whatever their motivations and connections, the Diggers, as they're known, have made a wondrous city beneath the city, a world into which Kalder guides readers. Meanwhile, aboveground, he writes, psychics and clergy are doing a land-office business conducting exorcisms "with the same frequency that plumbers patched up the pipes in the crumbling tower blocks of the former Soviet Union." One such exorcist divides his time between the underground and the surface world, and Kalder accompanies him on his chases after Satan, "catastrophe surfing" in the quieter corners of the erstwhile Evil Empire. In Siberia, a former traffic cop has concocted a millenarian sci-fi cult that makes cousins such as Scientology look rational. According to them, God is "a light that doesn't burn, which is cold and white and tender and gentle." Naturally enough, subterraneans and exorcists figure in it. . . A hoot to read."