2 Books Like The Diary of a Russian Lady

An artist for the Illustrated London News, Price sailed with a commercial mission establishing trade with Russian arctic ports on the Kara Sea (the mouth of the Yenisei River). He went up the river through Siberia all the way to Mongolia, and from there another four thousand miles to Shanghai. What he uncovered was basically the terrra incognita of Siberia was astonishing: thriving cities and towns that would be a credit to any developed nation. He was well aware of how surprising this was, went to great pains to describe every aspect of life there. Knowing how the Russian practice of exiling prisoners to Siberia was regarded in the west, he made careful investigations into their lives, as he knew what he was seeing would totally contradict the conventional views.

Petropoulos considers ten important artists who either managed to accommodate themselves to the Third Reich or flourished during it, placing each individual both in the context of his own achievements and his relationship to Adolf Hitler and the Party. His preface and introduction alone make the book valuable, as it gives the reader an idea of the complexity both of the subject and of the society in which these men and women found themselves. His treatment of Hindemith, Richard Strauss, and Leni Riefenstahl is perceptive and thoughtful—particularly so with Riefenstahl. As I can testify from personal experience, anyone attempting any objective account of Germany in this period will be savagely attacked, and Petropoulos picks his way through this minefield very dexterously, although the end result is a difficult read.