Russia & the Former Soviet Union

A compelling account of the heavily armed and highly mobile Soviet river gunboats which took on the Germans during World War II. Russia's enormous river system has long been its highway and, as early as 1908, the Tsar's armies were developing armoured...

Fully illustrated, this study assesses the Soviet and Waffen-SS troops who contested the cities of Kharkov and Rostov-on-Don on the Eastern Front during 1942-43. As the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union unfolded, two places that suffered...

This informative study explores the Soviet invasion of Finland, detailing the events of the Winter War of November 1939 to March 1940. The invasion was expected to be swift and decisive, however, the fighting qualities of the Finnish Army blunted the...

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...

In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned,...

The first comprehensive history of the Sami people of the Nordic countries and northwestern Russia. There is no single volume which encompasses an integrated social and cultural history of the Sami people from the Nordic countries and northwestern Russia...

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 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...

The Battle of Warsaw in August 1920 has been described as one of the decisive battles of European history. At the start of the battle, the Red Army appeared to be on the verge of advancing through Poland into Germany to expand the Soviet revolution. Had...

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...

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...

Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999, Michael Parenti challenges mainstream media coverage of the war, uncovering hidden agendas behind the Western talk of genocide, ethnic...

Developed in the 1960s/1970s, the Tu-144 was the Soviet Union's only practical venture into supersonic commercial aviation. Though its career was all too brief, it was a major technological achievement for the Soviet aircraft industry. The book provides...

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...

How, despite thirty years of effort, Soviet attempts to build a national computer network were undone by socialists who seemed to behave like capitalists. Between 1959 and 1989, Soviet scientists and officials made numerous attempts to network their...

A landmark journey along the full length of the old Iron Curtain - from the Arctic Circle to Turkey's eastern border - tracing the history of the Cold War and meeting the people who live with its legacy. The Iron Curtain divided the continent of...

A Times Literary Supplement Book of the YearA riveting account of a forgotten holocaust: the slaughter of over one hundred thousand Ukrainian Jews in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. In the Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a...

'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...

A vast system of prisons, camps, and exile settlements, the Gulag was one of the defining attributes of the Stalinist Soviet Union and one of the most heinous examples of mass incarceration in the twentieth century, combining the functions of a standard...

Exam board: SQALevel: HigherSubject: HistoryFirst teaching: September 2018First exam: Summer 2019Fresh stories, fresh scholarship and a fresh structure. Connecting History informs and empowers tomorrow's citizens, today.Bringing together lesser-told...

Start speaking Russian today! Now in an updated second edition, Beginner's Russian with Interactive Online Workbook offers an innovative, easy, and thorough way to speak, and read Russian confidently. This complete Russian course includes a...

BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week'Wonderfully idiosyncratic, coolly heartfelt and memorable' William Boyd'One of the great writers of early 20th Century Russia' Simon Sebag Montefiore'A remarkable memoir . . . both potent and endearing' Erica Wagner, New...

The history of anthropology has been written from multiple viewpoints, often from perspectives of gender, nationality, theory, or politics. Before Boas delves deeper into issues concerning anthropology's academic origins to present a groundbreaking study...

In this saga of brilliant triumphs and magnificent failures, David E. Hoffman, the former Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, sheds light on the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless...

Immense in scope, ferocious in nature, and epic in consequence, the Battle of Kursk witnessed (at Prokhorovka) one of the largest tank engagements in world history and led to staggering losses - including nearly 200,000 Soviet and 50,000 German...

'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...

A strikingly original book about a terrible photograph - an exceptionally rare image documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family in Ukraine. A Times Book of the Year 'A very rare kind of picture... To the murdered others, this...

**A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022**'Anyone wanting to learn more about Putin's personality, ideas, power...should read this outstanding biography' Ian Kershaw, author of Personality and PowerThis book is essential reading for anyone who wants to...

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,...

WINNER OF THE WOLFSON PRIZE 2013HERALD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014The extraordinary story of the Kremlin - from prize-winning author and historian Catherine MerridaleBoth beautiful and profoundly menacing, the Kremlin has dominated Moscow for many centuries...

WINNER OF THE WOLFSON PRIZE 2013HERALD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014The extraordinary story of the Kremlin - from prize-winning author and historian Catherine MerridaleBoth beautiful and profoundly menacing, the Kremlin has dominated Moscow for many centuries...

By the author of Life and Fate, now a major Radio 4 drama starring Kenneth Branagh. Vasily Grossman is widely recognized as one of the outstanding literary figures of the twentieth century. The short fiction collected here - satire, comedy, tragedy and...

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...

A vivid and human glimpse into Europe's borderlands as they emerged from Soviet rule - back in print after nearly 20 years'In this superb book, in which one senses the spirit of Franz Kafka and Bruno Schulz, the dramatic world of the Eastern borderlands...

Build, reinforce and assess students' knowledge throughout their course; tailored to the 2016 CCEA specification and brought to you by the leading History publisher, this study and revision guide combines clear content coverage with practice questions...

The character of the last Tsar, Nicholas II (1868-1918) is crucial to understanding the overthrow of tsarist Russia, the most significant event in Russian history. Nicholas became Tsar at the age of 26. Though a conscientious man who was passionate in...

Acclaimed author Andrey Kurkov gives powerful insight into life in Kyiv following the 2013 protests and before the 2022 Russian invasion.-16 DegreesC, sunlight, silence. I drove the children to school, then went to see the revolution. I walked between...

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...

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...