Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
| Format | US | UK |
|---|
This was published by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2008 and contains intelligence documents on Stalingrad at the time of the battle. Khristoforov is a historian, and he had access to the KGB archives. That’s his book’s main value. Some documents are very interesting: what the NKVD was doing during the terrible days when the Germans were going to take Stalingrad. Everybody was sure that the Germans would take it, even Stalin, because he’d lost communication with the city.
Yes it’s true, they’re classified. But let’s talk about your fourth book, which concerns the same subject as Antony Beevor’s history of the siege of Stalingrad.
Yes, by V Khristoforov – it’s also called Stalingrad and was published a couple of years ago by the Russian Academy. He’s a historian, and he did have access to the KGB archives. That’s his book’s main value. Some documents are very interesting: what the NKVD was doing during the terrible days when the Germans were going to take Stalingrad. Everybody was sure that the Germans would take it, even Stalin, because he’d lost communication with the city.
This collection of documents shows the NKVD in readiness to blow up all the industrial enterprises. It shows how they were stopping the troops bolting from the battlefield and searching for spies and saboteurs, how much they fought. It’s invaluable for any researcher writing on the subject. So thank you very much, Mr Khristoforov.
Read full interview
Dr Lyubov Vinogradova was born in Moscow in 1973. After graduating from the Moscow Agricultural Academy and later defending a PhD in microbiology, she took a second degree in foreign languages, choosing English and German. In 1995 she was introduced to Antony Beevor and helped him research Stalingrad. Since then she has worked on many other research projects with Antony Beevor and other English-speaking writers and also her own projects. She is the co-author (together with Anthony Beevor) of A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army. She says American victims of the Great Depression came to Russia to find jobs and support their families in the 1920 and 30s. ‘The Soviet authorities used all sorts of tricks to get them to take up citizenship. They were told that they had to hand over their American passports temporarily and they never saw them again. And then they lost any rights that American citizens have or legal grounds to be protected. It was a great tragedy.’
