{"id":254131,"date":"2026-07-13T03:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/between-two-fires-joshua-yaffa\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T03:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:17:13","slug":"between-two-fires-joshua-yaffa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/between-two-fires-joshua-yaffa\/","title":{"rendered":"Between Two Fires – Joshua Yaffa"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<\/figure>\n

Seryozha was in a jittery, nervous state. He said he hadn\u2019t eaten or slept in three days. Vera had him lie down for a while. Adelgeim took him to meet some other young people who had come to visit him from Moscow, but Seryozha ran away and rolled around in the grass. Adelgeim and Vera brought him home to rest, but he took off again.<\/p>\n

Finally Seryozha\u2019s father arrived to check on him and announced that he would take him back to Moscow on the train that evening. Before leaving, Seryozha told Adelgeim he \u201cunderstood everything,\u201d without saying what; he then asked Adelgeim to take him in or, barring that, find him a place in a monastery. Let\u2019s first talk about Orthodoxy a bit, Adelgeim said. We can do that next time. Go home for now and we\u2019ll think about monasteries later. The next day Adelgeim and Vera got a call that Seryozha had run away from his father and was still in Pskov, at the city\u2019s hospital, with no money or phone.<\/p>\n

Adelgeim went to pick him up. Back at the Adelgeim home, Seryozha ate a bowl of soup, then disappeared once again, this time returning after an hour or two. He seemed to Vera \u201cuncollected, anxious, unnatural, twitchy. He couldn\u2019t decide if he wanted to sit down, stand up, run away, come back.\u201d That evening, Vera started to make dinner, and handed her husband a knife so he could peel a squash from the backyard garden.<\/p>\n

He and Seryozha sat on a mustard-colored couch in the corner of the kitchen and started to talk about Saint Luke of Crimea, an Orthodox bishop and surgeon who defied the Bolsheviks in the years after the revolution. Vera could hear their conversation as she walked to the stove. A minute later, Vera heard a terrible scream. She ran back to the couch. Her husband sat in a pool of dark blood, frozen and quiet, bent over toward the table. Seryozha yelled, \u201cDemon!<\/p>\n

Demon! Demon!\u201d dropped the knife, and ran out onto the street. Vera called an ambulance; as she waited, she could hear Seryozha pacing up and down the road in front of the house, still in a dark trance, screaming out: \u201cI have sinned! I have killed a holy man!\u201d<\/p>\n

A police car chased after him and a number of officers threw him to the ground. Paramedics showed up and made their way to the kitchen. One bent down to look at Adelgeim, then turned to Vera: \u201cA direct strike to the heart. That\u2019s it. He died right away.\u201d Father Pavel Adelgeim left this life four days after his seventy-fifth birthday.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cA deeply reported account of what it\u2019s like to live in Putin\u2019s Russia, but it\u2019s not about Twitter bots or influencing foreign elections or even Vladimir Putin himself\u2026.Yaffa gives us insight into Putin by helping us better understand the political culture that produced him.\u201d \u2014NPR \u201cFew journalists have penetrated so deep and with so much nuance into the moral ambiguities of Russia. If you want insight into the deeper distortions the Kremlin causes in people\u2019s psyches, this book is invaluable.\u201d \u2014Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible \u201cSuperb\u2026[an] excellent new book\u2026Yaffa has distinguished himself with his rigor, his acumen, and his nuanced voice\u2026.His in-depth reporting consistently allows him to move beyond the headlines, revealing the deeper historical and sociological patterns that underpin that notoriously contradictory country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Foreign Affairs \u201cA wonderfully insightful book\u2026well-told and neatly interlinked stories\u2026 It is to Mr. Yaffa\u2019s credit that in general he avoids simplifying. Even when he describes people who seek cynical advantage from the powerful, the picture is never completely dark; when he portrays moral heroes, he never presents them as infallible. That is how things are in life, perhaps nowhere more so than in Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014The Economist \u201cJoshua Yaffa\u2019s portrait of a people is a triumph\u2014a brilliantly original, deeply literate path through the moral struggles and calculations of a modern Russia he knows in his bones.\u201d \u2014Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition \u201cYaffa skillfully weaves together perceptive descriptions of flesh-and-blood people with a balanced evocation of the wider political and historical context.<\/p>\n

As we follow these individuals, we come to understand many of the developments of the post-Soviet era\u2026through the eyes of those who have lived through them. Yaffa has a good eye for colourful detail\u2026and he proves attentive to the subtleties and ambiguities of Russian life.\u201d \u2014Tony Wood, Financial Times \u201cA fascinating and nuanced account that illuminates the myriad conflicting and often contradictory forces that have shaped the Russia of today.\u201d \u2014Douglas Smith, The Wall Street Journal \u201cBetween Two Fires is a study of compromise, opportunism, and the fraught moral choices available in Putin\u2019s Russia.<\/p>\n

In a series of carefully reported stories, Joshua Yaffa shows how people choose\u2014sometimes consciously and other times not\u2014to adapt, change, and otherwise \u2018make do\u2019 in an authoritarian state.\u201d \u2014Anne Applebaum, author of Red Famine and Gulag \u201c[A] highly original and riveting account\u2026Good and not-so-good men and women are forced to make difficult choices\u2014and Joshua Yaffa\u2019s remarkable book is a guide to the pain and pleasure of their lives in the public arena.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Table of Contents<\/p>\nToggle<\/span><\/path><\/svg><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n