|
Polar Star (novel)
''Polar Star'' is a 1989 crime novel by Martin Cruz Smith, set in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. It is a sequel to '' Gorky Park'' and features former militsiya investigator Arkady Renko, taking place during the period of Perestroika.Wroe, Nicholas, ''The Guardian'' (March 26, 2005)Crime Pays/ref> Background After uncovering corruption in high places (in '' Gorky Park''), Renko is dismissed from his job as a Moscow police investigator and is forced to accept a variety of menial jobs in remote parts of the Soviet Union. Finally, he finds himself gutting fish on a factory ship in the Bering Sea, in part to hide from the KGB, who have tried to kill him. The Soviet factory ship is part of a US-Soviet joint venture, with the US fishing vessels catching the fish and turning the catch over to the Soviets for processing (gutting, cleaning, and freezing). The other crew members have signed up with the prospect of a one-day stop at the American port of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Isla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Cruz Smith
Martin Cruz Smith (born November 3, 1942) is an American mystery novelist. He is best known for his nine-novel series (to date) on Russian investigator Arkady Renko, who was first introduced in 1981 with '' Gorky Park''. Early life and education Martin William Smith was born in Reading, Pennsylvania to John Calhoun Smith, jazz musician and Louise Lopez, an American Indian of Pueblo descent, jazz singer and Amerindian rights militant. Martin was educated at Germantown Academy, in Germantown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, then at the University of Pennsylvania, also located in Philadelphia, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing in 1964. He is of partly Pueblo, Spanish, Senecu del Sur and Yaqui ancestry. Career From 1965 to 1969, Smith worked as a journalist and began writing fiction in the early 1970s. He wrote two Slocum adult action Western novels under the pen name Jake Logan. Smith has also written a number of other paperback originals, including a ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glasnost
''Glasnost'' (; russian: link=no, гласность, ) has several general and specific meanings – a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information, the inadmissibility of hushing up problems, and so on. It has been used in Russian to mean "openness and transparency" since at least the end of the 18th century. In the Russian Empire of the late-19th century, the term was particularly associated with reforms of the judicial system. Among these were reforms permitting attendance of the press and the public at trials whose verdicts were now to be read aloud. Vladimir Lenin repeatedly emphasized the importance of glasnost as the most important feature of democracy. In the mid-1980s, it was popularised by Mikhail Gorbachev as a political slogan for increased government transparency in the Soviet Union. Historical usage Human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva argues that the word ''glasnost'' has been in the Russian language for s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels Set In The Soviet Union
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sequel Novels
A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same fictional universe as an earlier work, usually chronologically following the events of that work. In many cases, the sequel continues elements of the original story, often with the same characters and settings. A sequel can lead to a series, in which key elements appear repeatedly. Although the difference between more than one sequel and a series is somewhat arbitrary, it is clear that some media franchises have enough sequels to become a series, whether originally planned as such or not. Sequels are attractive to creators and to publishers because there is less risk involved in returning to a story with known popularity rather than developing new and untested characters and settings. Audiences are sometimes eager for more stories abo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Martin Cruz Smith
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1989 American Novels
File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress Street Viaduct, Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxon Valdez oil tanker runs aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, causing a large Exxon Valdez oil spill, oil spill; The Fall of the Berlin Wall begins the downfall of Communism in Eastern Europe, and heralds German reunification; The United States United States invasion of Panama, invades Panama to depose Manuel Noriega; The Singing Revolution led to the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from the Soviet Union; The stands of Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, Yorkshire, where the Hillsborough disaster occurred; 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, Students demonstrate in Tiananmen Square, Beijing; many are killed by forces of the Chinese Communist Party., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 1989 Loma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., it borders the Canadian province of British Columbia and the Yukon territory to the east; it also shares a maritime border with the Russian Federation's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug to the west, just across the Bering Strait. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean, while the Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest. Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state by area, comprising more total area than the next three largest states ( Texas, California, and Montana) combined. It represents the seventh-largest subnational division in the world. It is the third-least populous and the most sparsely populated state, but by far the continent's most populous territory located mostly north of the 60th paralle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladivostok
