Soviet Memoirs

After World War II, 50 percent of Americans polled said they didn’t believe Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide in their bunker in 1945, as captured Nazi officials claimed. Instead, they believed the dictator faked his death and escaped, perhaps to Argentina. This wasn’t a crazy opinion: Joseph Stalin told Allied leaders that Soviet forces never discovered Hitler’s body and that he personally believed the Nazi leader had escaped justice. At least two German submarines crossed the Atlantic and landed on the coast of Argentina in July 1945.

The searing accounts of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Evgeniia Ginsberg, and Varlam Shalamov opened the world's eyes to the terrors of the Soviet Gulag. But not until now has there been a memoir of life inside the camps written from the perspective of an actual employee of the Secret police. In this riveting memoir, superbly translated by Deborah Kaple, Fyodor Mochulsky describes being sent to work as a boss at the forced labor camp of Pechorlag in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle.

Stan was aged 15 when war broke out. Over a period of 5 years, he dodged death as he travelled thousands of kilometres from Poland to the UK, via Soviet gulags, Uzbekistan, the Middle East and India. He then trained as a paratrooper in Scotland. He met a local girl and was going to get married, but had to leave her behind when he was dropped into battle at Arnhem. He was trapped behind enemy lines and captured by the Nazis. Only the Dutch underground might be able to help him escape.

He was a teacher, a father—and a predator who haunted the USSR. Between 1978 and 1990, Andrei Chikatilo terrorized the Soviet Union with a series of brutal, sexually sadistic murders. Operating in an era of state secrecy, his crimes went undetected for years as innocent men were blamed, files were buried, and authorities denied the existence of serial killers. The Soviet Monster is the definitive account of Chikatilo’s life, crimes, and the political climate that enabled him. True crime author David G.

Among the leaders of the 20th century, arguably none shaped the course of history as much as Vladimir Lenin. If Adolf Hitler had not inflicted the devastation of World War II upon Europe, it's quite likely that the West would consider Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) the 20th century's greatest tyrant. Along with Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky led the October Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and held crucial posts in the early Soviet governments.

Can trauma be inherited? In this “urgent and enthralling reckoning with family and history” (Andrew Solomon), an American writer returns to Russia to face a family history that still haunts him. Can trauma be inherited? It is this question that sets Alex Halberstadt off on a quest to name...

Memoirs of a Madman or Diary of a Madman is a farcical short story by Nikolai Gogol. Along with The Overcoat and The Nose, Diary of a Madman is considered to be one of Gogol's greatest short stories. The tale centers on the life of a minor civil servant during the repressive era of Nicholas I. Following the format of a diary, the story shows the descent of the protagonist, Poprishchin, into insanity. Diary of a Madman, the only one of Gogol's works written in first person, follows diary-entry format.

This audiobook offers the first systematic analysis of Putin's two wars, placing the Second Chechen War and the War with Georgia of 2008 in their broader historical contexts. Drawing on extensive original Russian sources, Marcel H. Van Herpen analyzes in detail how Putin's wars were prepared and conducted and why they led to allegations of war crimes and genocide.

As Joshua Rubenstein writes in his preface, “Leon Trotsky haunts our historical memory. A preeminent revolutionary figure and a masterful writer, Trotsky led an upheaval that helped to define the contours of twentieth-century politics.” In this lucid and judicious evocation of Trotsky’s life, Joshua Rubenstein gives us an interpretation for the twenty-first century.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the vast expanse of the Soviet Union became accessible to the outside world. Suddenly, the Church of the Nazarene was confronted with exciting and challenging opportunities for ministry and missions. Among those spearheading this pioneering missionary work were Franklin Cook and Carla Sunberg, the authors of Pulling Back the Curtain on the Former Soviet Union.

Am 24. Februar 2022 schickte Wladimir Putin seine Armee gegen die Ukraine in den Krieg und traf damit eine Entscheidung, die das politische und ökonomische Gleichgewicht der ganzen Welt ins Wanken brachte. Der russische Angriffskrieg bringt unzählige menschliche Tragödien und immense materielle Zerstörung mit sich, und er wirft eine zentrale Frage auf: Wer ist Wladimir Putin, dieser Mann, der sich weigert, Lehren aus dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion zu ziehen, und der von der Rückkehr zu den Grenzen des Zarenreichs und der Wiedereinsetzung eines Regimes träumt, das sich der totalitären Methoden des Stalinismus bedient?

В Дневнике писателя, не имеющим аналогов в русской и зарубежной публицистике, Достоевский напрямую общается с читателями и словно приглашает присоединиться к обсуждению глубоких тем, которым посвящено все его творчество: человек и Бог, добро и зло, свобода и судьба России. В заметках 1876 года особое внимание он уделяет анализу мировой политики того времени и духовных болезней русского общества, оказавшемся во многом пророческим. А результатом его размышлений можно считать впервые опубликованную в ноябрьской главе повесть "Кроткая", где писатель исследует отношения тирана и жертвы на примере обычной семьи.

При упоминании имени Михаила Афанасьевича Булгакова на память сразу приходят его Белая гвардия, Мастер и Маргарита или Собачье сердце. Эти без преувеличения гениальные романы выдержали многочисленные переиздания, были неоднократно экранизированы и по праву занимают самое почетное место в золотом фонде российской литературы.

The World War II era produced many leaders of titanic determination, men whose strengths and weaknesses left an extraordinary imprint on historical affairs. The struggle between massively divergent ideologies, exacerbated by huge social changes affected by the world’s technological metamorphosis into the machine age, catapulted some individuals unexpectedly onto the world stage. This audiobook details the lives of two such men: Josip Broz Tito, better known to history as Marshal Tito, and Nicolae Ceaușescu, one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictators.

On a sunny September day in 1931, Soviet spy Stanislav Shumovsky walked down the gangplank of the SS Europa and into New York, concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students. Joseph Stalin had sent him to acquire American secrets to help close the USSR’s yawning technology gap. In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the listener on a journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation, piecing together every aspect of Shumovsky’s life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives.