The document is the autumn 2016 issue of the East-West Review journal of the Great Britain-Russia Society. It contains articles on various topics related to Russia such as memoirs of life in the Soviet Union, biographies of important historical figures, reviews of recent books on Russian history and culture, and reports on events held by the Society. The issue also includes information about the Society's leadership and details on how to become a member or contributor to the journal.

1. East-West ReviewJournal of the Great Britain-Russia Society
Autumn 2016
ISSN 1759-863X
Vol. 15, no. 2
ISSUE 42

2. 2
Chairman Stuart Thom
Phone/Fax: 0207 924 2081
chairman@gbrussia.org
Vice–Chairman and
Contact for Liaison with
the Russian Community
Dr Elisabeth Robson
(via gbrussia.org)
Hon. Secretary Barbara Emerson
secretary@gbrussia.org
Hon. Treasurer Anna Bennigsen
24 Maida Avenue
London
W2 1ST
treasurer@gbrussia.org
Hon. Membership and
Meetings Secretary
Ute Chatterjee
Mobile: 07884 464461
membership@gbrussia.org
Journal Editor Andrew Sheppard
22 Millway
Chudleigh
Newton Abbot
Devon. TQ13 0JN
journal@gbrussia.org
Talks Organizer
(temporary)
Daniel Salbstein
Tel: 01903 210611
talks@gbrussia.org
Further Education Liaison Professor Andreas Schönle
Youth Officer Nicholas Cobb
youthofficer@gbrussia.org
Russian Kruzhok Olga Selivanova
meadolga@hotmail.com
East–West Review
The journal of the Great Britain–Russia Society, registered charity no. 1148802
Editor: Andrew Sheppard Sub-Editor: Martin Dewhirst
The views expressed by contributors to East–West Review should not be taken as representing those of the
Great–Britain Russia Society itself
The Great Britain–Russia Society’s aim is to advance the education of the public in particular but not exclusively in
the following: the historical background, culture, the economic, political, social conditions and trends in the Russian
Federation and its near neighbours. This is done through lectures and members’ meetings and this Journal, as well as by
encouraging as wide a range of people as possible to become members.
Prospective member subscribers should send a cheque for £20 in favour of Great Britain–Russia Society to the
Hon. Treasurer: by standing order, however, the membership costs only £17.
Great Britain–Russia Society
Patron:
His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent, GCVO
Honorary President:
Professor Geoffrey Hosking, OBE, FBA, FRHistS
Honorary Vice Presidents:
Sir Roderic Lyne, KBE, CMG
The Rt Hon. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, KCMG, QC., PC
The Rt Revd. and Rt Hon. Lord Williams of Oystermouth PC FBA FRSL FLSW
The Rt Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, GCMG The Rt Hon. Baroness Williams of Crosby
Back numbers of East-West Review published from Spring 2014 onwards and offprints of most articles published in
Volume 7 (2008) and later can be obtained from the Editor; contact details as above.

3. 3
Contents
A Teenage Repatriate (part 3)
By Natalia Yurievna Sakharova
(Tr. Kitty Hunter Blair) 5
Russian Geopolitics: Three London spring
events
Rapporteur Frank O’Reilly 13
Who or What was the Pushkin Pleiad?
By Michael Pursglove 16
Sir Paul Dukes (1889-1967) with the lid off
By John Roycroft 22
Isaac Schwartz (1923-2009): The great,
unknown composer
By David Brummell 25
Stalin’s Music Prize: Soviet culture and politics
by Marina Frolova-Walker
Classics for the Masses: Shaping Soviet musical
identity under Lenin and Stalin
by Pauline Fairclough
Reviewed by Andrew Sheppard 30
Rasputin and Other Ironies: The best of Teffi
by Teffi (Ed. Robert Chandler and Anne Marie
Jackson)
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea
by Teffi (Tr. Robert & Elizabeth Chandler, Anne
Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg)
Reviewed by Andrew Sheppard 33
Аристономия (Aristonomia)
by Boris Akunin
Reviewed by Tony Cash 36
Voronezh Notebooks
by Osip Mandelstam (r. Andrew Davis)
Reviewed by Michael Pursglove 39
The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the
Court of St James’s, 1932-43
Edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky
By Daniel Salbstein 41
Beyond Crimea: The new Russian Empire
by Agnia Grigas
The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep:
Russia’s road to terror and dictatorship under
Yeltsin and Putin
by David Satter
Reviewed by Andrew Sheppard 43
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe
Reviewed by Vera Liber 46
Cover illustration:
Ilya Repin (1844-1930)
Cossacks on the Black Sea (Казаки на Черном море), 1908
Correction: On page 38 of the Spring/Summer issue of East-West Review (Vol. 15, No. 1), the e-mail address for enquiries
about the 2016 Moffat Russian Conference was incorrect. The address is: liz@crookedstane.com. We apologise for this
unfortunate error. The Conference is from 21st to 23rd October: see www.moffatbookevents.com.

