Podcast appearances and mentions of vladimir alexandrov

A leading climate scientist, once renowned internationally for his work on nuclear winter theory, vanished in Madrid in the mid-1980s. Vladimir Alexandrov made friends everywhere he went; his name was, at the very least, known by some of the most powerful figures in the American and Soviet governments. Yet his disappearance wasn't officially looked into for months. When a clue to his fate does publically surface, it forces the world to ask: Was Vladimir actually kidnapped by the CIA?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vladimir Alexandrov llegó a España en1985 para hablar de su teoría del invierno nuclear en la II Asamblea de Ciudades No Nucleares de Córdoba. Se pasó todo el viaje borracho y desapareció en Madrid sin dejar rastro. ¿Qué ocurrió? Lo descubrimos en la Cápsula del Tiempo de Por fin no es lunes.

Vladimir Alexandrov discusses with Ivan two things which should be better known: both men who lived in Russia in the early part of the twentieth century. Vladimir Alexandrov taught courses in Yale's Slavic Department on nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian literature and culture from 1986 to 2018. While preparing to teach a graduate seminar on Russian émigré culture, he discovered Frederick Bruce Thomas, which resulted in the 2013 biography The Black Russian, which is now being developed into a dramatic TV series. In 2021, he published To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks, which is the biography of a remarkable revolutionary terrorist, political activist, government minister, and writer who has been described as "James Bond as written by Kafka." Vladimir's current project is a book about Russia's little-known support for the Union during the American Civil War. Find out more at www.valexandrov.com. Frederick Bruce Thomas https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/10/10/vladimir-alexandrov-black-russian/ Further reading https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/perspectives-global-african-history/russia-s-black-entertainment-empresario-remarkable-saga-fyodor-fyodorovich-tomas-freder/ Boris Savinkov https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/to-break-russias-chains-vladimir-alexandrov-book-review-daniel-beer/ Further reading • https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4571&context=etd • https://origins.osu.edu/read/terrorism-path-better-russia?language_content_entity=en This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

Frederick Bruce Thomas was born in 1872 to former slaves and spent his youth on his family's prosperous farm in Mississippi. However, a resentful, rich white planter's attempt to steal their land forced them to escape to Memphis. And when Frederick's father was brutally murdered by another black man, the family disintegrated. After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, Frederick went to London in 1894, then traveled throughout Europe, and decided to go to Russia in 1899, which was highly unusual for a black American at the time. Frederick found no color line in Russia and made Moscow his home. During the next nineteen years he renamed himself “Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas,” married twice, acquired a mistress, took Russian citizenship, and by dint of his talents, hard work, charm, and guile became one of the city's richest and most famous owners of variety theaters and restaurants. The Bolshevik Revolution ruined him and he barely escaped with his life and family to Turkey in 1919. Starting with just a handful of dollars out of the millions he had lost, Frederick made a second fortune in Constantinople by opening a series of celebrated nightclubs that introduced jazz to Turkey. However, because of the long arm of American racism, the xenophobia of the new Turkish Republic, and his own extravagance, he fell on hard times, was thrown into debtor's prison, and died in Constantinople in 1928.Although widely known during his lifetime, Frederick Thomas is now virtually forgotten. The few references to him that have been published during the past eighty years are all brief and often wrong. Vladimir Alexandrov, today's guest and author of the book “The Black Russian,” researched Frederick Thomas's life and times exhaustively in archives and libraries throughout the United States, as well as in Russia, France, England, and Turkey, and found a great deal of information about him. Frederick Thomas is fascinating because of the extraordinary way he escaped the constraints of his humble origins and being black in the United States, because of how his life went from rags to riches to ruin not once but twice as a consequence of revolutionary transformations in two exotic societies, and because of the contrasting roles that race played in his life abroad--from being invisible in Russia, to returning to haunt him in Turkey, when he most needed help and the American government turned him down.

