Robert Conquest's Top Book Recommendations

Robert ConquestHingley looks at the whole context of Russia – history, literature, what society is like. He knows Russia very well, but he does this as an Englishman knowing Russia very well, and is good at observing how different Russians are. Russia has these curious incongruities – from extreme dullness to hyperactivity. Hingley relishes the bizarre – in life and literature – and gives us stories from the... (Source)

Robert ConquestIn this book, Anne Applebaum goes into the area between the old Russian Empire, Germany and the old Turkish Empire, and sees how it has developed. In 1800, there wasn’t what I would call a Ukrainian – or still less a Belarusian – nation. They become nations when their educated classes came together and formed a nationality, more or less late in the 19th century. I’ve got a railway map in my home... (Source)

Robert ConquestDjilas observed that instead of getting rid of a ruling class, as was supposed to happen, Party members became the ruling class themselves. But it’s not a class analysis in the sense that we generally mean. In Russia you could be a peasant or a worker. You couldn’t be an intellectual because it didn’t count as a class. But if it didn’t count as a class, then why were hundreds of thousands of them... (Source)

Robert ConquestShe was extraordinarily pretty, also, as well as a wonderful singer. And another reason for reading her book is that the photographs are particularly good. She and her husband put up Solzhenitsyn when he was writing The Gulag Archipelago, so they’re all connected. (Source)

Robert ConquestYes let’s do that as I’ve quite a lot to say about old Solzh. It was a critical book – an entirely objective account of a victim in a labour camp. Just one day in an ordinary labour camp. Not exaggerated, not even a particularly nasty day. The most extraordinary part is how is got printed. It ran contrary to everyone in the Communist Party in Russia, but the Novy Mir editor Tvardovsky snuck a... (Source)