Vladivostok ( rus, Владивосто́к, a=Владивосток.ogg, p=vɫədʲɪvɐˈstok) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, covering an area of , with a population of 600,871 residents as of 2021. Vladivostok is the second-largest city in the Far Eastern Federal District, as well as the Russian Far East, after Khabarovsk. Shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Aigun, the city was founded on July 2, 1860 as a Russian military outpost on formerly Chinese land. In 1872, the main Russian naval base on the Pacific Ocean was transferred to the city, stimulating the growth of modern Vladivostok. After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Vladivostok was Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, occupied in 1918 by White Russian and Allies_of_World_War_I, Allied forces, the last of whom from Japan were not withdrawn until 1922; by that tim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dutch Harbour
Dutch Harbor is a harbor on Amaknak Island in Unalaska, Alaska. It was the location of the Battle of Dutch Harbor in June 1942, and was one of the few sites in the United States to be subjected to aerial bombardment by a foreign power during World War II. It was also one of the few sites, besides the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, in incorporated U.S. territory to be bombed by the Japanese in the war. Dutch Harbor is now the home of an important fishing industry. Russian to American Druzhinin, the commander of the Russian ship ''Zakharii I Elisaveta'', is credited for discovering the deep-water harbor now known as Dutch Harbor. Dutch Harbor is located within the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, more precisely on Amaknak Island in the Fox Islands. A mile long spit extending from the northeast end of Amaknak Island makes Dutch Harbor a natural port, protecting ships from the waves and currents of the Bering Sea, although winds off the Bering Sea have tossed shipments from decks of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Socialist Emulation
Socialist competition or socialist emulation (, "sotsialisticheskoye sorevnovanie", or , "sotssorevnovanie") was a form of competition between state enterprises and between individuals practiced in the Soviet Union and in other Eastern bloc states. Competition vs. emulation The first variant is a literal translation of the Russian term, commonly used by Western authors. The second form is an official Soviet translation of the term, intended to put distance from the " capitalist competition", which in its turn was translated as , "kapitalisticheskaya konkurenciya". Implied was that "capitalist competition" only profited those that won, while "socialist emulation" benefited all involved. In Soviet practice, according to Victor Kravchenko and Mikhail Heller, the competition between workers and industries was, however, not voluntary and much fiercer than the Western one. It was enforced by the collective pressure orchestrated by state security services (KGB) and local Communi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Chanson
Russian chanson ( rus, русский шансон, r=russkiy shanson}; from French "chanson") is a neologism for a musical genre covering a range of Russian songs, including city romance songs, author song performed by singer-songwriters, and blatnaya pesnya or "criminals' songs" that are based on the themes of the urban underclass and the criminal underworld. History The Russian chanson originated in the Russian Empire. The songs sung by serfs and political prisoners of the Tsar are very similar in content to the songs sung in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation today. However, during the Soviet Union, the style changed, and the songs became part of the culture of samizdat and dissent. During the Khrushchev thaw, the Soviet Union released millions of prisoners from the gulag. When the former prisoners returned from the gulags back to their homes in the 1950s, the songs that they had sung in the camps became popular with Soviet students and nonconformist intelli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgian People
The Georgians, or Kartvelians (; ka, ქართველები, tr, ), are a nation and indigenous Caucasian ethnic group native to Georgia and the South Caucasus. Georgian diaspora communities are also present throughout Russia, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Ukraine, United States, and European Union. Georgians arose from Colchian and Iberian civilizations of classical antiquity; Colchis was interconnected with the Hellenic world, whereas Iberia was influenced by the Achaemenid Empire until Alexander the Great conquered it. In the 4th century, the Georgians became one of the first to embrace Christianity and now the majority of Georgians are Orthodox Christians, with most following their national autocephalous Georgian Orthodox Church, although there are small Georgian Catholic and Muslim communities as well as a significant number of irreligious Georgians. Located in the Caucasus, on the continental crossroads of Europe and Asia, the High Middle Ages saw Georgian people f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Georgian People")