The latest book by Vladimir Alexandrov is a brilliant examination of the enigmatic Russian revolutionary, Boris Savinkov. Although now largely forgotten outside Russia, Boris Savinkov was famous, and notorious, both at home and abroad during his lifetime, which spans the end of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union. A complex and conflicted individual, he was a paradoxically moral revolutionary terrorist, a scandalous novelist, a friend of epoch-defining artists like Modigliani and Diego Rivera, a government minister, a tireless fighter against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and an advisor to Churchill. At the end of his life, Savinkov conspired to be captured by the Soviet secret police, and as the country's most prized political prisoner made headlines around the world when he claimed that he accepted the Bolshevik state. Alexandrov argues that this was Savinkov's final play as a gambler, staking his life on a secret plan to strike one last blow against the tyrannical regime. To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks (Pegasus, 2021) reads like a spellbinding thriller. Professor Alexandrov's biography of Boris Savinkov not only sheds light on one of the most fascinating figures in Russian history, but also prompts speculation about how the history of Russia may have played out differently if the former terrorist turned government minister had achieved his goals. Interview conducted by Lynne Hartnett, Associate Professor of History at Villanova University. Professor Hartnett is the author of The Defiant Life of Vera Figner: Surviving the Russian Revolution and is currently writing a book about Russian political exiles in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. She is also the author and narrator of two courses for The Great Courses: Understanding Russia: A Cultural History and The Great Revolutions of Modern History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The latest book by Vladimir Alexandrov is a brilliant examination of the enigmatic Russian revolutionary, Boris Savinkov. Although now largely forgotten outside Russia, Boris Savinkov was famous, and notorious, both at home and abroad during his lifetime, which spans the end of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union. A complex and conflicted individual, he was a paradoxically moral revolutionary terrorist, a scandalous novelist, a friend of epoch-defining artists like Modigliani and Diego Rivera, a government minister, a tireless fighter against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and an advisor to Churchill. At the end of his life, Savinkov conspired to be captured by the Soviet secret police, and as the country's most prized political prisoner made headlines around the world when he claimed that he accepted the Bolshevik state. Alexandrov argues that this was Savinkov's final play as a gambler, staking his life on a secret plan to strike one last blow against the tyrannical regime. To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks (Pegasus, 2021) reads like a spellbinding thriller. Professor Alexandrov's biography of Boris Savinkov not only sheds light on one of the most fascinating figures in Russian history, but also prompts speculation about how the history of Russia may have played out differently if the former terrorist turned government minister had achieved his goals. Interview conducted by Lynne Hartnett, Associate Professor of History at Villanova University. Professor Hartnett is the author of The Defiant Life of Vera Figner: Surviving the Russian Revolution and is currently writing a book about Russian political exiles in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. She is also the author and narrator of two courses for The Great Courses: Understanding Russia: A Cultural History and The Great Revolutions of Modern History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The latest book by Vladimir Alexandrov is a brilliant examination of the enigmatic Russian revolutionary, Boris Savinkov. Although now largely forgotten outside Russia, Boris Savinkov was famous, and notorious, both at home and abroad during his lifetime, which spans the end of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union. A complex and conflicted individual, he was a paradoxically moral revolutionary terrorist, a scandalous novelist, a friend of epoch-defining artists like Modigliani and Diego Rivera, a government minister, a tireless fighter against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and an advisor to Churchill. At the end of his life, Savinkov conspired to be captured by the Soviet secret police, and as the country's most prized political prisoner made headlines around the world when he claimed that he accepted the Bolshevik state. Alexandrov argues that this was Savinkov's final play as a gambler, staking his life on a secret plan to strike one last blow against the tyrannical regime. To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks (Pegasus, 2021) reads like a spellbinding thriller. Professor Alexandrov's biography of Boris Savinkov not only sheds light on one of the most fascinating figures in Russian history, but also prompts speculation about how the history of Russia may have played out differently if the former terrorist turned government minister had achieved his goals. Interview conducted by Lynne Hartnett, Associate Professor of History at Villanova University. Professor Hartnett is the author of The Defiant Life of Vera Figner: Surviving the Russian Revolution and is currently writing a book about Russian political exiles in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. She is also the author and narrator of two courses for The Great Courses: Understanding Russia: A Cultural History and The Great Revolutions of Modern History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The latest book by Vladimir Alexandrov is a brilliant examination of the enigmatic Russian revolutionary, Boris Savinkov. Although now largely forgotten outside Russia, Boris Savinkov was famous, and notorious, both at home and abroad during his lifetime, which spans the end of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union. A complex and conflicted individual, he was a paradoxically moral revolutionary terrorist, a scandalous novelist, a friend of epoch-defining artists like Modigliani and Diego Rivera, a government minister, a tireless fighter against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and an advisor to Churchill. At the end of his life, Savinkov conspired to be captured by the Soviet secret police, and as the country's most prized political prisoner made headlines around the world when he claimed that he accepted the Bolshevik state. Alexandrov argues that this was Savinkov's final play as a gambler, staking his life on a secret plan to strike one last blow against the tyrannical regime. To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks (Pegasus, 2021) reads like a spellbinding thriller. Professor Alexandrov's biography of Boris Savinkov not only sheds light on one of the most fascinating figures in Russian history, but also prompts speculation about how the history of Russia may have played out differently if the former terrorist turned government minister had achieved his goals. Interview conducted by Lynne Hartnett, Associate Professor of History at Villanova University. Professor Hartnett is the author of The Defiant Life of Vera Figner: Surviving the Russian Revolution and is currently writing a book about Russian political exiles in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. She is also the author and narrator of two courses for The Great Courses: Understanding Russia: A Cultural History and The Great Revolutions of Modern History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In this episode of “Keen On”, Andrew is joined by Vladimir Alexandrov, the author of “To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks”, to shine a light on the life of Boris Savinkov, an extraordinary man who tried to change Russian and world history. Vladimir Alexandrov received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton. He taught Russian literature and culture at Harvard before moving to Yale, where he is B.E. Bensinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He is the author of The Black Russian as well as books on Bely, Nabokov, and Tolstoy, and lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Visit our website: https://lithub.com/story-type/keen-on/ Email Andrew: a.keen@me.com Watch the show live on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajkeen Watch the show live on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankeen/ Watch the show live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lithub Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiteraryHub/videos Subscribe to Andrew's newsletter: https://andrew2ec.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although now largely forgotten outside Russia, Boris Savinkov was famous, and notorious, both at home and abroad during his lifetime, which spans the end of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union. A complex and conflicted individual, he was a paradoxically moral revolutionary terrorist, a scandalous novelist, a friend of epoch-defining artists like Modigliani and Diego Rivera, a government minister, a tireless fighter against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and an advisor to Churchill. At the end of his life, Savinkov conspired to be captured by the Soviet secret police, and as the country's most prized political prisoner made headlines around the world when he claimed that he accepted the Bolshevik state. However, some believe that this was Savinkov's final play as a gambler, staking his life on a secret plan to strike one last blow against the tyrannical regime. Todays' guest is Vladimir Alexandrov, author of To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks. Neither a "Red" nor a "White," Savinkov lived an epic life that challenges many popular myths about the Russian Revolution, which was arguably the most important catalyst of twentieth-century world history. All of Savinkov's efforts were directed at transforming his homeland into a uniquely democratic, humane and enlightened state. There are aspects of his violent legacy that will, and should, remain frozen in the past as part of the historical record. But the support he received from many of his countrymen suggests that the paths Russia took during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—the tyranny of communism, the authoritarianism of Putin's regime—were not the only ones written in her historical destiny. Savinkov's goals remain a poignant reminder of how things in Russia could have been, and how, perhaps, they may still become someday.

