Ruth First (1997/2012)

“The struggle to free South Africa from its apartheid shackles was long and complex. One of the many ways in which the apartheid regime maintained its stranglehold in South Africa was through controlling the freedom of speech and the flow of information, in an effort to silence the voices of those who opposed it. United by the ideals of freedom and equality, but also nuanced by a wide variety of persuasions, the ‘voices of liberation’ were many: African nationalists, communists, trade-unionists, pan-Africanists, English liberals, human rights activists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews, to name but a few.

The Voices of Liberation series ensures that the debates and values that shaped the liberation movement are not lost. The series offers a unique combination of biographical information with selections from original speeches and writings in each volume. By providing access to the thoughts and writings of some of the many men and women who fought for the dismantling of apartheid, this series invites the contemporary reader to engage directly with the rich history of the struggle for democracy.

This volume presents a brief biography of Ruth First, followed by a selection of her writings as a political activist, scholar and journalist. The book presents a timeline summary of significant events in Ruth’s life within the context of major socio-political events of the time. It concludes with a reflection on her legacy from a current perspective and offers a further reading list.”

Compiled by Don Pinnock
Publisher HSRC Press, Cape Town, 1997
Second edition, 2012
Voices of Liberation series, 2
Open access
ISBN 9780796923592
vii+182 pages

Commentary: Ruth First: lessons for a new generation of African scholars (Tebello Letsekha, DEP, 2014).
Ruth First Papers

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF chapters (bibliography missing)
single PDF (complete)

Nadezhda Mandelstam: Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (1970) [RU, EN]

“Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memoir of her life with poet Osip, who was first arrested in 1934 and died in Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937-38. The book is a vital eyewitness account of Stalin’s Soviet Union and one of the greatest testaments to the value of literature and imaginative freedom ever written.”

Publisher Chekhov Publishing Corp., New York, 1970
432 pages

English edition
Translated by Max Hayward
With an Introduction by Clarence Brown
Publisher Atheneum, New York, 1970
Fifth printing, 1983
ISBN 0689705301
xvi+432 pages

Reviews: George Ivask (Slavic Review, 1971), Simon Karlinsky (Slavic and East European Journal, 1971), Robert P. Hughes (Russian Review, 1971), Seamus Heaney (London Review of Books, 1981), Elaine Feinstein (The Independent, 2013).
Commentary: Judith Robey (Slavic and East European Journal, 1998).

Vospominaniya (Russian, 1970/1999, TXT; HTML)
Hope Against Hope (English, 1970/1983, PDF/42 MB; DJVU/7 MB)

Ilya Kabakov: The 1960s and 1970s: Notes on Unofficial Life in Moscow (1999) [RU, EN]

A memoir, originally written in 1982 and 1986, by the Russian conceptual artist now living in the United States. “He belongs to the generation of underground (or nonconformist) artists that emerged with the liberalization of domestic policies in the Soviet Union in the 1960s during the Krushchev “thaw”. That generation formed a subculture in resistance to the ideological settings of “official art”, of Socialist Realism, as well as to Soviet ideology and the life style of ‘homo sovieticus’. This book is a memoir of the ‘underground years’ and offers a unique insider’s perspective on artistic life during a period of ‘prohibition’ through an exploration of the tension between totalitarian politics and resistance aesthetics.” (from a review by Volha Isakava)

60-е-70-е. записки о неофициальной жизни в Москве
Publisher Gesellschaft zur Förderung Slawistischer Studien, Vienna, 1999
Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. Sonderbände, 47
Digital edition by Otto Sagner, Munich, 2012
ISBN 9783954796380
267 pages

Conversation with Ilya and Emilia Kabakov (Anton Vidokle, e-flux, 2012, EN)

Reviews: Volha Isakava (Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2005, EN), Julianne Fürst (Kritika, 2013, EN).
Commentary: Keti Chukhrov (2010, EN).

Publisher

JPGs, PDF (RU)
PDF (8 MB, RU)
Short excerpt in English translation