Bookshelf

Alexandre Lambert. Jacques-Alexis Lambert, témoignage de la Révolution russe. Editions de Penthes, 2009.

Mémoires inédites du professeur de Lénine.

Jacques-Alexis Lambert (1863-1942) fut le professeur de français de Vladimir Lénine au lycée de Simbirsk, ville natale de Lénine au bord de la Volga. Ce Neuchâtelois d’origine émigra en Russie tsariste à la fin du XIXème siècle afin de poursuivre une carrière d’enseignant de français et de musique à Simbirsk, Samara et Tsaritsine. Il accéda au rang d’un conseiller d’état en 1909. Il finit par retourner en Suisse en 1919 fuyant les troubles de la révolution et de la guerre civile russe. Ainsi, alors que les relations diplomatiques entre les deux pays étaient interrompues, il s’adressa directement à son ancien élève de lycée, afin d’obtenir une autorisation extraordinaire de quitter la Russie. En 1920, il rédigea ses mémoires à La Chaux-de-Fond et nous offre un témoignage inédit sur la Révolution russe. Préfacées par Alexandre Lambert, son arrière-petit-fils, ces mémoires sont publiées pour la première fois.

Pour en savoir plus, lizes l'interview avec Alexandre Lambert sur notre site.

About the author

Nadia Sikorsky

Nadia Sikorsky was born and raised in Moscow. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University and went on to complete her postgraduate studies there, earning a PhD in History. She spent 13 years at UNESCO, first in Paris and then in Geneva. After serving as Director of Communications at Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, she launched NashaGazeta.ch in 2007, Switzerland’s first Russian-language online daily newspaper.

In 2022, Nadia Sikorsky was named to Le Temps’ Forum des 100, which brings together individuals who, in the newspaper’s view, have “significantly contributed to the success of French-speaking Switzerland”, from across public life, business, politics, science and culture.

After 18 years at the helm of NashaGazeta.ch, Nadia Sikorsky decided to devote herself to what had always held a special place in her work as a journalist: culture in all its diversity. This led to the creation of Russian Accent, a trilingual cultural blog in Russian, French and English, born in the heart of Europe, in Switzerland, which has become her second home and whose multiculturalism and multilingualism have helped shape the character of this new project.

At the heart of the project is the perspective of a European of Russian origin, drawing on more than 35 years of professional experience and a deep knowledge of both cultural traditions. Nadia Sikorsky sees her role as that of a cultural mediator between the two. The title of the blog, Russian Accent, reflects this idea: the accent is neither a linguistic barrier nor a political position, but a distinctive cultural imprint within a European context.

Events
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A new book by the Geneva-based Slavist Jean-Philippe Jaccard and his Russian colleague Andrei Ustinov, now living in San Francisco, has been published by the European University at St Petersburg: Vzir Zaumi. Daniil Harms and the Literary Avant-Garde of the 1920s. In the authors' own words, the volume offers a kind of X-ray of Leningrad's "left-wing " circles and their evolution during the period between Harms's poetic debut and the creation of OBERIU, as well as the dynamics that shaped those circles.

A few days ago, the Lausanne-based publisher Éditions Noir sur Blanc brought out Guzel Yakhina’s novel about the celebrated Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein. French readers will be able to read it in Maud Mabillard’s translation and, importantly, in full, including the ninth chapter omitted from the Russian edition.