4. 4
David Brummell is a long-standing member of the
Pushkin Club and a former trustee of Pushkin House
(2004-2013).
Tony Cash spent 40 years in radio and TV production,
including a spell broadcasting Russian language musical
and cultural programmes to the Soviet Union. He was
a founder Producer/Director of the South Bank Show
and is, with Mike Gerrard, the author of The Coder Special
Archive: The untold story of naval national service men learning and
using Russian during the Cold War (Hodgson Press, 2012). He
is currently pursuing a number of further media projects.
Kitty Hunter Blair (Stidworthy) teacher, translator,
author, was active for decades in the Pushkin Club and in
its Bloomsbury regeneration as Pushkin House, and for
many years taught Russian at the University of Cambridge.
Her close friendship with Natalia Sakharova sprang from
a meeting in the Historical Archives in Leningrad in 1989
with Natalia’s genealogist husband, Dr I V Sakharov. She
and Kitty were immediately on the same wavelength, and
over the years would meet in St Petersburg, Cambridge,
Paris, or at the Belgian Monastery of Chevetogne.
Vera Liber is a freelance writer, theatre and dance critic,
and a member of the Society of Authors. She also translates
for the theatre, cinema and literary publications.
Frank O’Reilly is a geographer with a special interest
in development studies, agricultural geography and energy
matters and a regional interest in the Baltic area. He has
served as a visiting lecturer in the Forestry and Social
Policy Departments of the University of Joensuu, Finland.
Michael Pursglove is a former senior lecturer in Russian
Language and Literature and is now a freelance translator
and researcher.
John Roycroft first visited Moscow in 1960, to watch the
conclusion of a world championship chess match. It so
happened that the Gary Powers U2 spy plane was shot
down then. John and others saw material evidence put
on display in a Moscow park. He previously knew some
dictionary Russian, but studied the language only after
retiring from IBM in 1987.
Natalia Sakharova was born and received most of her
schooling in Paris. In 1949, at the age of 15, she moved,
with her émigré parents, ‘back’ to the USSR. It was, of
course, their choice, not hers: ‘had we stayed, I should have
become French.’
Daniel Salbstein was the founding Chairman (2002-08)
of the Great Britain-Russia Society. He is currently serving
once again, on a temporary basis, as the Society’s Talks
Organiser.
List of Contributors
Women gathering the harvest on the Don Steppe in 1919 (i.e. whilst the Civil War raged all around them). They are using
bullocks, or oxen, as draft power and a mechanical reaper. Picture Credit: IWM (Q75919).

5. 36
Book Review
Аристономия (Aristonomia)
by Boris Akunin
(Moscow: Захаров, 2012) 560pp., ISBN: 978-5815911390
Reviewed by Tony Cash
Prodigiously prolific, Boris Akunin is best known for
his popular detective stories. At least 15 of them, set
in the Tsarist period, feature the talented investigator
Erast Fandorin. Three further tales star a female sleuth,
a nun, Sister Pelagia. Using the pen name Anna Borisova
to achieve a woman’s perspective, Akunin has published
three literary novels on contemporary themes. Under
yet another pseudonym, A O Brusnikin (an obvious
anagram), he’s also penned three historical
novels located variously in the times of Peter
the Great, the 1840’s conquest of the Caucasus,
and the Crimean War of the 1850s. Many
of these works he has himself adapted for
cinema and TV. He has plays to his credit,
too. Recently, he felt moved to explain to his
readers the deep-rooted historical reasons
why it’s been so difficult for his country
fully to embrace democracy. To analyse
the factors involved he’s embarked on
a ten-tome history of the Russian state
from the earliest times to the present
day – individual volumes appearing
alongside matching novels. All this in
less than two decades.
