Memoir Russia

Nell'agosto 1991, Tiziano Terzani - che già nel febbraio precedente ha potuto visitare le isole Curili e Sachalin, estremo avamposto dell'Unione Sovietica - inizia, come membro di una spedizione sovietico-cinese, un lungo viaggio sul fiume Amur per osservare da vicino la situazione del paese nelle sue zone asiatiche più periferiche.

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.

This is the riveting account of one of the first Americans to spy for Joseph Stalin. A brilliant Columbia University graduate, Isaiah Oggins went to Berlin to establish a safe house and spy for his country - but he turned coat. Working for the Soviets, he was nevertheless poisoned in 1947 on Stalin's orders. Classified for decades, Oggins' story is a cloak-and-dagger tale to rival the best novels.

Cast between the 17th and 18th centuries, this gigantic, Pulitzer prize-winning biography is as impressive as the man himself. Peter the Great was an extraordinary ruler - impulsive and stubborn, cruel yet generous, tender and forgiving.

История Петра I — незавершенный исторический труд гениального российского поэта, "солнца русской поэзии", драматурга и прозаика А. С. Пушкина (1799–1837). В нем представлена хронология событий времени правления Петра Великого. Пушкин планировал на ее основании написать Историю Петра I максимум через год. Параллельно он трудился над "Историей Пугачева" и "Капитанской дочкой". Работу прервала дуэль… Николай I запретил печатать рукопись. Причина — автор с большой для того времени смелостью позволил себе рассказать не только о положительных, но и отрицательных качествах императора.

Young Stalin is a remarkable adventure story about an exceptional, turbulent young man, born in exoticism, raised in the church, fancying himself a poet, then embracing revolutionary idealism and thereby finding his romantic Messianic mission in life.

In Operation Whisper, Barnes Carr tells the true story of the most effective Soviet spy couple in America, a pair who vanished under the FBI's nose only to turn up posing as rare book dealers in London, where they continued their atomic spying. The Cohens were talented, dedicated, worldly spies - an urbane, jet-set couple loyal to their service and their friends. Most people they met seemed to think they represented the best of America. The Soviets certainly thought so.

There have been many biographies of Stalin, but the court that surrounded him is untravelled ground. Simon Sebag Montefiore, acclaimed biographer of Catherine the Great's lover, prime minister, and general, Potemkin, has unearthed the vast underpinning that sustained Stalin. Not only ministers such as Molotov or secret service chiefs such as Beria, but men and women whose loyalty he trusted only until the next purge.

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.

If you want to discover the captivating life of Nicholas II, then pay attention...Tsar Nicholas II is a complicated and controversial figure in Russian history. His rule came on the heels of his autocratic father’s death, and his succession to the throne led to a revolving door of conflicts, from a brutal and bloody coronation to the eventual collapse of the Romanov family as a whole through the efforts of the Russian Revolution. As Nicholas II was such a crucial figure in shaping Russia, he deserves further inspection into his story.

Just what was so terrible about Ivan the Terrible? Most of us are familiar with this infamous nickname, but most fall short of being able to describe how he received such an ominous moniker. Maybe you’ve heard the stories of how Ivan killed his own son, poisoned his wives, and waged war on his neighbors, but these anecdotes are just minor details in the scheme of this man’s complicated life.

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.

He was Grand Duke Michael, handsome brother of Tsar Nicholas II. She was the beautiful twice-divorced daughter of a Moscow lawyer. Their scandalous love affair and their runaway marriage to Vienna in 1912, trailed by the Tsar's secret police, caused uproar in Russia and was the talk of all Europe.

Stalin’s Scribe is the first biography of a man who was once one of the Soviet Union’s most prominent political figures. Thanks to the opening of Russia’s archives, Brian Boeck discovers that Sholokhov’s official Soviet biography is actually a tangled web of legends, half-truths, and contradictions. Boeck examines the complex connection between an author and a dictator, revealing how a Stalinist courtier became an ideological acrobat and consummate politician in order to stay in favor and remain relevant after the dictator’s death.

In 1890, Kate Marsden, a British nurse, travelled 14,000 miles by boat, train, sledge, and horse, to reach remote isolated patients with leprosy in Siberia. Her resulting memoir, On Sledge and Horseback to the Outcast Siberian Lepers, is more than just a travelogue. It offers a profound reflection on the plight of societal outcasts, the challenges faced by female explorers, and the need for religious zeal to survive, all of which she experienced with the approval of Queen Victoria and Empress Maria Feodorovna.

In Russian literary marriages, the wives of some of the most famous authors of all time did not resent taking a "secondary position", although to call their position secondary does not do justice to the vital role these women played in the creation of some of the greatest literary works in history. Living under restrictive regimes, many of these women battled censorship and preserved the writers' illicit archives, often risking their own lives to do so. They established a tradition all their own, unmatched in the West.

No Smiling Allowed is a comedic take on life in the former Soviet Union, as an immigrant in America. Julia Bendis has compiled many years of funny stories about her old-fashioned and traditional Russian parents, their understanding of how life works in the United States, their hilarious adventures, and her own younger generation's view of what it was like to blend in as a weird-looking kid from Russia.

Orwell Prize-nominated journalist Heidi Blake uncovers exclusive details of Vladimir Putin’s worldwide meddling with dissident voices. This is the explosive and true story of how Russia operates in our cities, right under the noses of the most powerful nations in the world, and why even they can’t stop him.

Aunque de origen alemán, tuvo una excelente formación a "la francesa". Asumió el cargo de emperatriz como sucesora de su marido Pedro III, que murió en un complot en 1762 (año que Catalina tomó el poder). Por su estrategia de política interior y exterior intentó una europeización del país, y otorgó a la nobleza un puesto relevante que hasta ese momento no habían tenido. Interiormente fracasó su intento de crear un código con las ideas de Montesquieu y vivió una contienda en 1773 con los campesinos, por la nefasta situación social que la población vivía.

In this crackling memoir, the journalist and novelist Michael Idov recounts the tempestuous years he spent living alongside - and closely observing - the media and cultural elite of Putin's Russia. After accepting a surprise offer to become the editor in chief of GQ Russia, Idov and his family arrive in a Moscow still seething from a dubious election and the mass anti-Putin rallies that erupted in response. Idov is fascinated by the political turmoil but nonetheless finds himself pulled in unlikely directions.