Russia & the Former Soviet Union

A pioneering history of medical care in Stalin’s Gulag—showing how doctors and nurses cared for inmates in appalling conditions   A byword for injustice, suffering, and mass mortality, the Gulag exploited prisoners, compelling them to work harder for...

A groundbreaking history of Russia, from empire to the Soviet era, viewed through the lens of its money. Money seems passive, a silent witness to the deeds and misdeeds of its holders, but through its history intimate dramas and grand historical...

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has been marginalized at the edge of a Western-dominated political and economic system. In recent years, however, leading Russian figures, including former president Vladimir Putin, have begun to stress a...

WINNER OF THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2017, THE PUSHKIN HOUSE RUSSIAN BOOK PRIZE 2017 AND THE LONGMAN-HISTORY TODAY BOOK PRIZE 2017THE TIMES, SPECTATOR, BBC HISTORY and TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR'Masterful, ...

WINNER OF THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2017, THE PUSHKIN HOUSE RUSSIAN BOOK PRIZE 2017 AND THE LONGMAN-HISTORY TODAY BOOK PRIZE 2017THE TIMES, SPECTATOR, BBC HISTORY and TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR'Masterful, ...

'Through his daily involvement with them, Wilhelm Adam is able to perfectly describe the characters involved, the tensions and despair amongst them and the pressure Paulus and his staff found themselves under as the Soviet pincers closed around the men...

This title examines the bitter conflict between two highly tactical armies as they battled across challenging terrain to gain control of strategically significant Northern Finland. On the one side were the invading Soviet troops, hoping to liberate an...

How a Soviet cosmic dream is becoming a modern reality Cheating death and raising the dead. Creating life. Freeing the spirit. Colonising space. These projects, of which some have been achieved and some will soon, have a shared Russian history,...

The captivating account of a young female television producer's adventures bringing Sesame Street to post-communist Russia. In the early 1990s, communism had collapsed and Russia was finally awakening, economically and culturally. The timing appeared...

The Russian Civil War of 1917-1920, out of which the Soviet Union was born, was one of the most significant events of the twentieth century. The collapse of the Tsarist regime and the failure of the Kerensky Provisional Government nearly led to the...

The scale of death and destruction during the Battle of Stalingrad during late 1942 and early 1943 remains unprecedented in the history of warfare. The annihilation of General von Paulus' 6th Army epitomised the devastating defeat of Hitler's ambition...

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it...

A harrowing yet uplifting account of Stalin's persecution of the Russian intelligentsia in the 1930s, and of one man - Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), whose poetry, in spite of the unfolding tragedy of his life, preserved its unique creative gaiety...

History didn't end. Democracy didn't triumph. America's leading role in the world is no longer assured. Instead, autocrats and populist strongmen are on the rise, and the global order established after 1945 is under attack. This is the phenomenon Katie...

How did Russia manage to emerge resurgent on the world stage and play a weak hand so effectively? Is it because Putin is a brilliant strategist? Or has Russia stepped into a vacuum created by the West's distraction with its own domestic problems and US...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780998041612Author Vladimir BukovskyFormat PaperbackPage Count 728Imprint Ninth of NovemberPublisher Ninth of NovemberWeight(grams) 957g

'Compassionate and compelling, this is not a political story but a quest for love in the heart of darkness' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'A biography on an epic scale, with a combination of tragedy and history worthy of a Russian novel' Independent ...

A detailed and absorbing narrative of the campaigns fought on the 'forgotten' Eastern Front of the Great War, vividly illustrating that these campaigns were no less costly, tragic and important than the catastrophes of the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781985635821Author Jamie C JohnstoneFormat PaperbackPage Count 308Imprint Createspace Independent Publishing PlatformPublisher Createspace Independent...

Named by Moscow Times "the History Book of the Year," The Ghost of Freedom combines riveting storytelling with insightful analysis, in the first general history of the modern Caucasus, stretching from the beginning of Russian imperial expansion up to the...