Aristonomia is an unusual
departure. Picking up a copy, you
straightway notice the author’s
name on the cover in double-
barrelled format, minus forename -
Akunin-Chkhartishvili. The second component, his
actual surname, reveals a Georgian family background. And
he was indeed born in that former Soviet republic, but has
lived in Moscow since the age of two and claims to feel
‘only ten per cent’ Georgian. The combined moniker singles
out this book, suggesting something far more weighty and
personal than the thrillers and genre novels of his previous
fictional output. And so it proves to be.
The principal action of Aristonomia occurs during the
internecine struggle between Whites and Reds in the Russian
Civil War. The narrative is interlarded with fascinating
philosophical ruminations whose objective, as the Foreword
states, is to unravel ‘the meaning of life’. Fortunately, nothing
quite so metaphysical is here implied. Akunin-Chkhartishvili
(henceforth A-Ch) is simply enquiring by what moral
standards, and with what purposes, men should live and act.
The one-word title is an original coining by the author, and
its meaning is pretty well summed up in a five-line definition
printed large and in bold on page 148:
A MAN MAY BE CALLED AN ARISTONOM
IF HE STRIVES TO DEVELOP HIS TALENTS,
POSSESSES SELF-ESTEEM, ACTS
RESPONSIBLY, DISPLAYS SELF-CONTROL
AND COURAGE, AND AT THE SAME TIME
SHOWS CONSIDERATION AND EMPATHY
TOWARDS OTHERS.
For this reader at least, digressions from the plot in
no way detract from the novel’s appeal. Indeed,
A-Ch’s philosophical, literary and
historical musings offer a variety
of illuminating perspectives,
implicitly inviting us, for example,
to gauge how moral are the actions
of the protagonists on either side of
the Civil War divide. Aristonomia has
more dimensions than your average
thriller, but it still satisfies the basic
requirements of an enthralling page-
turner.
The story opens in Petrograd
(formerly St Petersburg), shortly before
the toppling of Tsar Nicholas II in the
February 1917 Revolution. The central
character is Anton Klobukov, a 19-year-old
introspective be-spectacled law student who
receives a sophisticated Kodak camera as a
present. Six of his sepia photos appear here and
there as if tacked into a family album. Disinclined
to come out either for or against the Revolution,
he’s the person through whose eyes events are observed and
judged. After the Bolshevik putsch and the outbreak of civil
war, the course of his life is largely determined by two of his
father’s former students, both harbouring strong paternal
feelings towards him. Pankrat Rogachov is a committed,
even idealistic, Bolshevik who rises high in Dzerzhinsky’s
secret police, the Cheka. Pyotr Berdyshev is a leading
proponent of the White cause, eventually a loyal trusty of
Baron Peter von Wrangel, the anti-Communists’ last hope.
As the Red Terror instigated in 1918 in reply to the
attempted assassination of Lenin begins to abate, Rogachov
asks his protégé why he thinks the Bolsheviks not only
seized power but were able to hold on to it. ‘Because you’re
one flesh with the people’, Anton answers. ‘Nonsense,’
counters Pankrat, ‘that’s just intellectual romanticism … the
people obeyed the authorities because they’d got used to
tsarism, which had been there for ever. If they’re to submit
to the new power, they have to fear it. That’s human nature.’

6. 37
Book Review
One of the most gripping and intriguing scenes in the
novel occurs when Anton tells Rogachov that his Kodak
was stolen by Boyko, a Chekist who’d arrested him. Boyko is
called to his boss’s office and asked whether he has a camera
to take a snap of the men in the room. Not recognising his
former prisoner, the thief says yes and proudly runs to fetch
it. (The resulting three-shot is shown on page 164.) Photo
taken, Boyko asks if anything more is required. Rogachov
brutally tells him to put the stolen camera on the table along
with his belt and pistol, and has him arrested. ‘A Chekist
can be expected to be up to his elbows, even his shoulders,
in enemy blood’, explains Rogachov, ‘but not shit. Enemy
blood washes off, because we don’t stint our own blood. But
shit sticks for ever.’
The uniformed individual in the picture is Filip Blyakhin,
Rogachov’s dependable right-hand man and
‘Bolshevik Pinkerton’, who is successfully
hiding his past as a Tsarist agent. (Have
there not been suggestions, never proven,
that Stalin dallied with the Tsarist Okhrana?
Whenever Filip appeared front stage that
thought came to mind unbidden.) Unlike
Anton, Filip has bought, ostensibly, into the
whole Soviet project: Communist Russia is
now his ‘beloved mother’.
For the young Koblukov, however,
the country ‘isn’t even his stepmother’.
