Memoir Russia

In 1890, Kate Marsden, a British nurse, travelled 14,000 miles by boat, train, sledge, and horse, to reach remote isolated patients with leprosy in Siberia. Her resulting memoir, On Sledge and Horseback to the Outcast Siberian Lepers, is more than just a travelogue. It offers a profound reflection on the plight of societal outcasts, the challenges faced by female explorers, and the need for religious zeal to survive, all of which she experienced with the approval of Queen Victoria and Empress Maria Feodorovna.

Intrepid's Last Case chronicles the post-World War II activities of Sir William Stephenson, whose fascinating role in helping to defeat the Nazis was the subject of the worldwide best seller A Man Called Intrepid.

Stingray’s memoir vividly shows how the energy of youth culture and an international love affair with rock ‘n’ roll forged alliances among a new generation who brought an end to the U.S.S.R.

Who were the three men the American and Soviet superpowers exchanged at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie in the first prisoner exchange of the nuclear age? Bridge of Spies vividly traces their paths to that electrifying moment on February 10, 1962, when their fates helped to define the conflicts and lethal undercurrents of the most dangerous years of the cold war.

As President Barack Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, Michael McFaul helped craft the United States' policy known as "reset" that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as US ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of US-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president.

Luliia was a dedicated member of the Komsomol (the Soviet communist youth organization) and her parents worked for the NKVD. She started at the sniper school and eventually became a valued member of her battalion during operations against Prussia. She persevered through eight months of training before leaving for the Front on 24th November 1944 just days after qualifying. Joining the third Belorussian Front her battalion endured rounds of German mortar as well as loudspeaker announcements beckoning them to come over to the German side.

Arms trafficking, offshore accounts and luxury property deals. Super-yachts, private jets and super-car collections. blood diamonds, suspect oil deals, deforestation and murder. This is the world of Global Witness, the award-winning organisation dedicated to rooting out worldwide corruption. And this is co-founder Patrick Alley's revealing inside track on a breath-taking catalogue of modern super-crimes—and the 'shadow network' that enables them. Very Bad People is about going undercover in the world's most dangerous places and bringing down the people behind the crimes.

If Vasily Grossman's 1961 masterpiece, Life and Fate, had been published during his lifetime, it would have reached the world together with Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag. But Life and Fate was seized by the Russian KGB. When it emerged posthumously, decades later, it was recognized as the War and Peace of the 20th century.

Red Valkyries explores the history of socialist feminism in Eastern Europe. Through the revolutionary careers of five prominent socialist women active in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—the aristocratic Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai; the radical pedagogue Nadezhda Krupskaya; the polyamorous firebrand Inessa Armand; the deadly sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko; and the partisan, scientist, and global women's activist Elena Lagadinova—Kristen Ghodsee tells the story of the personal challenges faced by earlier generations of radicals.

Shocking, but laced with wry humour, Vladimir Pereverzin’s extraordinary story is of an ordinary man whose comfortable life is upended. Refusing to give false testimony against Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he is plunged into lengthy, brutal incarceration in Russia’s nightmarish prisons and penal colonies, including some in which political prisoner Alexei Navalny has been held.

General Erhard Raus was one of the German Army's finest panzer generals and a leading exponent of blitzkrieg in the east. German panzers were witnesses to the incredible onslaught that was the first few months of Barbarossa, then the gradual strengthening of Russian resistance, counterattack and, ultimately, the long and drawn-out German retreat. Raus and his panzers were tested in every conceivable tactical situation and, inevitably, Raus became highly versed in all aspects of mobilized warfare.

George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a senior officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain. Yet he was also one of the least-known double agents, and remained unrepentant. In 1961, Blake was sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for betraying to the KGB all of the Western operations in which he was involved, and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain. This was the longest sentence for espionage ever to have been handed down by a British court

Iosif Vissarionovich, Stalin, fue el hijo de un zapatero, un preso, un revolucionario, un líder militar y, entre 1928 y 1953 manejó a voluntad el destino del país más grande del mundo y la vida de sus ciudadanos. Su recuerdo aún genera una mezcla de terror y añoranza en millones de personas y la historia del S. XX no puede entenderse sin comprender a fondo su vida y el contexto en el que vivió hasta en sus más nimios detalles.

In this frank and moving inside account, Zelenskyy’s former press secretary tells the story of his improbable rise from popular comedian to the president of Ukraine. Mendel had a front row seat to many of the key events preceding the 2022 Russian invasion. From attending meetings between Zelenskyy and Putin and other European leaders, visiting the front lines in Donbas, to fielding press inquiries after the infamous phone calls between Donald Trump and Zelenskyy that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Longlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction A New York Times Most Anticipated Book "Henry Goodman is an excellent narrator, in particular due to his ability to give unique voices to figures ranging from Theodore Herzl to Basshe." — AudioFile This dazzling, innovative family...

In this book, the first to draw from recently released archives, Robert Conquest gives us Stalin as a child and student; as a revolutionary and communist theoretician; as a political animal skilled in amassing power and absolutely ruthless in maintaining it. He presents the landmarks of Stalin's rule: the clash with Lenin; collectivization; the Great Terror; the Nazi-Soviet pact and the Nazi-Soviet war; the anti-Semitic campaign that preceded his death; and the legacy he left behind.

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.

The first of two biographical volumes, Professor Robert C. Tucker covers Stalin's life from his first revolutionary years until the end of the 1920s. This important period of his life is the key to understanding how a dictator is formed and how his cruel totalitarian regime was born. With an in-depth analysis of Stalin's personality and beliefs - set against a historical examination of Soviet society - this captivating book helps us to understand how and why Stalinism occurred.

In Spymaster's Prism, the legendary former spymaster Jack Devine details the unending struggle with Russia and its intelligence agencies as it works against our national security. Devine tells this story through the unique perspective of a seasoned CIA professional who served more than three decades, some at the highest levels of the agency.

As Joshua Rubenstein writes in his preface, “Leon Trotsky haunts our historical memory. A preeminent revolutionary figure and a masterful writer, Trotsky led an upheaval that helped to define the contours of twentieth-century politics.” In this lucid and judicious evocation of Trotsky’s life, Joshua Rubenstein gives us an interpretation for the twenty-first century.