![]() ![]() ![]() "In the genre of pastiche-writing in which this book excels there are various strategies for avoiding straightforward references," writes Polonsky, a former research fellow at Cambridge and once an associate of Figes. There are even suggestions, if not of plagiarism, which remains the cardinal crime in academe, then of careless paraphrase. She cites among her charges against him factual inaccuracies, misreadings, cavalier appropriation of sources and overall intellectual irresponsibility. In the Times Literary Supplement - which still purports to be a journal of record and in which each submission is presumably peer reviewed - she seeks at once to demolish the scholarship and the academic reputation of Figes, who is professor of history at Birkbeck College in London. The review was written by the Moscow-based, British academic Rachel Polonsky. His new book, Natasha's Dance (Penguin Press), a broad, sweeping, multidisciplinary cultural history of Russia, has received what friends of the author concede is a review of "perhaps unprecedented hostility and malice". This week, one of the most celebrated writers in Britain, the Russian scholar Orlando Figes, must be feeling a little bit like a lamppost after yet another random soaking from a passing dog. Asking working writers what they think about critics, wrote the playwright Christopher Hampton, is like asking lampposts what they think about dogs. ![]()
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