Review: Dissolution, by Nicholas Binge

What a strange book. It has elements of time travel, but it’s not really a time travel book. Much of it consists of an interrogation taking place we don’t know where in which the interrogator…


Review: Stalin, by Harold Shukman

This is one of a crop of very short biographies of Soviet dictator published in recent years. Here is what I loved about it: Harold Shukman is a well-known academic, an expert on Soviet history….


Israel has had enough of Netanyahu

Public opinion polls in Israel consistently show that Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government cannot win the next election. The parties of the centre and left are consistently polling higher than those of the right.  And it’s…


Review: Red Widow, by Alma Katsu

First of all, that’s a great title for a spy thriller. But “Red Widow” is not a great spy thriller. Having spent many hours reading it, I don’t see the point of the story. Not…



Belarus: Time for solidarity

Last week I interviewed Lizaveta Merliak, who runs Salidarnast, a group campaigning in support of the embattled independent trade union movement in Belarus.   Liza was an activist in the Belarusian unions who was forced to…



Marx & Engels on the German elections

At the start of the Cold War, in 1952, a book came out in the USA and Britain entitled “The Russian Menace to Europe”.  The authors were listed as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.  A…