Pushkin's Children

These twenty pieces address the politics, culture, and literature of Russia with both flair and erudition. Passionate and opinionated, often funny, and using ample material from daily life to underline their ideas and observations, Tatyana Tolstaya"s essays range across a variety of subjects. They move in one unique voice from Soviet women, classical Russian cooking, and the bliss of snow to the effect of Pushkin and freedom on Russia writers; from the death of the czar and the Great Terror to the changes brought by Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin in the last decade. Throughout this engaging volume, the Russian temperament comes into high relief. Whether addressing literature or reporting on politics, Tolstaya"s writing conveys a deep knowledge of her country and countrymen. Pushkin"s Children is a book for anyone interested in the Russian soul.

Tatyana Tolstaya is the author of two collections of stories and a novel. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New Republic, and other periodicals, as well as in the New York Review of Books, After teaching at Princeton University and for many years at Skidmore College, she now lives in Moscow Jamey Gambrell has been translating Tatyana Tolstaya's fiction and nonfiction since 1990. She has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for translation

CONTENTS
Introduction by Alma Guillermoprieto vi
Women’s Lives 1
The Great Terror and the Little Terror 14
Misha Gorbachev’s Small World 27
Yeltsin Routs Gorbachev 49
The Future According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn 61
Pushkin’s Children 80
The Death of the Tsar 98
Kitchen Conversations 112
In the Ruins of Communism 124
Yeltsin and Russia Lose 140
The Past According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn 155
On Joseph Brodsky 168
Russia’s Resurrection 175
Dreams of Russia, Dreams of France 187
History in Photographs 196
The Price of Eggs 206
Snow in St. Petersburg 216
Andrei Platonov’s Unusual World 218
The Making of Mr. Putin 227
Lies I Lived 240