Memoir Russia

The Venona Files are several intercepted communiques between the Soviet Union and American Communists following WWII. Some historians and journalists are starting to regard the Cold-War-era American Communist Party as nothing more than a quaint club of polite if misguided ideologues. In The Venona Secrets, Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel intend to create a new impression of treacherous Americans "who willfully gave their primary allegiance to a foreign power, the USSR."

При упоминании имени Михаила Афанасьевича Булгакова на память сразу приходят его Белая гвардия, Мастер и Маргарита или Собачье сердце. Эти без преувеличения гениальные романы выдержали многочисленные переиздания, были неоднократно экранизированы и по праву занимают самое почетное место в золотом фонде российской литературы.

Across Cultures and Empires is above all an immigrant's story. Mahir Ibrahimov's fluency in multiple languages offers the perspective of someone who found a way to successfully cross boundaries amid the fall of empire and the resulting cascade of conflicts, even as he provides the listener with insight into an era where mass migration has become a defining dynamic. In the course of telling his personal story and reflecting upon his experiences, Ibrahimov offers clear observations on the deep connections he has made about freedom and America's role in the world.

In 1940 Edmund Wilson was the undisputed big dog of American letters. Vladimir Nabokov was a near-penniless Russian exile seeking asylum in the States. Wilson became a mentor to Nabokov, introducing him to every editor of note, assigning to him book reviews for the New Republic, engineering a Guggenheim. Their intimate friendship blossomed over a shared interest in all things Russian, ruffled a bit by political disagreements. But then came Lolita, and suddenly Nabokov was the big (and very rich) dog.

In this rapid-paced book, a former CIA chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence breaks open the mysterious case of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko's 1964 defection to the United States. Still a highly controversial chapter in the history of Cold War espionage, the Nosenko affair has inspired debate for more than 40 years. Was Nosenko a bona fide defector with the real information about Lee Harvey Oswald's stay in Soviet Russia, or was he a KGB loyalist, engaged in a complex game of deception?

"Unser Geschäft ist der Tod – und das Geschäft läuft gut." PMC (Private Military Company) WAGNER ist ein privates russisches Sicherheits- und Militärunternehmen, dessen Einheiten verdeckt operieren und als besonders brutal gelten. WAGNER war während der russischen Machtübernahme auf der Krim sowie in Syrien, im Sudan, in Mali aktiv und ist es aktuell auch in der Ukraine.

In a forgotten chapter of history, 1.5 million Polish civilians - arbitrarily arrested by Stalin as enemies of the people following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939 - were deported to slave-labor camps throughout the most inhospitable forests and steppes of the Soviet Union. The Ice Road is the gripping story of young Stefan Waydenfeld and his family, deported by cattle car in 1940 to the frozen wastes of the Russian arctic north.

Cambridge spy Guy Burgess was a supreme networker. He also set a gold standard for conflicts of interest, working variously for the BBC, MI5, MI6, the War Office, the Ministry of Information and the KGB. Yet Burgess was never challenged by Britain's spy catchers: his superiors were convinced he was too much of a liability to have been recruited by Moscow. Now, with a major new release of hundreds of files into the National Archives, Purvis and Hulbert reveal just how this charming establishment insider was able to fool everyone for so long.

Donna Solecka Urbikas grew up in the Midwest during the golden years of the American century. But her Polish-born mother and half sister had endured dehumanizing conditions during World War II, as slave laborers in Siberia. War and exile created a profound bond between mother and older daughter, one that Donna would struggle to find with either of them.

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.

Prostitution, Raub, Drogen, Terror, Menschenhandel, Umweltverbrechen – nahezu allen kriminellen Taten ist eines gemeinsam: Sie lohnen sich nur, wenn Kriminelle die Herkunft ihrer schmutzigen Erträge verschleiern können – durch Geldwäsche. Geld ist eine Waffe: Kriminelle bestechen Politiker, beeinflussen Parlamentswahlen durch Fake News und destabilisieren mit Cyberattacken die Demokratie. Klar ist: Nimmt man Kriminellen das dreckige Geld, trifft man sie am härtesten. Doch Deutschland tut in dieser Hinsicht praktisch nichts.

Can trauma be inherited? It is this question that sets Alex Halberstadt off on a quest to name and acknowledge a legacy of family trauma, and to end a century-old cycle of estrangement. As Halberstadt revisits the sites of his family’s formative traumas, he uncovers a multigenerational transmission of fear, suspicion, melancholy, and rage. And he comes to realize something more: Nations, like people, possess formative traumas that penetrate into the most private recesses of their citizens’ lives.

On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union just weeks before a peace summit between the two nations. The CIA concocted a cover story for President Eisenhower to deliver, assuring him that no one could have survived a fall from that altitude. But against all odds, pilot Francis Gary Powers emerged from the wreckage and was seized by the KGB. Award-winning journalist Monte Reel reveals how the U-2 spy program, principally devised by four men working in secret, upended the Cold War and carved a new mission for the CIA.

Stephen Ambrose describes how the Army Air Forces recruited, trained, and chose those few who would undertake the most demanding and dangerous jobs in the war. These are the boys -- turned pilots, bombardiers, navigators, and gunners of the B24s -- who suffered over 50 percent casualties.

In Russian literary marriages, the wives of some of the most famous authors of all time did not resent taking a "secondary position", although to call their position secondary does not do justice to the vital role these women played in the creation of some of the greatest literary works in history. Living under restrictive regimes, many of these women battled censorship and preserved the writers' illicit archives, often risking their own lives to do so. They established a tradition all their own, unmatched in the West.

Today, when Russia has regained its power on the world stage and Putin is restoring many of the old traditions and systems, it is helpful to understand what Russia was like at the time of transformation set in motion by Gorbachev and continued by Yeltsin. For a time Russia went through a period called "glasnost" and "perestroika" when all things seemed possible and a spirit of democracy was in the air.

Helmi’s Shadow tells the sweeping true story of two Russian Jewish refugees, a mother (Rachel Koskin) and her daughter (Helmi). With determination and courage, they survived decades of hardship in the hidden corners of war-torn Asia and then journeyed across the Pacific at the end of the Second World War to become United States citizens after seeking safe harbor in the unlikely western desert town of Reno, Nevada. This compelling narrative is also a memoir, told lovingly by Helmi’s son, David, of growing up under the wings of these strong women in an unusual American family.

On December 7, 1941, the nation of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and prompted the United States’ entry into the bloodiest war in human history. Americans have long debated the cause of the bombing; many have argued that the attack was a brilliant Japanese military coup or a failure of US intelligence agencies or even a conspiracy of the Roosevelt administration. But despite the attention historians have paid to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the truth about that fateful day has remained a mystery - until now.

One Hundred Years of Exile: A Romanov’s Search for Her Father’s Russia is the story of one woman’s journey through 100 years of history to find peace with her father. Tania Romanov Amochaev and her father were both exiled from their homelands as infants; both knew life in refugee camps. Their shared fate does not lead to mutual understanding.

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.