June 15, 2022

A Loss for Justice


A Loss for Justice

"The Committee against Torture has been protecting the rights of citizens who have suffered from torture and inhuman treatment by government officials all their lives. Despite the obvious benefits of this mission, the authorities have been trying for many years to give it an alien and harmful outline... Apparently, the authorities are giving a signal that torture is becoming (or has already become) part of state policy and is not a problem. Here I would like to remind you about the Constitution, where torture is prohibited (for the time being)."

– Sergey Babinets, chairman of the Russian Committee against Torture, on Telegram

The employees of the Committee against Torture in Russia have decided to officially dissolve the group after the Kremlin recently named it a "foreign agent".

Being given the title of "foreign agent" is harmful to the group because it diminishes their work in the eyes of the Russian public. It also implies that torture has increasingly become more normal for the Kremlin to carry out, despite the Russian constitution. 

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Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

Life Stories
September 01, 2009

Life Stories

The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

Little Golden Calf
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Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.

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