Russia & the Former Soviet Union

Why did the Soviet economic system fall apart? Did the economy simply overreach itself through military spending? Was it the centrally-planned character of Soviet socialism that was at fault? Or did a potentially viable mechanism come apart in...

Why have Russians chosen unlimited autocracy throughout their history? Why is democracy unable to flourish in Russia? Russian Conservatism and Its Critics provides the first account of Russia's immemorial commitment to the theory and practice of...

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A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year on Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet RepublicsThe Russian oil industry-which vies with Saudi Arabia as the world's largest producer and exporter of oil, providing nearly 12 percent of the global supply-is facing...

" . . . sparkles with wit, intelligence and bold characterization." -Women's Review of Books" . . . a ripping yarn . . . admirable translation . . . sensitive introductory essay." -Times Literary Supplement" . . . a remarkable journal worthy of the...

In 2013, the United States suffered its worst terrorist bombing since 9/11 at the annual running of the Boston Marathon. When the culprits turned out to be U.S. residents of Chechen descent, Americans were shocked and confused. Why would members of an...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780374527389Author Yevgenia AlbatsFormat PaperbackPage Count 412Imprint Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3plPublisher Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3plWeight(grams)...

A provocative reassessment of Stalin's military and political leadership during the most important years of his career This breakthrough book provides a detailed reconstruction of Stalin's leadership from the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 to...

The Vistula-Oder offensive was a massive Soviet Army operation on the Eastern Front which was launched on 12 January 1945 and paved the way for the Battle of Berlin. Its main objective was a major advance from the River Vistula to the River Oder,...

How do states and societies confront the legacies of war and occupation, and what do truth, guilt, and justice mean in that process? In Ghosts of War, Franziska Exeler examines people's wartime choices and their aftermath in Belarus, a war-ravaged Soviet...

Sensational new biography - using the discovery of long lost contemporary documents - of the Russian peasant mystic whose malign influence helped lead to the downfall of the Romanovs.An unprecedented insight into the most enigmatic of men thanks to the...

Sensational new biography - using the discovery of long lost contemporary documents - of the Russian peasant mystic whose malign influence helped lead to the downfall of the Romanovs.An unprecedented insight into the most enigmatic of men thanks to the...

Fragile, gritty, and vital to an extraordinary degree, St. Petersburg is one of the world's most alluring cities-a place in which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial. Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city's pre-1917...

A definitive biography of the U.S. diplomat and prize-winning historian George F. KennanThe diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904-2005) ranks as one of the most important figures in American foreign policy-and one of its most complex. Drawing on...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780471207689Author Greg KingFormat HardbackPage Count 672Imprint John Wiley & Sons IncPublisher Turner Publishing CompanyWeight(grams) 1102gDimensions(mm)...

Described as 'one of the most tragic human experiences in human history', the Soviet Union as an empire holds much intrigue and fascination for the Western world. It held unquestionable status as an empire, with its coverage of over 100 nationalities...

The author of this monograph would like to inform his reader right away that he does not claim to cover the following topic as fully as it could possibly be. At the present time, there are many historical documents, schematic drawings that once were...

When the Detroit Red Wings were rebooting their franchise after more than two decades of relative futility, they knew the best place to find world-class players who could help turn things around more quickly were conscripted servants behind the Iron...

Russia is famous for its vodka, and its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history and politics. In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that...

This is a definitive, deeply researched biography of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) and is the first scholarly biography to be published in any language. The book is Todes's magnum opus, which he has been working on for some twenty years...

When so much in Russia has changed, the banya remains. For over one-thousand years Russians of every economic class, political party, and social strata have treated bathing as a communal activity integrating personal hygiene and public health with...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780190658915Author Fellow Tony BrentonFormat PaperbackPage Count 384Imprint Oxford University PressPublisher Oxford University PressWeight(grams)...

In the decade after 1945, as the Cold War freeze set in, a new Europe slowly began to emerge from the ruins of the Second World War, based on a broad rejection of the fascist past that had so scarred the continent's recent history. In the East, this new...

World attention has focused on the newly independent Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, as they struggle to become politically and economically viable. In this timely book, Anatol Lieven presents an intimate and engaging portrait of the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781905192113Author Esme ChoonaraFormat PaperbackPage Count 64Imprint Bookmarks PublicationsPublisher Bookmarks PublicationsWeight(grams) 50g

Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland does what the title promises. It takes readers on a journey into a world few knew existed: the lives and thoughts of Soviet hippies, who in the face of disapproval and repression created a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780835608916Author Andrei ZnamenskiFormat PaperbackPage Count 304Imprint Quest Books,U.S.Publisher Quest Books,U.S.Weight(grams) 1g

In examining the re-emergence of Russia's White Movement, Memory Politics and the Russian Civil War gets to the heart of the rich 20th-century memory debates going on in Putin's Russia today. The Kremlin has been giving preference to a Soviet-lite...

The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921 is a new history of Russia's revolutionary era as a story of experience-of people making sense of history as it unfolded in their own lives and as they took part in making history themselves. The major events, trends,...

In 1929, in an effort to destroy the well-to-do peasant farmers, Joseph Stalin ordered the collectivization of all Ukrainian farms. In the ensuing years, a brutal Soviet campaign of confiscations, terrorizing, and murder spread throughout Ukrainian...

Drawing on never before used archival materials, Replacing the Dead exposes the history of Soviet and Russian abortion policy. It is not unusual for nations recovering from wars to incentivize their populations to raise their birthrates. The...

In Russia, food has a hugely important role in political, symbolic, and practical terms. In this illuminating history of Russian food in the modern age, Catriona Kelly - a leading cultural historian and keen amateur cook - reflects on this and an...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780061253805Author Aleksandr SolzhenitsynFormat PaperbackPage Count 528Imprint Avon BooksPublisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780061253805Author Aleksandr SolzhenitsynFormat PaperbackPage Count 528Imprint Avon BooksPublisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc

Virtually the entire Soviet effort on the Eastern Front of World War II bears the stamp of Georgy Zhukov, chief of staff of the Red Army and deputy supreme commander under Stalin. The first volume of his memoirs covers Zhukov's peasant childhood, his...

The Hungry Steppe examines one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalinist regime: the Kazakh famine of 1930-33. More than 1.5 million people, a quarter of Kazakhstan's population, perished. Yet the story of this famine has remained mostly hidden from...

In the new Russia, even dictatorship is a reality show. Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell's Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and...

An examination of how the technical choices, social hierarchies, economic structures, and political dynamics shaped the Soviet nuclear industry leading up to Chernobyl. The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780985893057Author Victor SheymovFormat PaperbackPage Count 440Imprint Cyber Books PublishingPublisher Cyber Books PublishingWeight(grams)...

This collectively written monograph is the first work to provide a broad history of the relationship between Eastern Europe and the decolonising world. It ranges from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, but at its core is the dynamic of...