Russia & the Former Soviet Union

A WATERSTONES AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A breathtaking exploration of Ukraine's past, present, and future, and a heartbreaking account of the war against Russia, written by a leading journalist who has lived and worked in Ukraine for over a...

*Shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History*'An enthralling account of a pivotal moment in modern history. . . replete with startling revelations about the deception and mutual suspicion that brought the US and Soviet Union to the...

The wartime memoir of Lyudmila Pavlichenko is a remarkable document: the publication of an English language edition is a significant coup. Pavlichenko was World War II's best-scoring sniper and had a varied wartime career that included trips to England...

Using the diaries of Luftwaffe commanders, rare contemporary photographs and other previously unpublished sources, Robert Forsyth analyzes the human, strategic, tactical and technical elements of one of the most dramatic operations arranged by the...

Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow helped to reveal to the West the true and staggering human cost of the Soviet regime in its deliberate starvation of millions of peasants and remains one of the most important works of Soviet history ever written...

Russia's surprising return to the world stage since 2000 has aroused the curiosity--if not the fear--of the West. Gradually, the Kremlin went from a policy of deference to foreign powers to acting with independence. The driver of this transformation was...

Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, DelinquentsAnne E. GorsuchA vivid account of Bolshevik efforts to "Sovietize" young people in the 1920s."A very impressive work-broad, learned, and very readable." -Lynn Mally"A welcome and...

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...

Collision of Empires is the first major historical work on the Eastern Front during World War I since the 1970s. One of the primary triggers of the outbreak of World War I was undoubtedly the myriad alliances and suspicions that existed between the...

Follow Peter Millar on a journey in the heart of Cold War Europe, from the carousing bars of 1970s Fleet Street to the East Berlin corner pub with its eclectic cast of characters who embodied the reality of living on the wrong side of the wall.About the...

"[A] surprisingly moving story." -The New Yorker"Bogdanov's novels reveal a great deal about their fascinating author, about his time and, ironically, ours, and about the genre of utopia as well as his contribution to it." -Slavic Review"Bogdanov's...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOK PRIZEFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and his Era, the most comprehensive portrait of the former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on 30 August 2022.'A phenomenally researched...

At the turn of the century, the Russian economy was growing by about 10% annually and its population had reached 150 million. By 1920 the country was in desperate financial straits and more than 20 million Russians had died. And by 1950, a third of the...

At the beginning of 1917, the three empires fighting on the Eastern Front were reaching their breaking points, but none was closer than Russia. After the February Revolution, Russia's ability to wage war faltered and her last desperate gamble, the...

East Prussia is no longer on any map, though it was once a thriving land, famously military, deeply forested, artistically fertile, and the birthplace of Immanuel Kant. As the scene of Stalin's 'terrible revenge' it came to embody the turbulence of the...

In his timely new book, Mikhail Shishkin, argues that Russia is not a 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma': we just don't know enough about it. So what is the real story behind Putin's autocratic regime and its invasion of Ukraine?In My Russia:...

This is the first comprehensive insight for the West into a Soviet "army within an army" whose existence has been known until recently only to a few highly placed people--most of whom would deny it. The spetsnaz Soviet special forces are one of the more...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780061253720Author Aleksandr SolzhenitsynFormat PaperbackPage Count 752Imprint HarperPerennialPublisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc

This book examines the construction, dissemination, and reception of the Stalin cult in East Germany from the end of World War II to the building of the Berlin Wall. By exporting Stalin's cult to the Eastern bloc, Moscow aspired to symbolically unite the...

Velikiye Luki had been an important Russian fortress city since the 13th century and had become an important rail-hub by the 19th century. In August 1941, the Germans occupied the city of 30,000 during Operation Barbarossa and made it a bulwark on the...

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

Based on a broad array of sources from Russian and Austrian archives, this collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the Soviet occupation of Austria from 1945 to 1955. The contributors cover a wide range of topics, including the Soviet Secret...

What did it mean when Vladimir Putin stepped down from president to prime minister of Russia in 2008 and bounced to the top again in 2013? The Putin-Medvedev clique of mega-rich ex-KGB men and lawyers call their state machine kontora - the firm - and run...

The only English-language book in print on this active-duty Russian supersonic bomber. In the late 1960s, the patriarch of Soviet aircraft design, Andrey Tupolev, offered the Soviet air force a supersonic bomber to replace the 1950s-vintage Tu-22...

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 compulsive page-turner ... a triumph of brilliant storytelling ... an instant classic that is an awesome, remarkable and exuberant achievement' Simon Sebag Montefiore Winner of the Wolfson History Prize and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper PrizeIn the...

From the acclaimed author of The Most Dangerous Book, the incredible true story behind the creation of a masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and PunishmentIn the summer of 1865, the former exile Dostoevsky found himself trapped in...

The story of what really led to Germany losing the battle of Stalingrad - the inability of the Luftwaffe to keep Sixth Army supplied throughout the winter of 1942-43 - and why this crucial airlift failed. Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering's failure to...

'Thrilling ... High-definition history: tight, thrilling and beautifully researched' SUNDAY TIMES 'This book is a triumph' DAN SNOW 9.07 a.m., April 12, 1961. A...

A unique anthology of Gulag memoirs, edited and annotated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum Anne Applebaum wields her considerable knowledge of a dark chapter in human history and presents a collection of the writings of survivors of the...

The Internet in Russia is either the most efficient totalitarian tool or the device by which totalitarianism will be overthrown. Perhaps both.On the eighth floor of an ordinary-looking building in an otherwise residential district of southwest Moscow, in...

Life of the Russian poet who withstood Stalinism and became an inspiration to millionsAnna Akhmatova is recognised as one of the greatest poets of Russian literature, an iconic figure who gave voice to the suffering of the Russian people during the...

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence, becoming the seventh state to emerge from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. A tiny country of just two million people, 90% of whom are ethnic Albanians, Kosovo is central - geographically,...

5th July 1943: the greatest land battle of all time began around the town of Kursk in Russia. This epic confrontation between German and Soviet forces was one of the most important military engagements in history and epitomised 'total war'.It was also...

The definitive short biography of the enigmatic Peter the Great Peter the Great (1672-1725), tsar of Russia for forty-three years, was a dramatic, appealing, and unconventional character. This book provides a vivid sense of the dynamics of his life-both...

'Brisk and thoughtful, this book could hardly be more timely' Dominic Sandbrook, BBC History Magazine, Books of the YearFrom a preeminent scholar of Eastern Europe and the prize-winning author of Chernobyl, the essential history of Russian imperialismIn...

The definitive and award-winning history of Vladimir Putin's rise to power following the collapse of the Soviet Union, by The Economist's Russia editor.'Fast-paced and excellently written' New York Times'A real insiders' story of Russia's post-Soviet...

Remembered by many as the Soviet leader who banged his shoe at the United Nations, Nikita Khrushchev was in fact one of the most complex and important political figures of the twentieth century. Complicit in terrible Stalinist crimes, he managed to...

The forgotten protagonist of this true account aspired to be a cubist painter in his native Kyiv. In a Europe remade by the First World War, his talents led him to different roles-intelligence operative, powerful statesman, underground activist, lifelong...

A journey along the seemingly endless Russian border - from North Korea in the Far East through Russia's bordering states in Asia and the Caucasus, crossing the Caspian Ocean and the Black Sea along the way."Erika Fatland [is] shaping up to be one of the...