Memoir Russia

In 1946, after five years as a prisoner - first as a Soviet POW in Nazi concentration camps, then as a deportee in the Arctic Gulag - 29-year-old Lev Mishchenko unexpectedly received a letter from Sveta, the sweetheart he had hardly dared hope was still alive. Amazingly, over the next eight years, the lovers managed to exchange more than 1,500 messages and even to smuggle Sveta herself into the camp for secret meetings. Their recently discovered correspondence is the only known real-time record of life in Stalin's Gulag.

This is the riveting account of one of the first Americans to spy for Joseph Stalin. A brilliant Columbia University graduate, Isaiah Oggins went to Berlin to establish a safe house and spy for his country - but he turned coat. Working for the Soviets, he was nevertheless poisoned in 1947 on Stalin's orders. Classified for decades, Oggins' story is a cloak-and-dagger tale to rival the best novels.

The Russian Empire was the third-largest empire in world history, stretching over three continents. It played a major role in 1812-1814 in defeating Napoleon's ambitions to control Europe and expanded to the west and south. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean, and (until 1867) into Alaska in North America in the east. Its wide disparities bred dissidence and rebellions; along with its enormous size, this made it a challenge to govern.

In The Inconvenient Journalist, Dusko Doder, writing with his spouse and journalistic partner Louise Branson, describes how one February night crystalized the values and personal risks that shaped his life. The frigid Moscow night in question was in 1984, and Washington Post correspondent Doder reported signs that Soviet leader Yuri Andropov had died.

"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.

Le chiamavano Streghe della notte. Nel 1941, un gruppo di ragazze sovietiche riesce a conquistare un ruolo di primo piano nella battaglia contro il Terzo Reich. Rifiutando ogni presenza maschile, su fragili ma agili biplani, mostrano l'audacia, il coraggio di una guerra che può avere anche il volto delle donne. La loro battaglia comincia ben prima di alzarsi in volo e continua dopo la vittoria.

In Deutschland wurde Alexej Nawalny erst dadurch bekannt, dass er nur knapp einen Giftanschlag überlebte, für den er den russischen Geheimdienst verantwortlich macht. Nach seiner Behandlung in Deutschland wurde er bei seiner Rückkehr umgehend festgenommen, veröffentlichte aber gleichzeitig ein Video über Putin, das millionenfach geklickt wurde, Hunderttausende gingen auf die Straße.

He walks with me through every day of my life, in that unsteady, faltering gait that so embarrassed me when I was a boy. Always, he is holding fast to the upper part of my right arm . . . As we make our way together, my father—I called him Daddy when I was small, because it sounded American and that is how he so desperately wanted things to seem—is speaking in the idiosyncratic rhythms of a self-constructed English. So Sherwin Nuland introduces Meyer Nudelman, his father, a man whose presence continues to haunt Nuland to this day.

In April of 2018, Giorgi Rtskhiladze answered the door of his Connecticut home to find two FBI agents bearing a subpoena waiting for him. Their questions: What was his interaction with Donald Trump, the Trump family, and the Trump Organization? What did he know about Michael Cohen's business dealings? Why was he the person who Cohen had a text conversation with about the possibility of damaging tapes of Donald Trump from Russia?

From an FBI insider, a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the historic investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia and the president's unprecedented attacks on the bureau - and a passionate defense of the men and women who work every day to uphold democratic institutions and the rule of law.

Dieser Mann schreckt vor nichts zurück. Bei der Verfolgung seiner Ziele geht Wladimir Putin über Leichen, und das nicht erst seit dem Überfall auf die Ukraine. John Sweeney, investigativer Journalist und seit vielen Jahren auf der Spur von Putins Verbrechen, legt die Beweise vor: Schon bei seinem unheimlichen Aufstieg vom Stasi-Mann in Dresden zum unumschränkten Herrscher im Kreml ging Putin mit erbarmungsloser Konsequenz vor, ließ Oppositionelle ausschalten, provozierte Kriege und überzog Russland mit einem Netzwerk der Korruption.

Nicolai Lilin ricostruisce la vita sorprendente e la folgorante ascesa politica di Vladimir Putin, da una misera casa popolare nel quartiere criminale di Leningrado alla poltrona presidenziale del Cremlino. Con il suo tipico stile potente che ti cattura e non ti lascia andare fino alla fine, Lilin indaga non solo la storia ma anche l'animo di Putin. Come in un romanzo ne racconta le origini, ne descrive le trasformazioni, ne ricorda i talenti che lo hanno portato a diventare il personaggio che conosciamo.

Among the leaders of the 20th century, arguably none shaped the course of history as much as Vladimir Lenin. If Adolf Hitler had not inflicted the devastation of World War II upon Europe, it's quite likely that the West would consider Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) the 20th century's greatest tyrant. Along with Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky led the October Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and held crucial posts in the early Soviet governments.

In this crackling memoir, the journalist and novelist Michael Idov recounts the tempestuous years he spent living alongside - and closely observing - the media and cultural elite of Putin's Russia. After accepting a surprise offer to become the editor in chief of GQ Russia, Idov and his family arrive in a Moscow still seething from a dubious election and the mass anti-Putin rallies that erupted in response. Idov is fascinated by the political turmoil but nonetheless finds himself pulled in unlikely directions.

True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, an American who betrayed his country and crushed his family. Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American, spied for Stalin during the 1930s and '40s. Then, a pawn in Stalin's sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades.

In the history of the modern world, there have been few characters more sadistic, sinister, and deeply demented as Baron Ungern-Sternberg. An anti-Semitic fanatic with a penchant for Eastern mysticism and a hatred of communists, Baron Ungern-Sternberg took over Mongolia in 1920 with a ragtag force of White Russians, Siberians, Japanese, and native Mongolians.

Marc Bennetts, foreign correspondent for The Times and The Sunday Times, moved to Russia in the chaotic yet free final years of President Yeltsin's rule. Twenty-five years later, The Times pulled him out of Russia over concerns for his security following his arrest in Moscow at a protest against the war in Ukraine. From the "wild" 1990s in Moscow to narrowly escaping death under fire in Ukraine, The Descent is a unique and personal diary of how Russia spiraled into violent insanity.

Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we know is a shadow of the fascinating reality. It is all too easy to forget that he composed an empire's worth of music, and navigated the imperial Russian court to great advantage. In this iconoclastic biography, celebrated author Simon Morrison recreates Tchaikovsky's complex world.

At last a book about the so-called "Mad Monk" of Imperial Russia that lays to rest the myths and reveals the truth about one of the most controversial characters in human history while exploring the impact his murder had on a dynasty, a people, and a country.

In Operation Whisper, Barnes Carr tells the true story of the most effective Soviet spy couple in America, a pair who vanished under the FBI's nose only to turn up posing as rare book dealers in London, where they continued their atomic spying. The Cohens were talented, dedicated, worldly spies - an urbane, jet-set couple loyal to their service and their friends. Most people they met seemed to think they represented the best of America. The Soviets certainly thought so.