Russian & Soviet

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....

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....

A dramatic and timely account of Stalin's failed invasion of Finland in 1939, and the decade of wars and fraught relations that followed....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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

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....

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"....

The end of the Cold War was an opportunity—our inability to seize it has led to today's renewed era of great power competition....

In this revised version that includes an exclusive new chapter on the Russia-Ukraine war, renowned foreign policy expert Angela Stent examines how Putin created a paranoid and polarized world—and increased Russia's status on the global stage....

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

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....

In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country....

New York Times bestselling author of Collusion and The Snowden Files Luke Harding’s personal, frontline reporting on Russia’s harrowing invasion of Ukraine, the biggest news event of the year and an inflection point in international politics....

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....

A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the US confronted the USSR during the Cold War....

"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.

Granted privileged access to Russia's secret archives, Edvard Radzinsky has broken down the iron curtain...

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

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

The Putin Interviews is based on what journalists and other world leaders have long coveted: extended, unprecedented access to Russian President Vladimir Putin....

Frontline journalist and Financial Times reporter Christopher Miller tells the inside story of Ukraine's bravery and defiance in the face of Russian aggression....

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....

"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.

In this timely and incisive book, Sergei Medvedev argues that Russia's war in Ukraine was not merely a whim of Putin's obsession: rather, it was the result of two decades of authoritarian degradation and post-imperial ressentiment, a culmination of Putin's regime and of Russia's entire imperial history.

This book explores why there is a major war again in Europe. Putin's actions need to be understood if not forgiven. With the Ukraine conflict seen as a proxy war of NATO versus Russia, how likely is the fighting to spread?

This book is Khodorkovsky's account of what is happening in Russia today and what could happen in the future. Putin will not last forever: sooner or later, there will be a post-Putin era. But Russia's history has been deeply shaped by an autocratic trap: a revolution against an autocracy has produced another autocracy, followed by another revolution and another autocracy, and so on. If Russia is to find its place as a constructive partner in a global community of civilized nations, then it has to escape this vicious cycle.

Over two decades have passed since the “Cold War” between the Soviet Union and the West ended. Many citizens of the former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact nations have embraced the opportunities which come with expanded civil liberties and economic growth, but extremists exploit nostalgia for the days of empire. In the words of Vladimir Putin, “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.” A new ideology—Eurasianism—is being advanced by those who dream of a new empire and revenge on the Western powers which brought about the collapse of the...

Dubbed by many pundits as “The Most Stupid War in the World,” the Ukraine conflict is one that hardly anyone saw coming back in 2010. However, it is close to a decade old already. In this conflict in the evenly divided Ukraine, brinkmanship by the local players in the country, by the West that wants to drag Ukraine into its orbit, and by Russia that fears losing Ukraine and its security in the process, is the norm. At the same time, the world watches in a seemingly helpless manner as Ukraine gets torn apart at the seams. Most of the governments in the West blame Russia for instigating ...

There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being the real thing, the true inheritor of a legacy, the upholder of the identity others strive to be attached to. In this account, we see two narratives that oppose one another, but that ought to complement each other. How do a people so divided by history embrace their common heritage or denominator as the children of Kievan Rus, but who later became known as the frontier people (Ukrainians)? "The Real Ukrainians" is the first part of an account that would take us hand-in-hand through our journey that would make us enlightened regarding the ...

In this brave and chilling account of the post-Soviet space, the author provides us with a fascinating insight into Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the other republics of the Soviet Union through the larger-than-life character of Boris Petrenkov who leads us by the hand through his world, his mind, and the characters he interacts with. This smooth and fascinating ride into a part of the world that people find mysterious comes with explosive revelations that take us through history from the times of Kievan Rus a millennia ago, to the Golden Horde of the Mongols, czarist Russia, the Soviet ...