Soviet Memoirs

The best-selling author of Bringing Down the House (63 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and the basis for the hit movie 21) and The Accidental Billionaires (the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network) delivers an epic drama of wealth, rivalry, and betrayal among megawealthy Russian oligarchs - and its international repercussions.

The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s brilliant Putin’s Kleptocracy provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia.

This journal of the invasion, a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv, is a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a twenty-first-century war. Andrey Kurkov has been a consistent satirical commentator on his adopted country of Ukraine. His most recent work, Grey Bees, is a dark foreshadowing of the devastation in the eastern part of Ukraine in which only two villagers remain in a village bombed to smithereens. The author has lived in Kyiv and in the remote countryside of Ukraine throughout the Russian invasion.

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.

The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad—while Western spies watched in horror as their governments failed to guard against the threat. Unflinchingly documenting the growing web of death on British and American soil, Heidi Blake bravely exposes the Kremlin's assassination campaign as part of Putin's ruthless pursuit of global dominance—and reveals why Western governments have failed to stop the bloodshed.

Now a Multi Award Winning Motion Picture from Director Peeter Rebane, Starring Tom Prior. An inspiring memoir, Firebird: The Story of Roman chronicles one man’s unwavering resolve to follow his heart above all else. Sergey’s remarkable life story fosters understanding and empathy, driving support for LGBTQ+ equality around the world. In 1970s Soviet occupied Estonia, handsome soulful soldier Sergey is serving out a compulsory two-year conscription at a Soviet Air Force Base. While stationed there, he meets and falls in love with a maverick fighter pilot, Roman. The two young men begin a...

On September 20, 1998, a Cuban-born former Red Army lieutenant named Jose Vigoa launched a series of raids on the Las Vegas Strip. During a 16-month spree, Vigoa robbed five world-class hotels, three armored cars, and one department store. The casinos hit were the MGM; the Desert Inn; the New York, New York; the Mandalay Bay; and the Bellagio. Lieutenant John Alamshaw, a 23-year-old veteran in charge of robbery detectives, was ordered to stop the robberies at all costs. He knew he was up against a mastermind. What he didn't know was that he was running out of time.

Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 remains one of the most horrifying and hotly debated crimes in American history. Just as perplexing as the assassination is the assassin himself; the twenty-four-year-old Oswald's hazy background and motivations - and his subsequent murder at the hands of Jack Ruby - make him an intriguing yet frustratingly enigmatic figure. Because Oswald briefly defected to the Soviet Union, some historians allege he was a Soviet agent.

"My Life in the Red Army" by Fred Virski offers a rare, firsthand account of a soldier's experiences within the Soviet military machine during a critical period of the 20th century. Through the lens of Virski's personal journey, the book sheds light on the inner workings, struggles, and day-to-day life of the Red Army from the perspective of an ordinary soldier.

On December 7, 1941, the nation of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and prompted the United States’ entry into the bloodiest war in human history. Americans have long debated the cause of the bombing; many have argued that the attack was a brilliant Japanese military coup or a failure of US intelligence agencies or even a conspiracy of the Roosevelt administration. But despite the attention historians have paid to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the truth about that fateful day has remained a mystery - until now.

There is growing evidence that Trump has spent decades cultivating ties to corrupt Russians and the post-Soviet state. In Trump/Russia: A Definitive History, Seth Hettena chronicles the many years Trump has spent wooing Russian money and power. From the collapse of his casino empire - which left Trump desperate for cash - and his first contacts with Russian deal makers and financiers, on up to the White House, Hettena reveals the myriad of shady people, convoluted dealings, and strange events that suggest how indebted to Russia our 45th president might be.

The Kremlin intrigues, the private worlds of the Soviet Empire's ruling class, Radzinsky thrillingly brings them to life. And the riddle of that most cold-blooded of leaders, a man for whom nothing was sacred in his pursuit of absolute might, and perhaps the greatest mass murderer in Western history, is solved.

Partly out of dire circumstances and partly from a cultural worldview, it was the Soviet Union who first pressed female pilots into direct combat when Hitler invaded Russia. Ahead of Stalingrad, Stalin publicly declared that “women should be given the right to fly and fight for their country.” As a result, more than 800,000 women served in the Soviet military during the war years.

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.

As Viv Groskop knows from personal experience, everything that has ever happened to a person has already happened in the Russian classics: from not being sure what to do with your life (Anna Karenina) to being hopelessly in love with someone who doesn't love you back (Turgenev's A Month in the Country). In this sort of literary self-help memoir, Groskop mines these and other works, as well as the lives of their celebrated creators and her own experiences as a student of Russian, to answer the question, "How should you live your life?"

Witty, sharp, and unflinching, I Named My Dog Pushkin will have fans of Samantha Irby and Jenny Lawson howling with laughter at Margarita’s catastrophes, her victories, and her near misses as she learns to grow as both a woman and an immigrant in a world that often doesn’t appreciate either.

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.

John Cairncross was among the most damaging spies of the 20th century. A member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring, he leaked highly sensitive documents from Bletchley Park, MI6, and the Treasury to the Soviet Union...Based on newly released archival materials, this biography will be the first to cover the life and espionage of this singularly important spy.

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.

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.