Russia Social Science

God and Ronald Reagan made presidential historian Paul Kengor's name as one of the premier chroniclers of the life and career of the 40th president. With The Crusader, Kengor returns with the one book about Reagan that has not been written: the story of his lifelong crusade against communism and of his dogged and ultimately triumphant effort to overthrow the Soviet Union.

Since the invasion of Ukraine and ban on foreign reporters, Russia seems to have sunk into an even deeper shadow than in the darkest times of the Soviet Union. Posing as an historian, Italian journalist Marzio G. Mian managed to explore today’s great clash of civilizations―between Russia and the West―by traveling the floodplains where the Orthodox faith first took root, the Soviet empire asserted itself, and the neo-imperial project of Vladimir Putin’s post-Soviet autocracy is currently being consolidated.

El periodista Manel Alías és el primer corresponsal de TV3 i Catalunya Ràdio a Moscou. Durant tots aquests anys de notícies i reportatges, ha recorregut la immensitat de Rússia recollint històries extraordinàries que no cabien en una crònica, però que ajuden a entendre el país en tota la seva complexitat.

In Unholy Alliance, Jay Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) tackle radical Islam head on. They expose the attempts by fundamentalist Muslims - both in the US and abroad - to destroy our legal system in favor of a system that would destroy our essential liberties. They bring attention to terrorism in today's world and reflect on the recent Paris and San Bernadino attacks as well as Russia, Syria, Iran, and continuous threats to our nation.

"Having known and observed Jeremy for almost half a century, I have no doubt that his influence has been as great as that of all but the most senior figures in government. In his second book, Jeremy continues the recounting of his life's work, which he began in his early volume, Every Man Should Try. Jeremy has devoted his life to conflict resolution and to ending the nuclear arms race." - From the preface by Morton H. Halperin, Director of the Policy Planning Staff, Department of State (1998-2001)

When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system.

In The Kremlin's Noose Amy Knight tells the riveting story of Vladimir Putin and the oligarch Boris Berezovsky. When Putin began dismantling Boris Yeltsin's democratic reforms, Berezovsky came into conflict with the new Russian leader by reproaching him publicly. Their relationship quickly disintegrated into a bitter feud played out against the backdrop of billion-dollar financial deals, Kremlin in-fighting, and international politics.

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.

Fleeing East from Nazi terror, over a million Polish Jews traversed the Soviet Union, many finding refuge in Muslim lands. Their story - the extraordinary saga of two thirds of Polish Jewish survivors - has never been fully told. Author Mikhal Dekel's father, Hannan Teitel, and her aunt Regina were two of these refugees. After they fled the town in eastern Poland where their family had been successful brewers for centuries, they endured extreme suffering in the Soviet forced labor camps known as "special settlements".

Nicht nur Putins Militärapparat, auch seine Propagandamaschine läuft seit dem Überfall auf die Ukraine im Februar 2022 auf Hochtouren: Im Netz führt die russische Regierung einen Cyberkrieg gegen unliebsame Zivilisten, Politiker und Institutionen aus dem In- und Ausland. In ihrem Debüt "Putins Armee der Trolle" legt die preisgekrönte – und wegen ihrer kritischen Berichterstattung verfolgte – finnische Investigativjournalistin Jessikka Aro die Strategien hinter der Propagandaschlacht des Kremls offen.

After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between 31 and 54 people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone.

Bringing together a new introduction by Volodymyr Zelensky with his most powerful war speeches, this book recounts Ukraine’s story through the words of its president. It is the story of a nation valiantly defending itself from Russian aggression. And it is the story of a people leading the world in the struggle for democracy. Above all, it is a battle cry for us all to stand up and fight for liberty. If not now, when?

When Reagan and Gorbachev sat down in Reykjavik in 1986, George Shultz said that it was “the poker game with the highest stakes ever played”. It was the last time the world had a chance to do away entirely with nuclear weapons. This is the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable summit conference. An Impossible Dream is the first exploration of recently available archives of both sides - top-secret archives of the Kremlin, the personal papers of Gorbachev, as well as Reagan's archives.

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.

Die Bestseller-Autoren und Ortskenner Gesine Dornblüth und Thomas Franke zeigen, wie perfide Russland vorgeht: In Armenien, Georgien, der Ukraine, den baltischen Staaten und Zentralasien, aber auch in den USA und der EU. Sie schreiben über Angst, Unwissenheit, Sprachkurse und Religion, und zeichnen nach, wie sich russisches Gift bereits subtil in die Gesellschaften gefressen hat.

Putins Krieg hat alle bislang als unumstößlich geltenden Grundannahmen unserer Beziehungen zu Russland zunichte gemacht. Wie ist mit einer geopolitischen Macht auf dem europäischen Kontinent umzugehen, deren DNA darauf ausgerichtet ist, mit kriegsverbrecherischer Gewalt bestehende Staatsgrenzen zu verändern? Zu dieser fundamentalen Herausforderung für die Zukunft Europas und möglichen Lösungen schweigen die deutschen Parteien auffallend laut.

This is one of eight Russian language KGB Training Manuals that were recently released to the general public. To quote The Interpreter: “manuals expose the devious methods of the Soviet Union’s secret police not only to surveil but suborn their own citizens and foreigners in a vast project to extend the Kremlin’s power around the world”. We are printing this English translation so that the general public can see first hand how the KGB operated and extrapolate their actions to today’s environment.

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.

When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, analysts and policymakers highlighted the unifying shock that NATO members experienced. However even before the return of US president Donald Trump, beneath this seeming cohesion lay deep-seated differences in how member states perceive and prioritize security threats.

The implosion of the Soviet Union was the culmination of a gripping game played out between two men who intensely disliked each other and had different concepts for the future. Mikhail Gorbachev, a sophisticated and urbane reformer, sought to modernize and preserve the USSR; Boris Yeltsin, a coarse and a hard drinking “bulldozer,” wished to destroy the union and create a capitalist Russia. The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt, carried out by hardline communists, shook Gorbachev’s authority and was a triumph for Yeltsin.