Russian Biographies

Empress Alexandra Romanov – the last empress of Russia, wife of Tsar Nicholas II, and now a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church – chose Countess Sophie Buxhoeveden, one of her ladies-in-waiting, to be her authorized biographer, opening up to her about her closest relationships and giving her access to copies of her private correspondence. Additionally, as a lady-in-waiting, Countess Buxhoeveden attended on the Empress for much of the reign of Tsar Nicholas II, only leaving her side when the Imperial Family was removed to Tobolsk after the Tsar’s abdication in 1917. Thereafter, she ...

Instant New York Times Bestseller! Why did one of the world’s most successful business titans, an oil magnate who rivaled the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, disappear from history? The author of the acclaimed bestseller The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel has the enthralling answer. With...

From renowned translators Richard Pevear and Lindsay Volokhonsky comes a new translation - certain to become the definitive version - of the first great prison memoir, a fictionalized account of Fyodor Dostoevsky's life-changing penal servitude in Siberia.

A legal analyst for NPR, NBC, and CNN, delves into the facts surrounding what has been called the “worst intelligence disaster in US history”: the case of Robert Hanssen—a Russian spy who was embedded in the FBI for two decades.

Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimes–as many as 20 million Soviets died in his purges and infamous Gulag–has given him the lasting distinction as a personification of evil in the twentieth century...

In 1998, I was the undercover agent tasked to recruit a Russian who could unmask their spy in the FBI. Twenty-five years later, this story is still not known outside of the Bureau. My mission was to befriend a former Soviet Embassy official at a film festival in Santa Monica and persuade him to betray the KGB’s mole. He was to return to Moscow in eight days, and our nation’s security hung in the balance.

A Russian Drama best seller now in its second edition! In February, 1959 nine young hikers on a cross country ski trip mysteriously died under horrific circumstances. It is one of the great mysteries of our times. They would be found with missing eyes, even a missing tongue, crushed bones, and stripped of their clothes (later found radioactive) in minus 50 degree temperatures. Theories range from their being murdered by the CIA to space aliens, to even "Abominable Snowmen". This book explores this famous incident using a technique known as "Higher criticism" to explain their terrifying ...

On September 11, 1984, five young American sailors were seized at gunpoint by the Soviet Union in the north Bering Sea and taken captive to Siberia. This is the story of what happened. The audiobook is two stories in one: Alaskan high seas adventure combined with the Christian testimony of five young American sailors who take a stand for their faith amidst intense interrogation by high-ranking officers in the Soviet military.

Stalin: The Architect of Fear and the Soviet Empire is a powerful and accessible biography tracing Joseph Stalin’s rise from his troubled Georgian childhood to his domination of the Soviet Union. It reveals how he built and ruled a vast empire through ideology, ambition, and relentless terror, shaping the lives of millions and redefining the course of the twentieth century. The book explores Stalin’s complex personality—his intelligence, paranoia, emotional hardness, and surprising moments of sentiment—while examining his relationships with Lenin, his rivals, and his own family. It ...

Steinbeck and Capa’s account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing. Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union...

Seven Million Dollar Spy reveals, for the first time, the inside story of the dramatic US counterintelligence operation that resulted in the capture of the most dangerous mole working for Russia inside US intelligence. Now, the former senior KGB spy, to whom the US paid seven million dollars for Moscow's file on the mole, is identified by both his real and code names.

An erudite and entertaining history of Moscow, a city defined by its survival and reinvention, and whose rich history offers crucial insight into contemporary global politics "A magisterial account of Moscow that reveals the city’s history and something of its soul through countless interwoven...

He ruled through terror and myth, shaping the twentieth century with brutality and ambition. From his rise as a revolutionary outsider to his domination of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin forged an empire of fear that scarred generations. Stalin: The Red Tsar and His Terror is a definitive biography that traces Stalin’s life from obscurity in Georgia to absolute power in Moscow, from his role in defeating Hitler to the machinery of purges, famine, and the Gulag. Drawing on survivor testimonies, archival evidence, and modern scholarship, this book reveals not only how Stalin ruled, but how...

'HUGELY IMPRESSIVE' - THE INDEPENDENT 'AN ASTONISHINGLY FINE HISTORY' - COUNTRY LIFE 'FASCINATING' - DAILY MAIL The history of the world's most successful military alliance, from the wrecked Europe of 1945 to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. As they signed NATO into being after World War II...

Their wings were weak, their talons broken…yet they flew the Soviets into winning the war against the Nazis. They were ignored, laughed at, and forced to do chores beneath their ranks. Why? They were the "weaker" gender. Despite being capable, they were initially denied entry into combat. And when they did enlist, their treatment only worsened: They were assigned worn-out uniforms and left to the mercy of rusted equipment on the battlefield. These adversities didn’t stop the Soviet female fighters from going ahead and showing unprecedented excellence in warfare.

In Stalin’s Russia, when prison sentences stretched ten, fifteen, and twenty-five years, the future Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn found himself incarcerated in its genocidal “corrective” labor camps (the so-called Gulag of the Soviet Union). His crime: expressing anti-Stalinist opinions in a letter to a friend. A devout Communist at his arrest, condemned to be worked to death in the frozen wastelands of Russia, he underwent instead a profound psychological transformation, broke free of his Marxist ideology—and survived. This full biography of one of the most influential ...

WINNER OF THE 2026 PULITZER PRIZE FOR OPINION WRITING The National Book Award winner's biography of a ruthless man's ascent to near-absolute power. “In a country where journalists critical of the government have a way of meeting untimely deaths, Gessen has shown remarkable courage in...

В 1890 году Антон Павлович Чехов, к тому времени уже прославленный писатель, отправился в тяжелое и рискованное путешествие на самый отдаленный край империи — на каторжный Сахалин. Проделав долгий путь через всю Сибирь, он прибыл на остров не как чиновник или журналист, а движимый желанием увидеть истинное положение дел, как живут ссыльные, каторжане и переселенцы, и донести правду до читателей. Результатом глубокого, подлинно научного и человечного исследования длиною в три месяца стал труд «Остров Сахалин», уникальное произведение, сочетающее в себе научную точность и человеческую чуткость.

The gritty memoir of a former US Marine and Presidential Guard, who, after being unjustly held and abused in a Russian gulag for three years and freed in a high-profile prisoner exchange, seeks revenge against his former Russian captors by volunteering to fight in Ukraine. In August 2019, Trevor...

Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography PEN Literary Award Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist New York Times Notable Book Washington Post Notable Book Boston Globe Best Book of the Year The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched...