Tolstoy

by Edward Crankshaw

Viking Press, 1974. Cloth. First Edition.

Genres: Russian Literature

276 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Edward Crankshaw (3 January 1909 – 30 November 1984), was a British writer, translator and commentator on Soviet affairs.

Born in London, Crankshaw was educated in the Nonconformist public school, Bishop's Stortford College, Hertfordshire, England. He started working as a journalist for a few months at The Times. In the 1930s he lived in Vienna, Austria, teaching English and learning German. He witnessed Adolf Hitler's Austro-German union in 1938, and predicted the Second World War while living there.

In 1940 Crankshaw was contacted by the Secret Intelligence Service because of his knowledge of German. During World War II Crankshaw served as a 'Y' (Signals Intelligence) officer in the British Army. From 1941 to 1943 he was assigned to the British Military Mission in Moscow, where he served initially as an Army 'Y' specialist and later as the accredited representative of the British 'Y' services, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Following a breakdown in 'Y' cooperation with the Soviet General Staff in December 1942, the British 'Y' Board recalled Crankshaw to London in February 1943. In May he was assigned to Bletchley Park, where he served as a liaison officer on matters pertaining to Russia.

From 1947 to 1968 he worked for the British newspaper The Observer. He died in 1984 in Hawkhurst, Kent.

Crankshaw wrote around 40 books on Austrian, (Vienna; Vienna, the Image of a Culture in Decline; Fall of the House of Habsburg; Gestapo. Instrument of Tyranny; Maria Theresa; Bismarck; The Habsburgs: a dynasty...) and Russian subjects, (Britain and Russia; Putting up with the Russians; Tolstoy: The making of a novelist; Russia without Stalin; The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825–1917; Khrushchev; Khrushchev Remembers; The New Cold War, Moscow vs. Pekin; preface to Grigory Klimov's The Terror Machine).

(source: wikipedia)

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew nothing about Tolstoy except reading his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karina. An aristocrat, autocrat and opinionated man. What a life? Fighting in the Crimean War, a womaniser, argumentative writing genius. The interesting aspect in the book is how he drew on his own life in his stories. In the end he lived into his 80s and had a life that he was dissatisfied with yet incredible in its achievements.

[Albemarle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an eye-opener! I thought of not reading this book – thank God I did! A troubled and at times immensely cruel man, it seems. Most interesting was his approach to War and Peace (amazing descriptions of people and events, yet without mystery or poetry) and Anna Karenina (a relapse towards a more human and accepting description of a ‘fallen’ yet elegant woman. The constant connections between incidents in his life and his novels was an important element, as was the Russian soul, so evident in the younger Dostoevsky.

[Emily]

Jonathan's great uncle! A wonderfully accessible Russian historian. Great stuff!