A Russian writer--unfortunately not named in the article--took the author of a negative review of one his books to court...and won. He didn't get as much as he wanted, but still...
The writer stated that after reading the book review, he experienced chest pains, headache, and elevated blood pressure. He demanded to be compensated in the amount of US$150,000.
Does this mean that I could sue every publisher that refuses to publish my work?
[Via Maud Newton]
Stig Fredrickson, a journalist for TT (the Swedish News Agency) on "How [He] Helped Alexandr Solzhenitsyn Smuggle His Nobel Lecture from the USSR":
During our meeting at Natalya's apartment Solzhenitsyn and I had arranged to try to meet once again, in the underground passage at the Belorussian railway station. In the enlarged version of his literary memoir "The Oak and the Calf", which was published in Moscow in 1996, Solzhenitsyn describes the meeting:
"I had in my pocket a film containing the text of the Nobel speech. We had failed to find any other way of sending it out, and once again, its destination was Sweden. I was standing in an inconspicuous spot; he and his wife Ingrid came strolling along arm in arm: I followed, keeping a gap between us, and Alya came behind me, after first watching out for a while from a different spot to make sure that no one was tailing us. Everything turned out fine, so we caught up with them and the four of us set off at a leisurely pace down the Leningrad Prospect. As we talked, I asked Stig if he would take the film, and he agreed. I handed it over in a dark courtyard. Folk wisdom has it that seeing a pregnant woman means your plans will come to fruition. Well, we had two of them, both our wives were pregnant."
"I had in my pocket a film containing the text of the Nobel speech. We had failed to find any other way of sending it out, and once again, its destination was Sweden. I was standing in an inconspicuous spot; he and his wife Ingrid came strolling along arm in arm: I followed, keeping a gap between us, and Alya came behind me, after first watching out for a while from a different spot to make sure that no one was tailing us. Everything turned out fine, so we caught up with them and the four of us set off at a leisurely pace down the Leningrad Prospect. As we talked, I asked Stig if he would take the film, and he agreed. I handed it over in a dark courtyard. Folk wisdom has it that seeing a pregnant woman means your plans will come to fruition. Well, we had two of them, both our wives were pregnant."
MIND YOUR WATCH!
The original photo (left) was altered (right) by editing the watch on the soldier's right wrist.
Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, which is utterly depressing and endlessly fascinating. Here's an interesting tidbit regarding looting by the Red Army (particularly of wristwatches) and that iconic image of the Soviet soldier raising the Hammer and Sickle above Berlin's Reichstag:
Wristwatches seemed to have almost mythical significance for Russian soldiers, who would walk around wearing half a dozen if they could. An iconic photograph of a Russian soldier raising the Soviet flag atop the Berlin Reichstag had to be touched up to remove the wristwatches from the arms of the young hero. In Budapest, the obsession with them remained part of local folklore and may have helped shape local perceptions of the Red Army. A few months after the war, a Budapest cinema showed a newsreel about the Yalta Conference. When President Roosevelet raised his arm while speaking to Stalin, several members of the audience shouted: "Mind your watch!" The same was true in Poland, where for many years Polish children would "play" Soviet soldiers by shouting: "Davai chasyi"--"Give me your watch." A beloved Polish children's television series of the late 1960s included a scene of Russian and Polish soldiers during wartime, camping out in deserted German buildings having amassed a vast collection of stolen clocks.