Memoir of a Polish Girl at the Time of the Russian Revolution (1914/1924). Expanded second edition with additional photographs. Irene Rochas was born Aniela Tarnowicz in Warsaw in 1906, the youngest child in a large upper middle-class Polish family. With the outbreak of WW I in 1914, Irene and her family were stranded in Moscow, and with the further outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution, they were able to return to their homeland only after a delay of four years. Irene's rediscovered narrative -- written when she was fifty years old and set in the form of a novel -- is a remembrance of those eventful years of her childhood in Moscow and Warsaw. In this sense, it is truly a "memoir". Yes, "danse macabre" is the dance of death, the last waltz to which we are all invited. But Irene's "Danse Macabre" -- with its inquisitive and empathetic tone... and its often searing imagery -- is less a rumination on the inevitability of death and more a testament to the vibrancy of life itself. [345 pp., Endnote, 29 plates]
Helena Tarnowicz-Barlicka was born in Warsaw in 1894, one of eight children in a large, traditional upper middle-class Polish family. With the outbreak of WWI in 1914, the family found itself stranded in Moscow, and with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, they did not return to Poland until 1918. Helena relentlessly pursued her dream of becoming a physician. She started her studies in Moscow in 1917, but it was not until 1925 in Warsaw that she finally graduated. The most important person in her life outside of her family was Norbert Barlicki, the Polish publicist, lawyer and politician of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) who was executed by the Germans during the Second World War. The testament by Helena is brief but evocative. It speaks for itself. It gives us insight into the character and mindset of Norbert Barlicki, but even more so, insight into what an extraordinary individual was Helena herself. Paperback, Illustr., 52 pp. with facsimile of original manuscript (in Polish).
Danse macabre: Wspomnienia polskiej dziewczyny z czasu rewolucji rosyjskiej (1914/24) - This is the Polish language version (wersja polska) of: "Danse Macabre: Memoir of a Polish Girl at the Time of the Russian Revolution (1914/1924)" by Irene Rochas, pseudonym of Aniela Tarnowicz.Irena Rochas urodziła sie jako Aniela Tarnowicz w Warszawie w 1906 roku i była najmłodszym dzieckiem w duzej, tradycyjnej polskiej rodzinie wyzszej klasy sredniej. Wybuch w 1914 roku I wojny swiatowej zastał Irene i jej rodzine w Moskwie, a pózniejszy wybuch rewolucji bolszewickiej uniemozliwił im powrót do ojczyzny przez nastepne cztery lata.Pomimo nieprzerwanej serii tragicznych wydarzen w rodzinie - które wydarzyły sie po powrocie do Polski - Irena tkwiła w swej determinacji zrobienia kariery teatralnej. Została przyjeta do szkoły aktorskiej w Warszawie i rozpoczeła znakomicie zapowiadajaca sie kariere aktorska. Jej kariera była niestety krótka. Wyszła za maz, urodziła dzieci i w wyniku wybuchu kolejnej wojny, niespodziewanie w 1940 roku znalazła sie w Ameryce. Narracja Ireny - napisana w wieku piecdziesieciu lat i utrzymana w formie powiesci - to wspomnienie tych burzliwych lat jej dziecinstwa w Moskwie i w Warszawie. W tym sensie jest to klasyczny pamietnik"; ale jak szybko czytelnik sie przekona, jest równiez czyms w wiele wiecej.Wprawdzie danse macabre" jest tancem smierci, ostatnim walcem, do którego wszyscy jestesmy zaproszeni. Ale Danse Macabre" Ireny - ze swym interesujacym, empatycznym tonem i wywierajaca głebokie wrazenie obrazowoscia - jest mniej nastawiony na przezywanie nieuchronnosci smierci, a bardziej na afirmacje bogactwa zycia.
Cynthia Grant Bowman is a professor of law at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York. She met the subject of this biography, Maria Chudzinski, while teaching at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, where Maria worked in the international section of the law library. Maria was born in Poland before the German invasion and the Second World War and joined the underground resistance, or Home Army, as a teenager. She fought during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and was taken prisoner by the Germans when the city fell. In 1945 Maria moved to England, where she was a member of the Polish Air Force, ultimately settling in Chicago in 1952. She has been very active in the Polish-American community in Chicago since that time. Intrigued by Maria's past, Professor Bowman asked her to tell her story. This book is the result.