In this podcast we discuss Vladimir Alexandrov's book "The Black Russian," and what lessons we may conclude from it. Frederick Bruce Thomas was a black American businessman who made a fortune in czarist Russia in the early 1900s. His life is a fascinating one, and one that has much to teach us today.

Guest: Vladimir Alexandrov on The Black Russian published by Grove Press. The post The Black Russian appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Vladimir Alexandrov on The Black Russian published by Grove Press. The post The Black Russian appeared first on The Eurasian Knot.

Rebroadcast The Black Russian with Valdimir Alexandrov, Ph.D. The Black Russian tells the story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, who was born in 1872 to former slaves and spent his youth on his family’s farm in Mississippi.  After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, he went to London in 1894, then traveled throughout Europe, and decided to go to Russia in 1899, all of which was highly unusual for a black American at the time.  He chose Moscow as his home, and during the next nineteen years renamed himself “Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas,” married twice, acquired a mistress, took Russian citizenship, and by dint of his talents, hard work, charm, and guile became one of the city’s richest and most famous owners of variety theaters and restaurants.  The Bolshevik Revolution ruined him and he barely escaped with his life and family to Turkey in 1919.  Starting with just a handful of dollars out of the millions he had lost, Thomas made a second fortune in Constantinople by opening a series of celebrated nightclubs that introduced jazz to Turkey.  However, because of the long arm of American racism, the xenophobia of the new Turkish Republic, and his own extravagance, he fell on hard times, was thrown into debtor's prison and died in Constantinople in 1928. Dr. Alexandrov is the B. E. Bensinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Acting Chair, Slavic Department at Yale University. www.valexandrov.com    

