Russian & Soviet

Celebrated historian Orlando Figes presents a brilliantly colored account of the myths that have shaped and reshaped Russia’s identity and politics from its founding....

In 2010, the words “earthquake swarm” entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia—including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove—was sold at auction for over $1 million....

In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of 73....

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of the CIA's most valuable spy in the Soviet Union and an evocative portrait of the agency's Moscow station....

Acclaimed journalist Simon Shuster gives us the first inside account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the perspective of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team, who granted him unprecedented access....

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines....

In the new Russia, even dictatorship is a reality show....

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most cataclysmic events in world history, profoundly shaping politics, international relations, social patterns, economics and science in the century that followed....

When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre", describing her work as "a history of emotions - a history of the soul"....

Defense expert Seth Jones argues that the US is woefully unprepared for the future of global competition. While America has focused on building fighter jets, missiles, and conventional warfighting capabilities, its three principal rivals have increasingly adopted irregular warfare....

Young Stalin tells the story of an exceptional, charismatic, darkly turbulent young man born into obscurity, fancying himself a poet and a priest....

Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between two global giants in this compelling, expansive history of the relationship between China and Russia, from the seventeenth century to the present....

The first comprehensive, fully up-to-date biography of Vladimir Putin, woven into the tumultuous saga of Russia over the last sixty years....

From a preeminent scholar of Eastern Europe and the prizewinning author of Chernobyl, the essential history of Russian imperialism....

The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution....

The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to its own people and to the world....

Journalist Owen Matthews dives deep into the war in Ukraine—from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol....

Once Upon a Time in Russia is the untold true story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches....

A brilliant investigative narrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy....

As US-Russian relations scrape the depths of cold-war antagonism, the promise of partnership that beguiled American administrations during the first post-Soviet decades increasingly appears to have been false from the start....

The great lesson of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the danger of misreading the statements, actions, and intentions of the adversary. Today, Vladimir Putin has become the greatest challenge to European security and the global world order....

This book traces the rise of Russia's most prominent non-state actor, Evgeny Prigozhin, and examines the political climate that propelled a convicted gangster with no government office to the formidable role he has come to occupy....

Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential audiobook is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today’s world....

The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad—while Western spies watched in horror as their governments failed to guard against the threat....

Initially a victory line where Allies met at the end of WWII, the Iron Curtain quickly became the front of a new kind of war. But what has the Iron Curtain left in its wake? Timothy Phillips travels its full 3,000-mile route to craft this new people's history of a defining 20th-century conflict....

Since its founding in 1995, the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, has regained the majority of the domestic security functions of the Soviet-era KGB. Under Vladimir Putin, who served as FSB director just before becoming president, the agency has grown to be one of the most powerful and favored organizations in Russia. The FSB not only conducts internal security but also has primacy in intelligence operations in former Soviet states.

Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century traces all the continuities and ruptures that led from the founding revolution of October 1917, to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship, the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years, and the glasnost and perestroika policies of Gorbachev.

"My Life in the Red Army" by Fred Virski offers a rare, firsthand account of a soldier's experiences within the Soviet military machine during a critical period of the 20th century. Through the lens of Virski's personal journey, the book sheds light on the inner workings, struggles, and day-to-day life of the Red Army from the perspective of an ordinary soldier.

Lenin's work and influence have often been written off as no longer relevant, and many today consider this to be so. Lenin has, they claim, had his day, even though he is still revered in China, the world's most populous country. However, Lenin, like his mentor Marx, has had a tendency to rise from apparent decline and oblivion to renewed force and influence.

In Collisions, Michael Kimmage, a historian and former State Department official who focused on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, offers a wide-angle, historically informed account of the origins of the current Russia-Ukraine war.