This January 24, 1949, a huge crowd rushes to the court of the Seine. “At 1 p.m., all the benches are occupied”, writes the great intellectual of Russian origin Nina Berberova, who covers the case for an emigrant newspaper (“the Kravchenko Affair”, South Acts, 1990). The “trial of the century”, as Tout-Paris already calls it, begins. That of a man alone facing Stalin, his killers and his empire.
30 dates to understand the history of Russia
“L’Obs” invites you to dive into a millennium of Russian passions by telling you about the key moments in the formation of the empire, through 30 key dates, which you will find as you go in our file between December 21 2022 and the 1er January 2023.
The plaintiff had arrived a few days earlier by plane from New York. He moved into the Plaza Hotel with his bodyguards and his gun, which never leaves him. His name is Viktor Kravchenko. Three-piece suit, voluntary jaws, this 43-year-old man is a former senior Soviet official who, five years ago, defected while he was in the United States. He published a book on the horrors of forced collectivization and the gulag.
Entitled “I chose freedom”, the book is not the first on the subject, but it is the most accessible. It will sell several million copies in twenty countries. At the time of its release in France, the communist magazine “les Lettres françaises” drew several assassi
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