Of all Complicite's book adaptations, Bulgakov's mind-expanding novel is surely the most ambitious.

Anne Frank's stepsister spent Holocaust Memorial Day in Moscow, thanking Russian veterans who helped to liberate her and others from Auschwitz.

Eva Schloss, 82, spent six days in the Russian capital in temperatures as low as -15 degrees.

"I have always wanted to go to Russia to meet the army veterans," she said. "It was very emotional for me, really very special.

Two Israeli billionaires will battle it out in a British court in May, after a judge ruled that there had been an agreement for the religious Russian-born tycoon Lev Leviev to give Arcadi Gaydamak 50 per cent of his income from diamonds in Angola.

A report looking at Iran's nuclear plans is expected to reveal that the country has been receiving help from Russia, Pakistan and North Korea.

By Antony Polonsky
The Littman Library, £39.50 each

Two Russian Jewish businessmen faced each other in court yesterday on the first day of a high profile case against Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich.

Mr Abramovich has been accused of the betrayal and blackmail of his former business partner Boris Berezovsky. The pair, among the world's richest men, worked together following the collapse of the Soviet Union but fell out several years ago.

He has become known as the Magnificent Mohel, a Chabad rabbi working in Ukraine who this week celebrated an astonishing landmark - 4,500 circumcisions which he has carried out in the last 13 years.