Three great Russian writers - Alexander Blok, Teffi, and Maximilian Voloshin - responded in very different ways to the 1917 Revolution and subsequent Civil War.

Robert Chandler will read both from his new translations of Voloshin's remarkable poems about the Red Terror in the Crimea and from Teffi's moving and witty account of her last meetings with Voloshin.  Robert Chandler’s translations include works by Alexander Pushkin, Andrey Platonov, Vasily Grossman and Teffi.  He is a co-editor of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, Feb 2015) 

from Civil War

    And from the ranks of both armies –

    the same voice, the same refrain:

    ‘He who is not with us is against us.

    You must take sides. Justice is ours.’