Appalled by the bloodletting, he’s tempted
to go abroad. Disappointment in love is
another factor prompting him to emigrate.
After the death of his parents in a suicide
pact, Pasha, the domestic family servant,
had tended to his emotional and physical needs. Their
passionate relationship is swiftly ended by Anton when,
after several weeks in prison, he returns to the house and
is invited by her to live in a ménage à trois with one of her
Bolshevik Party comrades.
In a very astute plotting gambit, A-Ch has Anton
walking around the city at night peering into windows as
he looks for better-heeled families who might welcome
his offer of being a night-watchman for them. His overtly
furtive behaviour leads three counter-revolutionaries to
assume he’s a Red agent spying on the bourgeoisie. Only the
arrival of the trio’s leader, old family friend Berdyshev, saves
him from instant immolation. ‘There’s a real war on,’ says
Anton’s deliverer, ‘much more blood will flow. To thwart
the revolution an iron military dictatorship will emerge. We
will fight fire with fire. You don’t need to see all this. Leave
Russia. Come back when the worst is over.’
With help from Berdyshev, Anton escapes to Finland,
travels through Germany, and ends up finally in Switzerland,
a country blessedly free of revolutionary turmoil, industrial
strife, or the Spanish flu at that time ravaging so many other
countries. He finds work in a Zurich hospital, and is lucky
enough to gain the favour of an exceptionally talented
surgeon who persuades him to train as an anaesthetist.
There, our hero falls in love with Victoria, the female
companion of a rich young man suffering from a heart
defect only an innovative, life-threatening procedure can
remedy. Laurence, the invalid, amazes Anton by appearing
not at all apprehensive about the forthcoming ordeal. He
explains that such pluck is feasible if ‘you have one fear
that’s so strong it stifles all the rest … the fear of losing
self-respect’.
Realising that he cannot hope to win Victoria’s love,
Anton reconciles himself to a future without her. In a fine
simile, he’s likened to someone floating past ‘an indescribable
island, bewitched by the landscape, but the ship continues
on its way, the island, like a tempting mirage, disappears
under the horizon, and no souvenir is
left of it except a black and white photo’.
Appropriately, Anton’s image of Victoria
and Laurence adorns the opening page of
the novel’s Swiss episodes.
Aristonomia is rich in gratifying
synergies. For the whole to be bigger than
the sum of parts, elements have to relate,
and A-Ch is most adept at interlacing the
many attractive (sometimes, of course,
given the subject matter, horrendous)
threads that constitute the story. Anton
writes to his mentor Berdyshev expressing
his feelings of guilt for seeking personal
happiness abroad while his country bleeds.
He seeks permission to return to a Russia
which, ‘however wild and bloody’, is his
home. Unlike his father, a pacifist in the Tolstoyan mode, he
understands that it may be necessary in certain circumstances
to use force, but reliance on armed might has not brought
the Whites success: ‘Victory in the civil war will be won’, he
writes, ‘not by shooting but by conviction, by words, and
even more, by deeds’.
Anton returns to Russia as the White Army is about
to make its last stand in Crimea. He lands in Sevastopol,
the peninsula’s principal naval base. There, he’s once again
taken up by Berdyshev, who optimistically claims the
successful Polish invasion of Soviet Russia as a ‘gift’ for
the White cause. Another ‘gift’ is Baron von Wrangel’s
assumption of military command. Berdyshev excoriates
the Baron’s predecessors, ‘flabby Alekseev’ and ‘martinet
Kornilov’. If Wrangel had been in post at the beginning of
1918, he asserts, ‘Moscow would long have been free of the
Bolsheviks’. Berdyshev has only one reservation about the
Whites’ new C-in-C: ‘from a propaganda point of view it’s a
pity he’s a baron. But, as the English say, nobody is perfect’
(the last three words in English).
It’s clear A-Ch has steeped himself in the history of the
Civil War period. That doesn’t prevent him from inventing
Boris Akunin pictured in 2012.

7. 38
Book Review
a fictional political movement when it serves the interests
of the story. Berdyshev outlines a plan he and like-minded
colleagues have been working on, to have a White Crimea
come to terms with the Bolsheviks. There would be an offer
of peaceful co-existence with free migration between the
two Russias. He paints a glowing picture of a new country
characterised by individual rights and enlightenment – the
region ‘transformed into a beautiful rose, the scent of which
will intoxicate the rest of Russia’. The scheme’s adherents,
into whose number Anton is enrolled, call themselves the
‘Brotherhood of the White Rose’.
