The Mystery of Olga Chekhova Free Ebook

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Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. NOOK Book. During the night of 8 Maylights stayed on all over Moscow. People The Mystery of Olga Chekhova impatiently The Mystery of Olga Chekhova news of the final German surrender. Only the most privileged members of the Soviet elite, such as the writer Ilya Ehrenburg, possessed a radio set which they The Mystery of Olga Chekhova to tune to foreign stations. The The Mystery of Olga Chekhova of the German surrender taken by Marshal Zhukov in Berlin was eventually made by Levitan, the Radio Moscow newsreader, at ten past one on the morning of Wednesday 9 May. Germany has capitulated. This day, in honour of the The Mystery of Olga Chekhova Great Patriotic War, is to be a national holiday, a festival of victory. The inhabitants of communal apartments did not wait for the music to finish. They surged out on to the landings in all stages of dress to congratulate each other. Those with telephones rang their relations and closest friends to share this historic moment with them. Many broke down in tears of relief and sorrow. With some 25 million dead as a result of the war, there was barely The Mystery of Olga Chekhova family in the whole Soviet Union which had not known suffering. He saw an old woman, crying and smiling, showing a photograph of her son in uniform to passers-by and telling them that he had been killed the previous autumn. It was a festival of remembrance as much as a celebration. Officers in uniform, above all those with medals, were cheered and sometimes bounced in the air as The Mystery of Olga Chekhova. Even Ehrenburg, the most famous propagandist of the Red Army, was recognized in the street and suffered the same honour, to his great embarrassment. Outside the American embassy, the crowds shouted their admiration for President Roosevelt, who had died just over a month before, to their genuine sorrow. Khmelev, the director of the Moscow Art Theatre, addressed a spontaneous meeting of the company in the foyer. When the radio played victory marches, I saw a woman through the brightly lit window of a house, dancing and singing to herself. During the course of that day between 2 and 3 million people packed the centre of the capital, from the embankments of the Moskva river up to the Belorussky station. Most of them came armed with bottles of vodka or Georgian champagne, which had been hoarded religiously for this very day. Workers and their families from the suburbs had come into the centre wearing their best clothes. Muscovites who had stayed in the capital during the war were better dressed than those from elsewhere because, during the panic of Octoberevacuees from the city had sold all the clothes they could not take with them to the thrift shops. Moscow, although it had been bombed that winter, had been truly fortunate. The Mystery of Olga Chekhova few buildings had been damaged. The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, to the south and west, towns and villages lay in ruins for hundreds upon hundreds of miles. Some 25 million people were homeless. Survivors lived in dugouts—literally holes in the ground covered by trunks, branches and turf. Hundreds of aircraft flew overhead, releasing red, gold and purple flares. Stalin was cheered spontaneously. Yet even as strangers embraced each other in the streets on that deeply emotional day, a true feeling of victory and joy somehow still seemed just beyond The Mystery of Olga Chekhova reach. The only certain sensation was an exhausted, slightly numb relief. After these celebrations, members of the Moscow Art Theatre felt that they too should mark the end of the war. The Kremlin was planning a huge military parade on Red Square to commemorate the achievements of the Great Patriotic War. They, meanwhile, decided on a special performance. They simply wanted to give thanks that Russian culture had survived the terrible onslaught of the Nazis. She had played it during the very first performance in Januarywatched by their friends Feodor Chaliapin, Maxim Gorky and Rachmaninov. It had painful memories. Anton, her husband, had been seriously ill. Six months later the playwright was dead. In those days, Olga Knipper- Chekhova, with her small, animated eyes and firm jaw, had possessed the clean good looks of a determined, intelligent governess. But now, aged seventy-six and quite stout despite the short rations of the war, she was a living monument of the Russian theatre. Yet under Stalin, this was no protection. She had spent much of the war fearing arrest at any moment by the NKVD secret police. In the spy- mania of the time, her anxieties were