Anna Reid Boeken

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On 8 September 1941, 11 weeks after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, Leningrad was surrounded. The siege would not end for 2 and a half years and as many as 2 million Soviet lives would be lost. This narrative history is interwoven with personal stories of daily siege life drawn from diarists and memoirists on both sides

The astonishing untold history of the Western invasion of Soviet Russia - and the tragedy it created.[Bokinfo].

The Ukraine is one of the most neglected countries in the world. It has a population of 52 million - larger than Britain's - and a land mass the size of France; it also has Chernobyl, and after Russia is the largest nuclear power. The word 'Ukraine' means 'borderland' and for most of its history the lands that make up present-day Ukraine have been a collection of other countries' border regions. Prior to Stalinism and Nazism, Ukraine was ethnically extremely diverse, including Russians, Poles, Jews, Greeks and Armenians. Their ghosts linger in language, literature, and architecture, quite distinct from Russia's.

The fascinating history of an unknown people A vivid mixture of history and reporting, The Shaman's Coat tells the story of some of the world's least-known peoples-the indigenous tribes of Siberia. Russia's equivalent to the Native Americans or Australian Aborigines, they divide into two dozen different and ancient nationalities-among them Buryat, Tuvans, Sakha, and Chukchi. Though they number more than one million and have begun to demand land rights and political autonomy since the fall of communism, most Westerners are not even aware that they exist. Journalist and historian Anna Reid traveled the length and breadth of Siberia-one-twelfth of the world's land surface, larger than the United States and Western Europe combined-to tell the story of its people. Drawing on sources ranging from folktales to KGB reports, and on interviews with shamans and Buddhist monks, reindeer herders and whale hunters, camp survivors and Party apparatchiks, The Shaman's Coat travels through four hundred years of history, from the Cossacks' campaigns against the last of the Tatar khans to native rights activists against oil development. The result is a moving group portrait of extraordinary and threatened peoples, and a unique and intrepid travel chronicle.

Osmého září 1941, krátce po zahájení operace Barbarossa, byl Leningrad obklíčen. Obležení trvalo dva a půl roku, během kterého zahynuly dva miliony lidí. Autorka v knize podrobně popisuje blokádu a její příčiny, přičemž čerpá z rozhovorů s pamětníky, deníkových zápisků účastníků bojů a oficiálních dokumentů. Nově otevřené sovětské archivy jí umožňují odhalit realitu města, kterou dlouho zakrývala propaganda. Obyvatelé, kteří zažívali neuvěřitelné útrapy, se museli pohybovat po zamrzlých ulicích a schodech a čelili extrémním podmínkám. Základními potřebami byly sáňky, kamínka a lampy. V obleženém městě docházelo k rabování, vraždám a kanibalismu, ale také k neobyčejné statečnosti a sebeobětování. Autorka se zabývá otázkami týkajícími se vedení města, jeho krutosti a nekompetentnosti, blízkosti pádu do německých rukou, role Stalina a Moskvy a důvodů, proč město nikdy nebylo dobyto. Zkoumá, co rozhodovalo o přežití a jak lidé dokázali čelit nesmírným útrapám.