Alexander Etkind is professor of Russian literature and cultural history and a fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He has taught at the European University at St. Petersburg, as a visiting professor at New York University and Georgetown University, and as a resident fellow at Harvard, Princeton, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington D.C., Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, and University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He is the author of numerous books including, most recently, Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied and Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience.
"An informative biography of diplomat William C. Bullitt, a name
not commonly associated with the foundation of the American Cold
War policy but should be. . . . Although Bullitt fell out of favor
with the Roosevelt administration during World War II, his
influence spread to diplomats such as George Kennan and Charles
Bohlen, both of whom served under Bullitt in Moscow. This personal
narrative will interest scholarly and casual readers ... Highly
recommended for those seeking a satisfying biography and those who
want a better understanding of American-Russian relations."
--Library Journal (starred review)
"A brilliant portrait of one of the most important American
diplomats of the twentieth century. A man of immense charm, a
friend and savior of Freud and his family in 1938, an admirer of
Russia and witness to the horror of the purges, a figure turned
into fiction by Bulgakov, Bullitt comes to life in Etkind's
remarkable book. Essential reading for all students of
twentieth-century Europe and the European-American embrace."
--Jay Winter, Yale University
"Bullitt steered through life like the kind of cabbie you hope to
avoid: now jabbing the gas, now stomping the brake, all the while
monologuing away. It's no wonder that such a man would catch the
interest of biographers. In Roads Not Taken, a slender new
edition to the corpus of Bullitt books, Alexander Etkind argues
that previous treatments of the man and his life have left some
blanks and blind spots, and sets about trying to fill them.
We see Bullitt and his young attaches locked in le Carre-ish
maneuvers with Stalin's secret police, sitting up nights with
revolvers, setting electrical traps in the hallways, at least until
the electricity is cut off. There is also, more kaleidoscopically,
the gigantic and barely believable party that Bullitt threw at the
embassy for 500 guests, featuring baby goats, a drunken bear, a
Czech jazz band and enough tawdry spectacle to furnish Bulgakov all
the material he needed for the Satan's Ball scene of The Master
and Margarita--down to Bullitt himself presiding in the figure
of Woland, the devil. . . . That kind of life makes a rich subject
for a biography."
--The Wall Street Journal
"Bullitt came full circle, from supporting the Revolution to
supporting containment. Most of his adult life was spent combining
the skills and drawbacks of an analyst, a prophet, and Cassandra.
In this sympathetic biography, Alexander Etkind, offers a
psychoanalytic reading of his subject, but his more conventional
summary of William Bullitt also rings true: brilliant and
bitter."
--The Times Literary Supplement
"Etkind makes Bullitt's sidelights into his centerpiece. . . . The
result is a refreshing look at a man we thought we knew, but did
not really know or understand: a complex, creative, and influential
individual whose meaning and role in history is much more than that
of a diplomat in Moscow."
--The Russian Review
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