On Monday 23 January 2012 at 7.30pm I’m giving the second of four talks on Russia’s scientific legacy. I’ve just sold the book of this series to Faber, so there may be a certain amount of drinking afterwards….

The old boast ran that Russia governed an empire with more surface area than the visible moon. Still, 40 per cent of it lay under permafrost, and no Romanov before Alexander II so much as set foot in Siberia.

Defying nature, the Bolsheviks forcibly industrialized the region, built factories and cities, and operated industries in some of the most forbidding places on the planet. Beginning with the construction of the Transsiberian railway, and ending with the planting of the Russian flag on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, this is a story of visionaries and idealists, traitors, despots, and the occasional fool.

Pushkin House, 5a Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2TA

Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
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