Bookshelf

Dr. Georges Lodygensky : Face au communisme (1905-1950) , Eds. Slatkine

«Quand Genève était au centre du mouvement anticommuniste international».

Face au communisme est le titre qu’avait donné le Dr Georges Lodygensky (1888-1977) à la principale partie de ses mémoires, celle qui retrace le combat mené de 1924 à 1950 par celui-ci au côté de l’avocat genevois Théodore Aubert au sein de l’Entente internationale anticommuniste, une organisation internationale dont le siège était établi à Genève. Auparavant, le lecteur pourra suivre les vicissitudes de la carrière du médecin russe à travers la Grande Guerre, la révolution de 1917 et la guerre civile, d’abord comme chirurgien militaire et comme médecin-chef d’un hôpital pour officiers, ensuite comme délégué de la Croix-Rouge russe auprès du CICR.

Parmi les jugements qui ont accueilli la parution de la version russe de cet ouvrage en 2007, relevons celui exprimé par M. Erwin H. Hofer, Ambassadeur de la Suisse en Fédération de Russie, dans une lettre adressée le 21 mars 2007 aux fils de l’auteur :

« J’ai eu un grand plaisir à prendre connaissance des souvenirs de votre père, du destin unique qui en a fait le contemporain de tous les événements dramatiques du XXe siècle. Son dévouement au service des grands idéaux, sa fidélité au devoir dans les situations les plus difficiles de la vie et son humanité n’ont pu que susciter mon enthousiasme.»

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.