V D Nabokov

“They are the memoirs of a well-intentioned liberal. They reflect the provisional government’s lack of resolution and ruthlessness in the face of the unscrupulous Bolshevik machine. He was involved in the great historical events of 1917 and he’d go home in the evening and talk to his son, who was 17 at the time and would become one of the century’s greatest authors. If you read the young Nabokov’s memoirs, Speak Memory, you see how much he loved his father.” Read more...

The best books on Why Russia isn’t a Democracy

Martin Sixsmith, Foreign Correspondent