Soviet Memoirs

From comedian to president to freedom fighter, this is the story of Volodymyr Zelensky, the man who stood up to Vladimir Putin and forever changed the world. The authors of Zelensky chronicle his rise, discuss the changing attitudes toward him by Ukrainians there and abroad, and include some of his most stirring speeches.

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.

Nicolai Lilin ricostruisce la vita sorprendente e la folgorante ascesa politica di Vladimir Putin, da una misera casa popolare nel quartiere criminale di Leningrado alla poltrona presidenziale del Cremlino. Con il suo tipico stile potente che ti cattura e non ti lascia andare fino alla fine, Lilin indaga non solo la storia ma anche l'animo di Putin. Come in un romanzo ne racconta le origini, ne descrive le trasformazioni, ne ricorda i talenti che lo hanno portato a diventare il personaggio che conosciamo.

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.

God & Spies is a firsthand account of America's greatest intelligence coup. Operation Ivy Bells was not a onetime intercept of foreign intelligence but an ongoing operation of multiple Soviet military channels! "How did I end up as a navy diver, 400 feet down in a frigid Russian sea? After making my dad totally disgusted with me, I set out to make him happy. 'Honor thy father' - I struggled with a decision to serve God. 'Lord, I will give my life to you and serve you if you let me make this dive.'"

April of 1958 - the Iron Curtain was at its heaviest, and the outcome of the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition seemed preordained. Nonetheless, as star musicians from across the globe descended on Moscow, an unlikely favorite emerged: Van Cliburn, a polite, lanky Texan whose passionate virtuosity captured the Russian spirit. This is the story of what unfolded that spring - for Cliburn and the other competitors, jurors, party officials, and citizens of the world who were touched by the outcome.

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.

Детство — произведение одного из величайших писателей мира, русского прозаика и мыслителя Л. Н. Толстого (1828–1910). Это первая повесть автобиографической трилогии автора. В ней описаны психологические переживания, которые испытывают многие мальчики в детстве. Здесь писатель впервые использовал прием, который критики назвали «диалектикой души». Произведение является обязательной частью школьной программы. Толстой создал много выдающихся произведений: «Воскресение», «Война и мир», «Кавказский пленник», «Казаки», «Крейцерова соната».

Against the backdrop of the late Cold War, a tiny American start-up company forged a secret deal to place American scientific payloads aboard the Soviet space station MIR. Born out of sheer desperation after the Challenger explosion and grounding of the United States space shuttle program, the agreement was negotiated and approved behind the backs of NASA and Congress, with the help of United States government officials inside the Commerce and Defense departments.

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?

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in a penal colony in the Urals for standing up for what she believed in. 'People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever. That is a mistake. What happened in Russia - what happened to me - could happen anywhere.'

Justin Lifflander dreams of becoming an intelligence officer and joining the Cold War fight against the Russians. Following internships at the State Department and the FBI, he lands a job at the US Embassy in Moscow. But Lifflander's story turns out to be less The Spy Who Loved Me and more Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He sets off for provincial Russia to live outside the gate of a nuclear missile factory and work as an inspector-janitor-chef on the INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty US monitoring team. There he discovers Russians are just as friendly—and suspicious—as their ...

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.

After going through three elderly leaders in three years, Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen as the new General Secretary of the Soviet Union at the relatively youg age of 54 in March 1985. Gorbachev hoped to build the Soviet economy to relieve the persistent shortages of consumer goods it faced, which were caused by enormous military spending of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev tried to introduce some economic reforms, but they were blocked by communist hardliners. Gorbachev then came to the belief that the Soviet economy could not improved without political reform as well.

Across Cultures and Empires is above all an immigrant's story. Mahir Ibrahimov's fluency in multiple languages offers the perspective of someone who found a way to successfully cross boundaries amid the fall of empire and the resulting cascade of conflicts, even as he provides the listener with insight into an era where mass migration has become a defining dynamic. In the course of telling his personal story and reflecting upon his experiences, Ibrahimov offers clear observations on the deep connections he has made about freedom and America's role in the world.

Irina Millbery created this audiobook about the Russian popular romantic poet Fedor Tyutchev, who lived in the 19th century, so that people of the whole world could learn about him and come to understand Russian poetry. Prepare to listen to his poems in Russian. Irina Millbery has also translated his most popular romantic song, "When I Met You", into English.

Melting ice, a military arms race, the rush to exploit resources at any cost - the Arctic is now the stage on which our future will be decided. And as temperatures rise and the ice retreats, Vladimir Putin orders Russia's oil rigs to move north. But one early September morning in 2013, 30 men and women from 18 countries - the crew of Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise - decide to draw a line in the ice and protest the drilling in the Arctic.

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.

Окаянные дни - это по сути дневниковые записи Ивана Алексеевича Бунина сделанные им на фоне событий, разворачивавшихся в России во время революции и последовавшей за ней гражданской войны. Книгу условно можно разделить на три части: наблюдений автора за происходящим в Москве в 1918 году, в Одессе в 1919 году и выдержки из последующих заметок, имеющих отношение к теме революции. Первые части книги показывают нам положение постоянной неопределенности, с которой сталкивалось большинство людей: угрозы голода, погромов.

Kim Philby's life and career has inspired an entire literary genre: the spy novel of betrayal. He was one of the leaders of the British counter-intelligence efforts, first against the Nazis, then against the Soviet Union. He was also the KGB's most valuable double-agent, so highly regarded that today his image is on the postage stamps of the Russian Federation.