perfectly understandable. Both her father and mother were of German origin. Her brother had assisted Admiral Kolchak, the White commander in Siberia during the civil war. Her favourite nephew, the composer Lev Knipper, had been a White Guard officer fighting the Bolsheviks in the south of Russia. The elderly actress was almost the last survivor of that extraordinary group led by Stanislavsky which had started to revolutionize dramatic art in Tall and elegant, with white hair and black eyebrows, he could have been an immensely distinguished professor or diplomat when not disguised in one of the many parts in which he immersed himself. The intensity with which he engaged in a role left him exhausted after a performance. Actors entering his dressing room discovered that he relaxed by taking off all his clothes and smoking a cigar. Shortly before his last illness inStanislavsky had wanted the brilliant actor and director Vsevolod Meyerhold, a companion of the early The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, to succeed him at the Moscow Art Theatre. But Meyerhold had attracted the hatred of the Soviet authorities, and Stanislavsky could do little to help from beyond the grave. Meyerhold, who had been a supporter of the Bolsheviks at the time of the revolution, had fallen foul of the Stalinist regime because his plays did not conform to the new doctrine of Socialist Realism. He attacked the sterile state of Soviet theatre in a suicidally brave speech at the All-Union Congress of Stage Directors. He was arrested in June Two weeks later, his Jewish wife, the well-known actress Zinaida Raikh, was murdered in their apartment. Her body was mutilated and her eyes were gouged out. Meyerhold may well have been one of those personally tortured by Lavrenty Beria himself before being killed. Stalin signed his death warrant. Few now dared to mention his name, or that a former mistress of Beria had been given the Meyerhold apartment. Even the play chosen to celebrate the Soviet victory over Germany seemed to have its own ghosts. And in MayOlga Knipper Chekhova had been in Kharkov with a touring party to escape starvation in Moscow, when they heard during the second act of the play that the city had suddenly fallen to the White Army of General Denikin. But the heady advance of the White armies was short-lived. Along with a stampede of civilian refugees fearing Bolshevik vengeance, they were decimated by typhus and starvation. Olga Knipper-Chekhova and her companions in the travelling group escaped south across the The Mystery of Olga Chekhova to Georgia. There, The Cherry Orchard had been their last performance in the capital, Tiflis, just before crossing the Black Sea into an indecisive exile. But this brief period, although dangerous in itself, was nothing in comparison to the flamboyant career of her niece and namesake in Germany. In the autumn ofthe Moscow Art Theatre had requested a special honour for their greatest actress to mark her seventy-fifth birthday, but this had been received with an ominous silence from the Soviet authorities. Throughout the war she had never The Mystery of Olga Chekhova invited to speak on the radio or to give solo performances as before. Other members of the family encountered similar sinister rebuffs. In the Soviet Union such signs could not be ignored. And now people were finding that the great victory had not eased the paranoia of the Stalinist regime. The recent wave of denunciations and pre-dawn raids by the NKVD made Muscovites afraid that another round of purges had begun. At least the building was reassuringly familiar. This theatre had literally been a second home to her for over half a lifetime. Inside, the circle of ceiling lamps and door handles of the auditorium were also of Art Nouveau design. The fronts of the seats were upholstered The Mystery of Olga Chekhova plush, but otherwise the walls and floors were bare of decoration. Stanislavsky had disapproved of anything which distracted attention from the performance. This symbol of a new reality in the theatre had remained in place throughout the revolution and the famine-stricken civil war. It had even survived the Stalinist Terror and the company being forced to stage Socialist Realist plays of pure propaganda. Olga Knipper- Chekhova had little to fear professionally in such a well-known role as the one she was to play for this special performance of The Cherry Orchard. In the autumn of she had played the part for the thousandth time for the troops and received fan letters from the front afterwards. Anton Chekhov had not written the part of Ranyevskaya with his wife in mind—he had in fact intended it for a much older actress—but this worked later to her advantage. It