Russia & the Former Soviet Union

The definitive history of the Russo-Japanese warThe Russians were wrong-footed from the start, fighting in Manchuria at the end of a 5,000 mile single track railway; the Japanese were a week or so from their bases. The Russian command structure was...

This is the first book on the Wagner Group, the shadowy Russian paramilitary organisation that fought in Ukraine and staged a surprise uprising against Vladimir Putin on 23-24 June. It has been involved in conflicts in Syria, Libya, the Central African...

Surprisingly little known, the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-20 was to change the course of twentieth-century history. In White Eagle, Red Star, Norman Davies gives a full account of the War, with its dramatic climax in August 1920 when the Red Army - sure...

'one of the best books about secret intelligence work ever written' Peter Hopkirk. Colonel F. M. Bailey, whose extraordinary adventures are told here, was long accused by Moscow of being a British master-spy sent in 1918 to overthrow the Bolsheviks in...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781956887495Author Carolus LoefroosFormat PaperbackPage Count 348Imprint Antelope Hill PublishingPublisher Antelope Hill PublishingWeight(grams)...

'A spicy and original romp through Russian history' ROBERT SERVICE'Poignant, comical, and in the best sense disturbing' PAUL FREEDMAN, AUTHOR OF TEN RESTAURANTS THAT CHANGED AMERICA'This wickedly delicious tale uncovers the secret, gustatory history of...

On a freezing night in January 2013, an assailant hurled acid in the face of the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, dragging one of Russia's most illustrious institutions into scandal. In Bolshoi Confidential,...

*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...

Asked shortly after the revolution about how she viewed the new government, Tatiana Varsher replied, "With the wide-open eyes of a historian." Her countrywoman, Zinaida Zhemchuzhnaia, expressed a similar need to take note: "I want to write about the way...

Making use of the extensive memoirs of German and Russian soldiers to bring this story to life, Retribution 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...

A powerful case that the economic shocks of the 1970s hastened both the end of the Cold War and the rise of neoliberalism by forcing governments to impose austerity on their own people.Why did the Cold War come to a peaceful end? And why did neoliberal...

This ground-breaking new study of the battles of Kursk and Prokhorovka will transform our understanding of one of the most famous battles of the Second World War, widely mythologized as the largest tank battle in history. 'If ever there was a time for a...

The Cold War had seemed like a permanent fixture in global politics, and until its denouement, no Western or Soviet politician foresaw that the stand-off between the two superpowers - after decades of struggle over every aspect of security, politics,...

In February of 1917 Russia was a backward, autocratic monarchy, mired in an unpopular war; by October, after not one but two revolutions, it had become the world's first workers' state, straining to be at the vanguard of global revolution. How did this...

Alan Bullock's bestselling and monumental masterpiece, now in a revised Second Edition 'It is practically unprecedented to take two such monsters as Hitler and Stalin, who never met, and interweave their lives chronologically, chapter by...

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...

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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780399588822Author Svetlana AlexievichFormat PaperbackPage Count 496Imprint Random House Trade PaperbacksPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams)...

A leading expert on foreign policy reveals how tensions between America, NATO, and Russia transformed geopolitics A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2021 and winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize "Sarotte has the receipts, as it were: her authoritative...

A funny, nostalgic and strange glimpse at life behind the Iron Curtain - from the hit social media account with over 1 million followers WELCOME TO THE USSR PARADE in the latest fashions! MARVEL at the wonders of the space race! DELIGHT in...

While the development of tanks had largely led to the replacement of cavalry in most armies by 1939, the Soviets retained a strong mounted arm. In the terrain and conditions of the Eastern Front they were able to play an important role denied them...

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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781590174517Author Victor SergeFormat PaperbackPage Count 576Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, IncWeight(grams)...

The full story of the most terrible siege in history when over a million people perished, illustrated by pictures recently released from Russian archives.Leningrad (now reverted to its pre-1914 name of St Petersburg) was surrounded by German forces in...

'The Reckoning is vivid history, the tragic Eastern Front brought to life through the widest range of Russian and German sources I've ever read. Bravo.' - Peter Caddick-Adams, author and broadcaster From critically acclaimed Eastern Front expert Prit...

The recent murder of Anna Politkovskaya is grim evidence of the danger faced by journalists passionately committed to writing the truth about wars and politics. A longtime critic of the Russian government, particularly with regard to its policies in...

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 9780300179040Author Geoffrey RobertsFormat HardbackPage Count 320Imprint Yale University PressPublisher Yale University PressWeight(grams) 156g

In 1992, Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist, snuck out of Russia carrying with him a vast cache of transcriptions of top-secret KGB intelligence files. The FBI later described his trove of documents as "the most complete and extensive intelligence...

An encyclopedic and richly detailed history of everyday life in the Soviet UnionThe Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR?...

An encyclopedic and richly detailed history of everyday life in the Soviet UnionThe Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR?...

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...

A fascinating account of Russia's Five-Day War against Georgia in 2008, notable for its strategic mistakes which prompted President Putin to undertake major military reforms. After Georgia's independence from Russia in 1991, President Saakashvili...

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...

Catch-22 meets The Brothers Karamazov in the last great satire of the Soviet EraThe Great Patriotic War is stumbling to a close, but a new darkness has fallen over Soviet Russia. And for a disparate, disconnected clutch of wanderers - many thousands of...

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 9781915070715Author Krzysztof DabrowskiFormat PaperbackPage Count 80Imprint Helion & CompanyPublisher Helion & Company

'Riveting, tragic tale' New Yorker 'Anna Pasternak has produced an irresistible account of joy, suffering and passion' Financial Times The heartbreaking story of the passionate love affair between Boris Pasternak and...