Yashka is the autobiography of Maria Botchkareva, a young Russian woman who bravely took up arms first against the Germans in World War One, and then opposed the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Maria describes a hard upbringing as a member of the Russian peasantry. Married at sixteen to her first husband Afanasy, it wasn't long before his charms were replaced by physical abuse; Maria soon fled. She applied for work as a servant girl, only to discover that the man advertising actually owned a string of brothels; she was promptly sent to the town of Sretensk to work in one. Such harsh experiences in youth nevertheless built a certain determination and toughness in the young Maria. When war broke out in 1914, she applied to join as a soldier - facing verbal abuse and sexual harassment from the outset, she nevertheless took to military life with eagerness and courage. The soldiers nicknamed her 'Yashka', and a measure of respect was slowly gained as she demonstrated great bravery.
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
Marina Yurlova served in uniform as a fighting Cossack, volunteering in 1914 at the age of 14. Though repeatedly wounded in combat, she returned to military service and repeatedly won the St. George¿s Cross for bravery. Through the war and revolution, Marina encountered Turks, Kurds and Reds, drove cars and trucks, fought for the Czech Legion, trekked overland across Siberia, and finally boarded a ship at Vladivostok to travel to Japan in 1919. Remarkably, whenever asked, Marina never denied she was a girl. She distills these five years of her life into a captivating narrative, filled with observations and impressions of places and people Marina encountered in her extensive travels through Russia.
Separated from her three young sons, stripped of possessions and fearing for her life, Countess Edith Sollohub was trapped in revolutionary Russia. This is her account of her escape, assuming new identities as a Polish refugee, a travelling musician and a Red Army nurse; enduring hunger, imprisonment and loneliness to be reunited with her family.
“Monumental.” —The New York Times Book Review Pulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin has written the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Hitler's Germany that is the signal event of modern world history In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest peasant economy into “socialist modernity,” otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost. What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways. Building and running a dictatorship, with life and death power over hundreds of millions, made Stalin into the uncanny figure he became. Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is the story of how a political system forged an unparalleled personality and vice versa. The wholesale collectivization of some 120 million peasants necessitated levels of coercion that were extreme even for Russia, and the resulting mass starvation elicited criticism inside the party even from those Communists committed to the eradication of capitalism. But Stalin did not flinch. By 1934, when the Soviet Union had stabilized and socialism had been implanted in the countryside, praise for his stunning anti-capitalist success came from all quarters. Stalin, however, never forgave and never forgot, with shocking consequences as he strove to consolidate the state with a brand new elite of young strivers like himself. Stalin’s obsessions drove him to execute nearly a million people, including the military leadership, diplomatic and intelligence officials, and innumerable leading lights in culture. While Stalin revived a great power, building a formidable industrialized military, the Soviet Union was effectively alone and surrounded by perceived enemies. The quest for security would bring Soviet Communism to a shocking and improbable pact with Nazi Germany. But that bargain would not unfold as envisioned. The lives of Stalin and Hitler, and the fates of their respective dictatorships, drew ever closer to collision, as the world hung in the balance. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is a history of the world during the build-up to its most fateful hour, from the vantage point of Stalin’s seat of power. It is a landmark achievement in the annals of historical scholarship, and in the art of biography.
Many scholars have tried to assess Adolf Hitler's influence on the German people, usually focusing on university towns and industrial communities, most of them predominately Protestant or religiously mixed. This work by Walter Rinderle and Bernard Norling, however, deals with the impact of the Nazis on Oberschopfheim, a small, rural, overwhelmingly Catholic village in Baden-Wuerttemberg in southwestern Germany. This incisively written book raises fundamental questions about the nature of the Third Reich. The authors portray the Nazi regime as considerably less "totalitarian" than is commonly assumed, hardly an exemplar of the efficiency for which Germany is known, and neither revered nor condemned by most of its inhabitants. The authors suggest that Oberschopfheim merely accepted Nazi rule with the same resignation with which so many ordinary people have regarded their governments throughout history. Based on village and county records and on the direct testimony of Oberschopfheimers, this book will interest anyone concerned with contemporary Germany as a growing economic power and will appeal to the descendants of German immigrants to the United States because of its depiction of several generations of life in a German village.