An engrossing history of the desperate battles for the Rzhev Salient, a forgotten story brought to life by the harrowing memoirs of German and Russian soldiers. The fighting between the German and Russian armies in the Rzhev Salient during World War...

The unfolding crisis in Ukraine has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War. As Russia and Ukraine tussle for Crimea and the eastern regions, relations between Putin and the West have reached an all-time low. How did we get here? Richard Sakwa...

Fringing the Black Sea are a kaleidoscope of countries, some centuries old and others emerging only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through the stories of the people he meets there, Jens Muhling seeks to paint a picture of this cauldron of...

This book presents a vivid and original portrait of the entire Romanov family, who shaped Russian history and politics for three centuries and whose legacy still sparks the public's imagination. For 300 years the history of Russia was inextricably linked...

In the summer of 1943, the German launched Operation Zitadelle (Citadel), aimed at cutting off a large number of Soviet forces in the Kursk salient. This offensive resulted in the battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle of World War II.Kursk quickly...

A fascinating life of Sergei Shchukin, the great collector who changed the face of Russia's art world Sergei Shchukin was a highly successful textiles merchant in the latter half of the nineteenth century, but he also had a great eye for beauty. He was...

"How extraordinary it is that compassion and tenderness may flourish in the cruellest conditions; how stubbornly and bravely people survive them. This is not a depressing book but an inspiriting and encouraging one." -Doris Lessing"The sixteen life...

In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities. Rustam Alexander recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were directly affected by those laws, including a naive...

Carpeted in boreal forests, dotted with lakes, cut by rivers, and straddling the Arctic Circle, the region surrounding the White Sea, which is known as the Russian North, is sparsely populated and immensely isolated. It is also the home to architectural...

'Brings out the practical activism, principled politics, and revolutionary patience crucial to organizing the oppressed on a rapidly over-heating planet' - Jodi Dean 'Crackling with intellectual life' - Lars T. Lih Vladimir Lenin lies in a tomb in...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681372563Author Antonia Lloyd-JonesFormat PaperbackPage Count 480Imprint The New York Review of Books, IncPublisher The New York Review of Books,...

The first English-language book to examine the crucial part air power played in the Soviet-Afghan War. The Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan was fought as much in the air as on the ground. From the high-level bombing raids that blasted rebel-held...

'A fresh, powerful portrait of Lenin' Anne Applebaum, author of Red Famine'Richly readable ... An enthralling but appalling story' Francis Wheen, author of Karl MarxThe cold, one-dimensional figure of Lenin the political fanatic is only a partial truth...

The definitive biography of Soviet Jewish dissident writer Vasily Grossman, called "gripping" and "fascinating" by William Taubman in the New York Times "[Popoff] tells Grossman's story with sensitivity and a keen understanding of his world, drawing on...

Filling a major gap in medieval studies, Medieval Eastern Europe is the first collection of primary sources in English translation covering the history of the whole eastern region of the European continent between 500 and 1300. Florin Curta, a leading...

A new illustrated study of the devastating, but little-known, Soviet armored blitzkrieg against the Japanese in the last weeks of World War II, and how it influenced Soviet tank doctrine as the Cold War dawned. Although long overshadowed in the West...

The history of the Latvian people begins some four and a half millennia ago with the arrival of the proto-Baltic Indo-Europeans to northern Europe. One branch of these migrants coalesced into a community which evolved a distinctive and remarkably robust...

Murdered in Mongolia in 1935 on the orders of Stalin, the Welsh investigative journalist Gareth Jones is a national hero in Ukraine for reporting the truth about the Holodomor (the Soviet Union's politically-driven famine that killed millions) and is...

For those living in the Soviet Union, Orwell's masterpieces, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, were not dystopias, but accurate depictions of reality. Here, the Orwell scholar and expert on Russian politics, Masha Karp – Russian Features Editor at...

The book is devoted to Shostakovich's most controversial symphony, composed at the height of Stalin's Purges. It rescued Shostakovich from official disfavour and deeply moved audiences. The critics recognized it as a masterpiece, but they were perplexed...