Soviet Union

In 2010, the words “earthquake swarm” entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia—including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove—was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon.

No one can predict the future. Julian certainly couldn’t. Still, as Paul “PC” Roman sees his grandmother unexpectedly at an Antwerp hotel, he can’t help but think this is what she wished for. He’s well-connected, happy, and wealthy, and his entire family shares in his success. Julian has every right to be proud of her grandson. It turns out that PC doesn’t know his grandmother at all. First, he sees her having dinner with a mysterious man. She brushes off the encounter, but PC begins to feel that something has brought Julian to Antwerp—something important. His instincts prove ...

Who is Alexei Navalny? Poisoned in August 2020 and transported to Germany for treatment, the politician returned to Russia in January 2021 in the full glare of the world media. His immediate detention at passport control set the stage for an explosive showdown with Vladimir Putin. But Navalny means very different things to different people. To some, he is a democratic hero. To others, he is betraying the Motherland. To others still, he is a dangerous nationalist. Navalny explores the many dimensions of his political life.

Leonid Brezhnev became First Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union in late 1964 after a plot to oust Khrushchev. Little is remembered in the public imagination about Brezhnev in comparison to Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Lenin, or Joseph Stalin, despite the fact Brezhnev ruled the USSR from 1964-1982, longer than any Soviet leader other than Stalin. In fact, he held power during a tumultuous era that changed the world in remarkable ways, and that era has been favorably remembered by many former Soviet citizens.

Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single ethnic group, no true central identity. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it has been subject to invasion by outsiders, from Vikings to Mongols, from Napoleon’s French to Hitler’s Germans. In order to forge an identity, it has mythologized its past to unite its people and to signal strength to outsiders. In A Short History of Russia, Mark Galeotti explores the history of this fascinating, glorious, desperate, and exasperating country.

This interdisciplinary study offers a comprehensive analysis of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Providing full historical context and drawing on a wide range of literature, this book explores the continuous economic and social transformation of the post-socialist world. While the future is yet to be determined, understanding the present phase of transformation is critical.

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 in the CIA, FBI, and the KGB, thousands of pages of FBI investigations, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. American Kompromat shows that from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat was used in operations far more sinister than the public could ever imagine.

The Soviet national hockey team began to dominate international hockey from its first appearance at the World Championships in 1954 when it won the gold medal. The World Championships and Olympics hockey tournaments were restricted to amateur players and Canadian professionals were ineligible to play. In 1969 Canada withdrew from international competition in a dispute over player eligibility with international hockey authorities. In September 1972 the Soviet national team played a series of eight games against a team of Canadian NHL professionals known as Team Canada. The “Summit Series...

It was always meant to be this way. Love involves sacrifice, but that can often go too far. A secretive cabal recruits two boys for a mission that could cost their lives but change their country. A man is trapped in East Berlin when the Wall goes up, and he will do anything to return to his beloved family, even pretend he is loyal but always ready to betray. These lives intersect and prove love is both eternal and a powerful motivator. Love forgives almost anything. But love is also sometimes the perfect companion for death.

In 1989 Ken Follett astonished the literary world with The Pillars of the Earth, set in 12th-century England. Readers and listeners ever since have hoped for a sequel. At last, here it is. Although the two novels may be listened to in any order, World Without End also takes place in Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building their exquisite Gothic cathedral. The cathedral is again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge.

The Cold War drove military innovation and none more than the need to spy on Soviet Bloc countries in the 1950s. The best way to spy other than tap phones and have agents on the ground was from the air. For this several cutting edge aircraft were designed and built by the legendary Kelly Johnson and Lockheed Skunk works – which pushed the boundaries of technology. At the same time a secret airbase to test these revolutionary aircraft in the form of Area 51 came into being. Follow the exciting true story of some very famous aircraft that would fly faster and higher than anything seen ...

Thanks in large part to the support of a powerful U.S. Senator with ties to a shadowy group of politicians and bureaucrats, David Morgan’s career survived the debacle that was Dagastan, and three years later he is posted to the West African country of Naganda as the American ambassador. As bad as Dagastan had been, Morgan finds that it was a cake walk compared to the quagmire that is Naganda. Having recently undergone a military coup, and with its economy in shambles, Naganda is now in the throes of a vicious internal power struggle, with China and the Soviet Union manipulating the ...

On Friday evening, February 22nd, 1980, lightning struck in the tiny village of Lake Placid, New York. For, on that night, the absolute impossible happened. The United States' men's Olympic Hockey Team defeated the vaunted Soviet Union 4 to 3 in the tournament's semi-final match. It was the single greatest upset in the history of sports. Up until that point in time, the Soviets had dominated the sport of international hockey in every way, manner, shape, and form possible. Ever since 1954, with only slight interruption, they had spent their mornings, afternoons, and evenings, systematically ...

Young Stalin tells the story of an exceptional, charismatic, darkly turbulent young man born into obscurity, fancying himself a poet and a priest, and finally embracing revolutionary idealism as his Messianic mission in life. Equal parts scholar and terrorist, a mastermind of bank robberies, extortion, piracy, and murder, he was so impressive in his brutality that Lenin made him, along with Trotsky, his chief henchman.

The Soviet plan to cut Finland in half failed spectacularly with the destruction of the 163rd and 44th Divisions at Suomassalmi and The Raate Road. Undeterred by the disaster, Soviet High Command crafted a new strategy to bisect Finland, targeting the crucial crossroads in the town of Kuhmo. Learning from their mistakes, they deployed the formidable 54th Mountain Division, seasoned in Arctic warfare, to achieve the objective. When ten thousand Red Army soldiers stormed across the border, the Finnish 9th Division, led by Colonel Siilasvuo, raced to intercept them. After days of fierce combat...

Dr. Bruce Banner. Emil Blonsky. One a brilliant scientist, the other an agent for the KBG. Both men whose lives were irrevocably altered by gamma radiation - transforming Banner into the incredible Hulk and Blonsky into the deadly Abomination. For years, the two super-strong creatures have clashed. Now they are brought together for their most deadly confrontation yet. The Abomination has allied himself with the URSA, an organization dedicated to restoring the Soviet Union - but he is using the URSA to further his own mad quest for vengeance on all those who wronged him in life.

Vladimir Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency, he appeared to commit himself to friendship with the West, suggesting that Russia could join the European Union or even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin of those years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist, dedicated to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad.

Since its publication in 2003, the first edition of Black Garden has become the definitive study of how Armenia and Azerbaijan, two southern Soviet republics, were pulled into a conflict that helped bring them to independence, spell the end the Soviet Union, and plunge a region of great strategic importance into a decade of turmoil. This important volume is both a careful reconstruction of the history of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict since 1988 and on-the-spot reporting of the convoluted aftermath.

Politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle have accused Russia of interfering with our elections and our intelligence agencies. But the war Russia is waging against America is very different from anything you have heard in the press, as Russian-born US intelligence expert Rebekah Koffler reveals. In Putin’s Playbook, Koffler details how Vladimir Putin is orchestrating a wide-ranging, multifaceted campaign to retake his country’s role as a superpower and to defeat America in the process.

Charlie Wilson's War is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War and how it fueled the rise of militant Islam. George Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from east Texas, conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful covert operation in the agency's history.