RED FORTRESS The Secret Heart of Russia’s History
By Catherine Merridale
Last week Geoffrey Hosking spoke to the Pushkin Club. On 3 Dec Catherine Merridale, another of our finest historians, will be speaking to us about the history of the Kremlin - the subject of her newly published and highly acclaimed book.
The extraordinary story of one of the most significant, mysterious and emblematic buildings in Russian history – the Kremlin; a stage set for Russia’s secretive power and the heart of Russian history.
“Catherine Merridale is a superb historian, among the very best of her generation”
- Tony Judt
Both beautiful and profoundly menacing, the Kremlin has dominated Moscow for many centuries. A threatening palace of astonishing scale, it is one of the very few buildings in the world which still keeps its original, late medieval function: built to intimidate and to consolidate the ruler’s power.
Catherine Merridale’s exceptional new book revels in the drama of this frightening compound, taking us behind its great red walls and towers and revealing the most startling events in Russia’s history. From sacred Orthodox religious site to tyrant’s lair, from sumptuous palace to greasy Bolshevik canteen, the Kremlin has been continually reshaped to accord with shifting ideological needs, bearing the traces of each ruler’s social, spiritual, military or regal priorities. It has allowed all its inhabitants to claim to be the heirs of Russia’s great historic destiny, as potent now under Vladimir Putin as it was under earlier, baleful inhabitants.
MORE DETAILS: http://www.pushkinhouse.org/single-event/events/red-fortress-the-secret-heart-of-russias-history
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