Soviet Union

Now extensively revised in this ninth edition, A History of Russia covers the entire span of the country's history, from ancient times to the post-communist present. Keeping with the hallmark of the text, Riasanovsky and Steinberg examine all aspects of Russia's history—political, international, military, economic, social, and cultural—with a commitment to objectivity, fairness, and balance, and to reflecting recent research and new trends in scholarly interpretation.

More than a century ago, the new Bolshevik government began sending Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to pose as foreign aristocrats, merchants, and students. Over time, this grew into the most ambitious espionage program in history. Many intelligence agencies use undercover operatives, but the KGB was the only one to go to such lengths, spending years training its spies in language and etiquette, and sending them abroad on missions that could last for decades. These spies were known as “illegals.”

A gripping true-life story about an extraordinary destiny of a young man, forced to make the choice of life: sell his soul to serve the devil, or preserve his dignity by taking a new path to a new world. The book chronicles the remarkable adventure of a foreign student who finds himself at the center of an action-packed spy thriller while studying in Moscow. Being eyewitnesses to the events, relying on solid documentary research and historical facts, the Grigorov Brothers authentically recreate the life of foreigners in the Soviet capital at the height of the Cold War, while masterfully ...

The men of Lieutenant Colonel Ketterle's battle group see that the fall of France did not mean the end of the war. Instead, they are sent east to take part in Operation Barbarossa - the invasion of the Soviet Union - fighting in battles of the first two Eastern Front campaigns of the game Maneuver Warfare: Panzergrenadier Battle Group. In this book, follow them – and their opponents – as they cross the Soviet border and fight in battles that culminate in the massive encirclement of Soviet troops at Kiev. Then, when that fails to deliver a final victory, the battle group is sent to ...

During the last years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union sent some of its most elite troops to unfamiliar lands in Central Asia to fight a vaguely defined enemy, which eventually defeated their superior number with unconventional tactics. Although the Soviet leadership initially saw the invasion as a victory, many Russian soldiers came to view the war as a demoralizing and devastating defeat, the consequences of which had a substantial impact on the Soviet Union and its collapse.

Four Soviet armies have invaded. Outnumbered more than ten to one by the most powerful military on earth, the Finnish Army is forced into retreat. Their last hope is the Mannerheim Line—a frozen wall of trenches and resolve. But if it falls, so does Finland. Behind enemy lines, Hale Karhonen faces an impossible mission. Cut off from his unit and hunted by Soviet forces, Hale must lead his family, his mother, sister, pregnant wife, and unborn child, through a gauntlet of snow and steel to reach safety. Every step is a battle. With the Soviet juggernaut pressing deeper into Karelia, the ...

Tragedy and terrorism couldn't extinguish his hopes for a better life for his beloved family. Escape to Tehran is a powerful true story about how one couple's decision to leave their home in St. Petersburg on the eve of the Communist revolution began an adventurous trek to establish a new life. Twice more they would flee Stalin and communist before they passed away, leaving their 17-year old son and 15-year old daughter orphaned and earning their living in a new country, Iran. Their son, the author's father, served as a translator for the Soviet Union, United States, and British armies in ...

Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station is intellectual history on a grand scale, full of romance, idealism, intrigue, and conspiracy, that traces the revolutionary ideas that shaped the modern world from the French Revolution up through Lenin's arrival at Finland Station in St. Petersburg in 1917. Fueled by Wilson's own passionate engagement with the ideas and politics at play, it is a lively and vivid, sweeping account of a singular idea—that it is possible to construct a society based on justice, equality, and freedom—gaining the power to change history.

In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of 73. Through the lens of personality - Stalin’s as well as those of his most notorious henchmen, Molotov, Beria and Yezhov among them - the author sheds new light on the oligarchy that attempted to create a new world by exterminating the old.

Making use of the extensive memoirs of German and Russian soldiers to bring their story to life, the narrative follows on from On A Knife's Edge, which described the encirclement and destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad and the offensives and counter-offensives that followed throughout the winter of 1942-43.

Camel from Kyzylkum is an award-winning memoir about the physical, emotional, and spiritual journey of immigrating from the Soviet Union in the late twentieth century. It touches on the themes of hope, struggle, family, and loss, while highlighting the compelling desire for people to focus on freedom and self-determination. Readers will gain a better understanding of how much work and risk people will endure reaching for a better life. Travel from Ukraine to the Kyzylkum Desert of Uzbekistan, from the Soviet Union to Austria, then Italy, and eventually America, all while following the ...

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 ...

Did you know that a measles outbreak led to the assigning of phone numbers? How about the fact that pirates are the reason we don’t use the metric system in the United States? Or that there’s actually a reason why stepping on a Lego hurts so damn much? Now I Know: The Soviets Invaded Wisconsin?! is the ultimate challenge for even the biggest trivia buff. Based on the very popular newsletter, you are guaranteed to learn something new despite how much you already think you know.

Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post-Soviet Russia.

While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top-secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States.

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.

November 2009. Sergei Magnitsky is led to an isolation cell in a Moscow prison and beaten to death by eight police officers. His crime? To testify against the Russian Interior Ministry officials involved in a conspiracy to steal $230 million in taxes. Magnitsky’s brutal killing has remained uninvestigated to this day. Red Notice is a searing exposé of the Russian authorities responsible for the murder, slicing deep into the heart of the Kremlin to uncover its sordid truths.

Two opposing narratives vie to explain the strategic future of Europe, one geopolitical and one economic, and both center on the same resource: natural gas. In The Bridge, Thane Gustafson, an expert on Russian oil and gas, argues that the political rivalries that capture the lion's share of media attention must be viewed alongside multiple business interests and differences in economic ideologies. With a dense network of pipelines linking Europe and Russia, natural gas serves as a bridge that unites the region through common interests.

When celebrated author and lecturer Maria Kovalenko receives an invitation to speak at a charity function in Chicago from Leonid Kozlov, whom she hasn't seen since he abandoned her 4 years ago, the past grips her. Leonid is now a wealthy man and a criminal boss. She shouldn't go. She has to see him. Their love story began years ago in Ukraine under the Russian oppression and man-made famine. He was a hero lost in an evil cause. And I was a female dying in that cause. Despite his training or allegiance to carry out his orders, he had a primal instinct to protect a woman. The sight of me, not...

Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.