The Black Russian with Vladimir Alexandrov Bernice Bennett host welcomes Vladimir Alexandrov, Ph.D.,  for an engaging discussion of his book, The Black Russian. He will explore the process of researching and writing this compelling story.   The Black Russian tells the story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, who was born in 1872 to former slaves and spent his youth on his family’s farm in Mississippi.  After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, he went to London in 1894, then traveled throughout Europe, and decided to go to Russia in 1899, all of which was highly unusual for a black American at the time.  He chose Moscow as his home, and during the next nineteen years renamed himself “Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas,” married twice, acquired a mistress, took Russian citizenship, and by dint of his talents, hard work, charm, and guile became one of the city’s richest and most famous owners of variety theaters and restaurants.  The Bolshevik Revolution ruined him and he barely escaped with his life and family to Turkey in 1919.  Starting with just a handful of dollars out of the millions he had lost, Thomas made a second fortune in Constantinople by opening a series of celebrated nightclubs that introduced jazz to Turkey.  However, because of the long arm of American racism, the xenophobia of the new Turkish Republic, and his own extravagance, he fell on hard times, was thrown into debtor's prison and died in Constantinople in 1928. Dr. Alexandrov is the B. E. Bensinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Acting Chair, Slavic Department at Yale University. www.valexandrov.com  

Vladimir Alexandrov, the B.E. Bensinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at Yale University joins The Halli Casser-Jayne Show to talk about his new book, "The Black Russian," in which he tells the little-known true story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, who left the color-conscious Mississippi Delta, seeking a better life.Frederick found freedom and extraordinary success in, of all places, Moscow where he renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas. But thans to the Bolshevik Revolution he was forced to escape his adopted country, leaving everything he'd built behind to start over in Constantinople. Once again his brain and brawn led him to success, when he opened what became a series of celebrated nightclubs and introducing jazz to Turkey. Sadly, the long arm of American racism, the xenophobia of the new Turkish Republic, and Frederick's own extravagance landed him in debtor's prison. He died in Constantinople in 1928. With the stamp of approval of some of the African-American communities most prominent voices, including those of Cornel West and Dr. Henry Louis Gates, "The Black Russian," is a story you won't want to miss.

Vladimir Alexandrov‘s new book The Black Russian (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013) tells the epic and often tragic story of Fredrick Bruce Thomas, an African American born to recently freed slaves, who would go on to make a fortune in Russia as a club owner and entrepreneur. Mr. Thomas was a pioneer in many respects. He migrated North in search of opportunity decades before the Great Migration. He fled the states in pursuit of greater prospects in Europe before it was fashionable for blacks to do so. He confronted and combated many of the forces that would shape the 20th century – racism, classism, and nativism – yet his story was little known to us until now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vladimir Alexandrov‘s new book The Black Russian (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013) tells the epic and often tragic story of Fredrick Bruce Thomas, an African American born to recently freed slaves, who would go on to make a fortune in Russia as a club owner and entrepreneur. Mr. Thomas was a pioneer in many respects. He migrated North in search of opportunity decades before the Great Migration. He fled the states in pursuit of greater prospects in Europe before it was fashionable for blacks to do so. He confronted and combated many of the forces that would shape the 20th century – racism, classism, and nativism – yet his story was little known to us until now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Vladimir Alexandrov‘s new book The Black Russian (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013) tells the epic and often tragic story of Fredrick Bruce Thomas, an African American born to recently freed slaves, who would go on to make a fortune in Russia as a club owner and entrepreneur. Mr. Thomas was a pioneer in many respects. He migrated North in search of opportunity decades before the Great Migration. He fled the states in pursuit of greater prospects in Europe before it was fashionable for blacks to do so. He confronted and combated many of the forces that would shape the 20th century – racism, classism, and nativism – yet his story was little known to us until now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vladimir Alexandrov‘s new book The Black Russian (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013) tells the epic and often tragic story of Fredrick Bruce Thomas, an African American born to recently freed slaves, who would go on to make a fortune in Russia as a club owner and entrepreneur. Mr. Thomas was a... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices