Showing titles in Russian & Soviet

Ten Days That Shook the World is John Reed's phenomenal firsthand account of the October Revolution, leading up to the storming of the Winter Palace and the assumption of power by the Bolsheviks in 1917.

Twenty-five years old and struggling to find his way in his journalism career, the young reporter who had been covering local political stories found himself smack in the middle of the world's biggest geopolitical crisis—fleeing air raids and being questioned by militants along the way. One year later when Hamas carried out its October 7th attack, Sherman flew right back into the thick of it—running from rockets and diving into Hamas tunnels in Gaza. While shrouded in the proverbial "Fog of War," it became clear to Sherman that the world isn't as simple as he thought it was.

Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimes–as many as 20 million Soviets died in his purges and infamous Gulag–has given him the lasting distinction as a personification of evil in the twentieth century...

The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secret police, the Soviet state had seemingly unprecedented capabilities based on its near monopoly of productive capital, monolithic authority, and secretive decision making. But behind the scenes, Soviet secrecy was double-edged. Mark Harrison combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to evaluate the impact of secrecy on Soviet state capacity from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

An incisive analysis of the failures that led to war in Ukraine and where we go from here, from Russian chess grandmaster and early Putin-critic, Garry Kasparov, with a foreword from Zelensky. What happens when you ignore the writing on the wall? For over a decade, Russian chess grandmaster...

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** Kompromat n.—Russian for "compromising information" This is a story about the dirty secrets of the most powerful people in the world—including Donald Trump. It is based on exclusive interviews with dozens of high-level sources—intelligence officers...

How do separatist conflicts arise and spread? When does separatism become a cover for a foreign aggression? How do local communities respond when state institutions collapse, and militants take over? The armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine, which started eight years before Russia's full-scale...

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Abraham Ascher offers a skillful blend of engaging narrative and fresh analysis in this concise introduction to Russian history. Newly updated on the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, it covers the growing political tensions between Russia and its neighbors and the mounting divergence between Russian and US foreign policies. This stimulating and beautifully written introduction will prove enlightening for students, scholars, and travelers alike.

This book analyzes the evolution of Russian military thought and how Russia's current thinking about war is reflected in recent crises. What Jonsson reveals is that Russia's conception of the very nature of war is now changing, as Russian elites see information warfare and political subversion as the most important ways to conduct contemporary war. Since information warfare and political subversion are below the traditional threshold of armed violence, this has blurred the boundaries between war and peace. 

My Russia is an autobiography that traces Jill Dougherty's fascination with Russia and shares the insights into the country, its people, and its leader she has gleaned through forty years of reporting. Listeners will see Russia's evolution through the eyes of the dedicated and compassionate woman they have watched on cable since 1983.

Wolf Messing: The True Story of Russia’s Greatest Psychic by Tatiana Lungin is the first comprehensive biography of the renowned psychic Wolf Messing. This fascinating memoir recounts Messing’s rise to fame in Europe, his escape from Nazi persecution, and his incredible career in the USSR, where he became a psychic sensation even under Stalin’s scrutiny. In this, the first biography and personal memoir of Wolf Messing to appear in the West, Tatiana Lungin limns a revealing portrait of one of the greatest psychic performers of the twentieth century.

Untraceable is a wonderful piece of fiction rooted in the recent history of Russia's state assassinations, especially the attempted poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. Professor Kalitin is a ruthless, narcissistic chemist who has developed an untraceable, extremely lethal poison called Neophyte while working in a secret city on an island in the Russian far east. When the Soviet Union collapses, he defects and is given a new identity in Germany.

In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a bloody escalation of a conflict that had begun eight years earlier. What drove Vladimir Putin to launch Europe's largest land war since World War II? Putin's Revenge features insight from Lucian Kim's first-hand reporting on key moments, such as Russia's occupation of Crimea and the beginning of the Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine. This book tells the story of the lead-up to the invasion with revelatory detail and fresh analysis, shedding new light on a conflict that has roiled the post–Cold War order.

In a page-turning narrative that reads like a thriller, an award-winning journalist exposes the troubling truth behind the world’s first act of nuclear terrorism. On November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko sipped tea in London’s Millennium Hotel. Hours later the Russian émigré and former...

The State and Revolution (1917), by Vladimir Lenin, describes the role of the State in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin began the composition of an early draft of State and Revolution while in exile in Switzerland in 1916, under the title "Marxism on the State". "Soviets", legislative bodies of workers and peasants were the de facto governments of Petrograd and many smaller cities.

Since its founding in 1995, the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, has regained the majority of the domestic security functions of the Soviet-era KGB. Under Vladimir Putin, who served as FSB director just before becoming president, the agency has grown to be one of the most powerful and favored organizations in Russia. The FSB not only conducts internal security but also has primacy in intelligence operations in former Soviet states.

A nuclear priesthood has arisen in Russia. From portable churches to the consecration of weapons systems, the Russian Orthodox Church has been integrated into every facet of the armed forces to become a vital part of Russian national security, politics, and identity. This extraordinary intertwining of church and military is nowhere more visible than in the nuclear weapons community, where the priesthood has penetrated all levels of command and the Church has positioned itself as a guardian of the state's nuclear potential. 

With a practitioner's eye honed during decades of work on Russian affairs, Thomas Graham deftly traces the evolution of opposing ideas of national purpose that created an inherent tension in relations. Getting Russia Right identifies the blind spots that prevented Washington from seeing Russia as it really is and crafting a policy to advance American interests without provoking an aggressive Russian response.

A "Best Non-Fiction to Read This Year" Selection from The New Statesman A magisterial, revisionist narrative history of the Soviet Union in its post-Stalin heyday, bringing a forgotten society to vivid life and offering a new explanation for how it suddenly collapsed. To those of us in the West...

The development of the Russian military's strategic thought is an understudied and thus misunderstood subject in the West. Strategy in Russia encompasses the broader context of foreign and domestic policy as well as the military's ties to the country's leadership. The military's strategic thought is closely linked to Russia's existence as a state and explains patterns of Russian confrontation.