But Crimea is far from being the White stronghold
of the Brotherhood’s dreams: there’s a powerful Red
underground, and predictably (though satisfyingly for this
reader), Rogachov is there to give it momentum. Anton
becomes the go-between who investigates whether the
White Rose plan has any chance of success, reasoning that
it would be foolish to give up the opportunity to explain
the two Russias idea to a ‘clever, substantial, unselfish man
who was not at all like the fanged, claw-handed monster of
a Bolshevik depicted in [White] propaganda posters’. On
hearing the proposition, Rogachov is scathing. Pouring in
its billions, wouldn’t international capital want to turn White
Crimea into a shopfront for petty bourgeois happiness?
Anton hadn’t thought of that. ‘If we leave the Crimean
peninsula to Wrangel,’ Rogachov protests, ‘there’ll soon be
a British base here. We know there are already talks going
on about this.’
As a student of the Civil War, I was intrigued by this
passage and even contacted A-Ch to discover whether
he was aware of any evidence which might substantiate
Rogachov’s statement about such Russo-British talks. He
assured me in an e-mail that, as others have argued, Britain’s
feelings about Russia at this juncture were effectively - ‘let’s
be shot of this place’.
For most of the rest of the story, Anton tags along
in Rogachov’s wake, witnessing the slaughter of scarcely-
trained Polish foot soldiers by seasoned Red cavalrymen;
being taken prisoner by a vengeful, more battle-hardened
Polish detachment; putting to good use medical training
undergone in Zurich. Khariton, a tough, injured, simple Red
Cossack brings tears to the young man’s eyes when he calls
him brother for saving his life in a tricky operation. ‘This
is the most important moment in my life’, thinks Anton.
Any reader who recalls the role played by the peasant Platon
Karataev in the fortunes of Pierre Bezukhov in Tolstoy’s
War and Peace may be forgiven for suspecting a parallel here.
However, A-Ch is far too talented and conscientious a
story-teller to allow such a comparison to stand. Not long
after this incident, Khariton’s cavalry squadron attacks a
small Jewish community in an abominable, painful-to-read
pogrom, which Anton is powerless to prevent. The novel
concludes on a note of desperation, Anton contemplating a
life of seclusion until, at some future date, he may write an
account of all these events.
As of today, sadly, there are no plans for an English
translation of Aristonomia, although I’m told publishing
rights have been acquired in France. ☐
White artillery: guns and training provided by the British.
Picture Credit: IWM (Q75898).
SUTTON RUSSIAN CIRCLE
The Sutton Russian Circle’s Programme for its 33rd year commences on 16th September 2016
with an illustrated lecture on The Nutcracker Ballet Story.
For details of the full programme for the 2016-17 season (12 meetings) see www.suttonrussiancircle.org.uk
or contact the Chairman and Programme Manager, Bob Dommett, on 01403 256593.

8. Summary of Guest Speakers: Autumn 2016
The South Caucasus between Russia, Iran & Turkey: A historical & contemporary
reassessment of regional geopolitics
Dr Harun Yilmaz
Wednesday 14th September 2016
How the oligarchs used television to gain control of Russia
Dr Arkady Ostrovsky
Thursday 29th September 2016
Russia’s new tools for confronting the West: Continuity and innovation in Moscow’s exercise of power
Keir Giles
Wednesday 12th October 2016
The Maisky Diaries
Professor Gabriel Gorodetsky
Monday 31st October 2016
Putin and the new order
Dr Martin McCauley
Wednesday 16th November 2016
N.B. This talk will be preceeded by the Society’s Annual General Meeting at 5.45pm for 6.00pm
Nothing is true and everything is possible
Peter Pomerantsev
Thursday 1st December 2016
Armenian Byzantium: From 950 to 1084AD
Toby Bromige
Monday 12th December 2016
All talks are at 6.30pm for 7.00pm at Pushkin House, 5a Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2TA
E
Great Britain–Russia Society
Great Britain-Russia Society Traditional Russian Old New Year Party
at the Civil Service Club, 13-15 Great Scotland Yard, SW1A 2HJ
on Friday 13th
January 2017, 6:30pm for 7:00pm
There will be a three course à la carte menu &
live Russian music
£25 per person
inclusive of half a bottle of house wine or mineral water and soft drinks
For all talks and for the Russian Old New Year Party, visit our website for more information
and to book places for yourself and your guests
www.gbrussia.org