Showing titles in Russia

Using historical archives and primary documents, former Library of Congress historian Andrei Znamenski reveals the strange accounts of the Bolsheviks’ clandestine quest for ultimate power. Red Shambhala details the attempts of Marxist revolutionary and cryptographer Gleb Bokii and occult writer Alexander Barchenko to create a divine era of Communism by tapping into the power of Shambhala, a mythic land of pure bliss where inhabitants enjoyed god-like capabilities.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 was a moment in time when the will of the people put an end to a system of government that had been in place for centuries. The story of Russia’s transition from Imperial reign to eventual Communist dictatorship is a tale rooted in the ranks of the common people and the men who rose to lead them.

The searing accounts of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Evgeniia Ginsberg, and Varlam Shalamov opened the world's eyes to the terrors of the Soviet Gulag. But not until now has there been a memoir of life inside the camps written from the perspective of an actual employee of the Secret police. In this riveting memoir, superbly translated by Deborah Kaple, Fyodor Mochulsky describes being sent to work as a boss at the forced labor camp of Pechorlag in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle.

Russia has long been a powerful country. Even today, Russia stands as one of the great powers on the planet. But modern-day Russia is just a vestige of the greater territory that once constituted Imperial Russia. The Russian Empire spanned continents, and at one time, Imperial Russia could claim territory from Alaska to Poland and just about everything else in between. However, despite its size and power, the Russian Empire was often plagued with massive internal problems.

The seeds of the Cold War were sown toward the end of World War II. During the war, the US and the Soviet Union were reluctant partners. But as is often the case in history, despite their differences, America and Soviet Russia had a common enemy that brought them together - Nazi Germany. But soon after Truman was elected president, American and Soviet relations began to go south. Before the war was over, disagreements arose over how the postwar world should be administered.

Are you interested in learning more about what actually happened at Stalingrad during WW2? Do you want to understand the unique characteristics of the battle? If so, this book is for you. Step into the lives of soldiers, civilians, and leaders who experienced this defining battle. Explore personal accounts that reveal courage, sacrifice, and determination. With this book, you will delve into the battle's tactics, maneuvers, and decisions that shaped its outcome.

Sasha and Kuznetsov have become steadfast members of the 25th Battalion’s sniper squad. Father and son now stand united in a desperate struggle to defend the besieged city of Mariupol. With every inch gained, the courageous defenders exact a heavy toll on the invading Russian forces. Clinging to outdated Soviet era tactics, the invaders find themselves outmaneuvered by the agile and innovative Ukrainian Territorial Defense Force. After enduring significant losses in a fierce battle for control over the city's eastern outskirts, the Russians suddenly shift tactics, posing a grave threat to...

In the mid-1950's were tumultuous for the Soviet Bloc. Several countries saw Stalin’s death and the apparent change of direction, even the softening of policy under Khrushchev, as an opportunity to pursue a reformist path...the uprising with the greatest impact on the bulk of the Cold War took place in Hungary in 1956, when protestors took to the streets to demand freedom from tyranny and a greater say in their own destiny. When the Hungarians rose up against the status quo in October 1956, they were met with a brutal response from Moscow.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' Russian Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of Russia's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

From revolutionary to Cold War adversary, Fidel Castro was one of the world's most controversial leaders and perhaps its most enduring. As Cuba's president for nearly 50 years, Castro's influential leadership captivated allies and enemies alike. By virtue of passionate oration and committed sense of purpose - good or bad - Castro kept the Cuban people devoted and the world enthralled.

Some have called the Crimean War history’s most unnecessary war, and while it is misunderstood, often overlooked, and sometimes ignored, it also involved many of the 19th century’s major powers, namely Russia, Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria, as well as men from lands these powers would call their empires. It was a war bridging the old with the new, mixing Napoleonic fighting styles and modern weapons, old world diplomacy and modern communications, and the traditional rules of war and modern death tolls.

Every American president since the end of the Cold War has called for better relations with Russia. But each has seen relations get worse by the time he left office. Now, the two countries are facing off in a virtual war being fought without clear goals or boundaries. Why? George Beebe argues that new game-changing technologies, disappearing rules of the game, and distorted perceptions on both sides are combining to lock Washington and Moscow into an escalatory spiral that they do not recognize.

In the dog days of August 2008, a column of Russian tanks and troops rolled across the Republic of Georgia’s northern border and into South Ossetia, sparking a war that was over almost before it began. The war, while not insignificant, lasted all of five days. The number of casualties did not exceed one thousand, the threshold most political scientists use to classify a war, although thousands of Georgians were displaced. By historical comparison, when Soviet tanks entered Hungary in 1956 and Afghanistan in 1979-89, the fatalities totaled 2,500 and roughly 14,000 respectively.

From the capture of Sidney Reilly, the "Ace of Spies", by Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1925, to the deportation from the USA of Anna Chapman, the "Redhead under the Bed", in 2010, Kremlin and Western spymasters have battled for supremacy for nearly a century. In Deception Edward Lucas uncovers the real story of Chapman and her colleagues in Britain and America, unveiling their clandestine missions and the spy-hunt that led to their downfall. It reveals unknown triumphs and disasters of Western intelligence in the Cold War,

In September 1939, a 10-year-old boy, Micha Giedroyc watched the Russian security police seize his home in eastern Poland. His father, a senator and judge, was imprisoned while his mother, with Micha and his two sisters, were left on the streets of the local town to fend for themselves. Later they were transported in cattle trucks to the wastes of Soviet Siberia, with hundreds of thousands of other deportees. 'Here, by the will of the rulers of the Soviet Empire, we were to toil and die.'

This is one of eight Russian language KGB Training Manuals that were recently released to the general public. To quote The Interpreter: “manuals expose the devious methods of the Soviet Union’s secret police not only to surveil but suborn their own citizens and foreigners in a vast project to extend the Kremlin’s power around the world”. We are printing this English translation so that the general public can see first hand how the KGB operated and extrapolate their actions to today’s environment.

The arms race between the Soviet Union and the USA was the most dangerous confrontation in the history of the world. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, and US President John F. Kennedy’s willingness to call his bluff, brought the Soviet Union and the West to the edge of a cataclysmic nuclear war. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Holmes, a British diplomat in Moscow during the early 1960s, provides an answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the Cold War.

A history of the Tatar peoples covers a huge expanse of territory, time, and the rise and fall of many Tatar communities. As such, they played a role in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East over several centuries, and from Genghis Khan to Ivan the Terrible and Josef Stalin, some of history’s most infamous tyrants have played a key role in this story. Crucially, the history of the Tatars is one that seems to take place at the fringes of the great empires.

From 1947 through 1991, the United States and its allies faced off against the Soviet Union and her proxy states in clandestine operations worldwide during the Cold War. It was not a conventional shooting war, but make no mistake, both sides lost thousands of brave men and women who fought for what they believed in. Eastern Europe was home to some of the most intense and harrowing missions, as NATO forces directly opposed the Soviets behind the Iron Curtain. Jinnik: The Asset is the true story of one man’s role in the conflict.

El triunfo de la Revolución rusa transformó al mundo y fue trascendental para la historia de la política contemporánea. Este audio libro, riguroso y ameno, nos ayudará a entender los motivos que provocaron el derrocamiento de los Románov y el triunfo de la Revolución.