allowed her, even in her seventies, to continue playing the character and receive tumultuous applause, although the acclaim was perhaps more for a revered institution. She was known for her expressive hand movements—in the role of Ranyevskaya, they The Mystery of Olga Chekhova fluttering and elegantly clumsy to express her emotional confusion—yet Olga Knipper Chekhova herself overdid things when nervous. Leave the other dozen pairs in the dressing room. Olga Knipper-Chekhova took her bow a few moments later. Her lowered eyes focused on the front rows. A beautiful, well-dressed woman in her forties gave her a discreet wave. Olga Knipper-Chekhova reeled back in shock and collapsed behind the curtain in confusion and terror. The The Mystery of Olga Chekhova woman who had waved to her, right there in the triumphant Soviet capital, was her niece, Olga Chekhova, the great star of the Nazi cinema. The Cherry Orchard of Victory 2. The Mystery of Olga Chekhova by Antony Beevor | NOOK Book (eBook) | Barnes & Noble®

Beevor related the tale of how one family… read more. Beevor related the tale of how one family survived the Russian revolution, the civil war, the rise of Hitler, The Mystery of Olga Chekhova Stalinist terror, and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. He spoke about how people survived under the terrible pressures of a totalitarian age. He noted a confusion of courage, idealism, fear, self- sacrifice, opportunism, and betrayal. He also spoke about playwright Anton Chekhov, a close relative of Ms. C-SPAN has agreements with retailers that share a small percentage of your purchase price with our network. However, C-SPAN only receives this revenue if your book purchase is made using the links on this page. Please note that questions regarding fulfillment, customer service, privacy policies, or issues relating to your book orders should be directed to the Webmaster or administrator of the specific bookseller's site and are their sole responsibility. Keegan the defense The Mystery of Olga Chekhova of The Daily Telegraph and the author of a number of books, including The Face of Battle ,…. The book examined why…. Request Download. Error requesting format availability. Your request has been submitted. There was an error processing your purchase. See all on World History. Olga Chekhova - Wikipedia

Antony Beevor's The Mystery of Olga Chekhova is the true story of a family torn apart by revolution and war. Olga Chekhova was a stunning Russian beauty and a famous Nazi-era film actress who Hitler counted among his friends; she was also the niece of Anton Chekhov. After fleeing Bolshevik Moscow for Berlin inshe was recruited by her composer brother Lev, to work for Soviet intelligence. In return, her family were allowed to join her. The extraordinary story of The Mystery of Olga Chekhova the whole family survived the Russian Revolution, the civil war, the rise of Hitler, the Stalinist Terror, and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union becomes, in Antony Beevor's hands, a breathtaking tale of compromise and survival in a merciless age. Hitler admired her for her "cosmopolitan sophistication," but Olga Chekhova, niece of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, was far too pragmatic to lose herself to the charms of a powerful man. Drawing on numerous interviews, articles and books, Beevor Stalingrad concludes that the great icon of Nazi cinema never forgot where she came from and worked as a Soviet agent while reaping the rewards of The Mystery of Olga Chekhova under the Third Reich. Chekhova, a Russian of German descent, could not help but see the benefits of serving the motherland. As an emigree in Berlin, she was already held suspect by the Soviets and hoped her spying for them would result The Mystery of Olga Chekhova favorable treatment of her family in Moscow. Recruited by her brother, Lev, a Soviet composer, Chekhova became a friend and confidante to men like Goebbels, while serving Stalin by gauging Germany's interest in war against Russia. He places Moscow and Berlin side by side and shows how the divergent trajectories of the regimes could intersect only on the battlefield. Amid the history lesson is the glowing and graceful Olga Knipper-Chekhova, a woman made wiser by a bad marriage and toughened by civil war. As The Mystery of Olga Chekhova illustrates, survival was perhaps her most pronounced motivation, and it guided her well, from the day in when she left the blight of Soviet Russia behind with nothing more than a diamond ring smuggled under her tongue to her death in Publisher Description. The Second World War. Ardennes D-Day Enhanced Edition.

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