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Looking back on my own experience in Palestine I can see how today’s horror grew from small beginnings. Zionism, Jewish separateness and the belief in a Jewish homeland, have developed into state violence. My parents were pioneering Zionists, leaving Russia for Palestine in 1902 to join a total Zionist population of a few thousand.

The Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations will rarely have looked less capable of solving the world’s problems than at their summit in St Petersburg, Russia, this weekend.

Many people today are interested in a revolutionary alternative to capitalism. But they often worry that socialism is associated with the brutality of Stalinism, a system which dominated Russia and Eastern Europe for much of the 20th century and that was no better than Western capitalism.

The SeagullDirected by Katie MitchellNational Theatre, LondonUntil 23 September This is a fresh and innovative production of one of the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s finest plays. It deals with conflicting visions of art, with love, class and the claustrophobia of bourgeois families.

"Why had we thought the Afghans wouldn’t fight? They defeated the Russians after all."Christina Lamb, Times journalist embedded with the Parachute Regiment in Afghanistan

Kandinsky: The Path To AbstractionTate Modern, central London until 1 Octoberwww.tate.org.uk A new exhibition follows the journey of Russian revolutionary artist Wassily Kandinsky from a figurative landscape painter to one of the founders of modern art. Kandinsky’s artistic revolution was heavily influenced by the Russian revolutionary movement and the revolution that occurred in Russia in 1917. This is an inspirational exhibition, with paintings conveying political turmoil and the birth of a new hope.

In 1907 when Maxim Gorky’s play Enemies was sent to the Russian censor it was banned. The censor said that it was "nothing but a diatribe against the possessing classes".

Whatever your feelings about Maxim Gorky, Enemies is a play that seems to capture the possibilities when society is on the edge of change.

The campaign against Dr Frank Ellis, lecturer in Russian and Slavonic studies at Leeds University, is growing. He has a history of racism, homophobia and sexism.

"Immigrants should be hunted down, rounded up and deported." "Homosexuality should be weeded out." These are just two of the foul comments made by Dr Frank Ellis, lecturer in Russian and Slavonic Studies at Leeds University in an interview with Leeds Student journalist Matt Kennard.

Political speeches are usually one-day wonders. Fifty years ago next week, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev made a "secret speech" that was very different. Late in the evening of 24 February 1956 delegates to the 20th congress of the Soviet Communists were called back from their hotels to the Kremlin in the greatest secrecy.

This exhibition of 30 photographs from the archives of Novosti RAI, the Soviet Press Agency is a must see. It charts the history of Russia from the 1917 revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.