Moscow Calling

In a career spanning forty years, Angus Roxburgh lived and worked in Russia as a literary translator, as Moscow correspondent of the Sunday Times and the BBC, and as a media consultant to the Kremlin. He witnessed Russian history unfolding at first hand - from the darkest days of communism and the Cold War, through the exhilaration of Gorbachev's perestroika reforms and the chaos of Yeltsin's rebuilding of capitalism, to the authoritarian Russia of Putin. Moscow Calling is his story of those momentous years. Part history, part travelogue, it takes the reader from the muddy suburbs of communist Moscow to the corridors of Putin's Kremlin, from the Baltic to Siberia, from artists' studios to the war-zone of Chechnya. Written with passion and humour, and a deep knowledge of the experiences and concerns of ordinary Russians, it is the essential background for understanding Russia today.