Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin by Catherine Merridale

have written this book without the generous support of the Leverhulme Trust, whose Major Research Fellowship released me from my teaching duties and also supported a good deal of travel and research. Such funding, graciously awarded and administered with the lightest touch, is both a life-line and a real inspiration. I am indebted to the Trustees, and also to the friends who supported my application, especially Emma Rothschild, Stephen A. Smith and the late Tony Judt. At an early stage in the work, also thanks to Tony Judt, I was a visiting Fellow at New York University’s Remarque Institute, a stimulating experience for which I should also like to thank Jair Kessler and Katherine E. Fleming.
    In the course of the research itself, I received expert help, advice and consolation from so many people that it is impossible to name them all. I owe a particular debt to Elena Gagarina and her staff in the Kremlin Museum Reserve and Library. Andrei Batalov, the director of the Kremlin’s historic buildings, was generous with his time and knowledge, and I also thank Tatiana Panova, the director of Kremlin archaeology. On many visits to Moscow, I was welcomed by the enthusiastic staff of its State Historical Library and by the staffs of several of the major state archives, including the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Archive of Ancient Acts. I am also indebted to the State (Lenin) Library of the Russian Federation, the State Historical Archive, the State Archive of the Economy and the Shchusev Museum of Architecture. Moscow colleagues and friends were generous as always, and I should especially like to thank Sergo Mikoyan, Stepan Mikoyan, Pavel Palazhchenko, Vsevolod Pimenov and Sergei Romaniuk.
    I had to read so many rare books and collections in the past few years that the staff of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, and especially those in the Upper Reserve and the Taylorian Slavonic Library, will probably have noticed a welcome drop in their daily workload since this manuscript was finished. It was a privilege to read in such company, and I should also like to thank the staffs of the British Library, the Library of the School of Slavonic Studies at University College London, the London Library, and the Cambridge University Library. In addition, I am indebted to the staff of the New York Public Library (and especially its much-loved Slavic and Baltic Division), notably Edward Kasinec. The staff of the Hillwood Museum and Library in Washington welcomed me in 2007, and I should particularly like to thank Scott Ruby, who not only introduced me to the collection but also shared some of his unpublished findings.
    The project took me well outside my accustomed research areas – that was a large part of the initial attraction – but it also left me more than usually indebted to readers with a special expertise in its individual fields. I am grateful for the kindness of Alla Aronova, Sergei Bogatyrev, Anna Pikington, Donald Rayfield and Jonathan Shepard, each of whom read parts of the draft and offered detailed and extremely generous comments. None, of course, bears any responsibility for my mistakes. Nor do the many others who talked me through individual aspects of the book, in which connection I should like to thank Brigid Allen, Jill Bennett, Kathleen Berton Murrell, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, Clementine Cecil, Robert Dale, Simon Dixon, Vladimir Faekov, Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield, Jeremy Hicks, Valerie Holman, Geoffrey Hosking, Baron Hurd of Westwell, Ira Katznelson, Igor Korchilov, Vladimir Kozlov, Sue Levene, Kate Lowe, Sir Rodrick Lyne, Isabel de Madariaga, Anne McIntyre, Philip Merridale, Nicola Miller, Serena Moore, Sergei Orlenko, Tina Pepler, W. F. Ryan, Andreas Schonle, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jon Smele, Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, Elena Stroganova, Katherin Townsend, Tamar de Vries Winter and Richard Wortman. The members of the Early Slavists online discussion forum provided numerous new leads, and I am also indebted to