Russian Politics

Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, activity in Eastern Ukraine, saberrattling regarding the Baltics, deployment to Syria, and more assertive behavior along its borders have peeked interest in the Russian Armed Forces. This increased interest has caused much speculation about their structure, capabilities, and future development. This audiobook will attempt to split the difference betweenthese radically different ideas by shedding some light on what exactly the Russian Ground Forces consist of, how they are structured, how they fight, and how they are modernizing.

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.

In To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, James M. Olson, former chief of CIA counterintelligence, offers a wake-up call for the American public and also a guide for how our country can do a better job of protecting its national security and trade secrets. Olson takes the listener into the arcane world of counterintelligence as he lived it during his 30-year career in the CIA.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky has seen behind the mask of Vladimir Putin. Once an oil tycoon and the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky spoke out against the corruption of Putin's regime—and was punished by the Kremlin, stripped of his entire wealth and jailed for over ten years. Now freed, working as a pro-democracy campaigner in enforced exile, Khodorkovsky brings us the insider's battle to save his country's soul. Offering an urgent analysis of what has gone wrong with Putin, The Russia Conundrum maps the country's rise and fall against Khodorkovsky's own journey.

Helen Rappaport, an expert in the field of Russian history, brings you the riveting day-by-day account of the last 14 days of the Russian Imperial family, in this first of two books about the Romanovs. The brutal murder of the Russian Imperial family on the night of July 16 to 17, 1918, has long been a defining moment in world history. The Last Days of the Romanovs reveals in exceptional detail how the conspiracy to kill them unfolded.

From learning about Lenin and the Red Army to discovering how and why Stalin rose to power and his eventual leadership during World War II and beyond, this book provides an essential look at one of the most important periods in Russian history. Listeners will be enthralled by this fascinating tale that delves into every aspect of Russia's struggles and successes.

The shocking untold story of the elite secret society of hackers fighting to protect our freedom, “a hugely important piece of the puzzle for anyone who wants to understand the forces shaping the internet age” (The New York Times Book Review) Cult of the Dead Cow is the tale of the oldest...

Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century traces all the continuities and ruptures that led from the founding revolution of October 1917, to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship, the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years, and the glasnost and perestroika policies of Gorbachev.

While in Chechnya, CIA Special Agent Dylan Kane stumbles upon a meeting between a known Chechen drug lord and a retired general once responsible for the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal. Money is exchanged for a data stick, and the resulting transmission begins a race across the globe to discover just what was sold, the only clue a reference to a top secret Soviet weapon called Crimson Rush.

Concluding his acclaimed series on the Eastern Front in World War I, Prit Buttar comprehensively details not only these climactic events, but also the "successor wars" that raged long after the armistice of 1918. New states rose from the ashes of empire and war raged as German forces sought to keep them under the aegis of the Fatherland. These unresolved tensions between the former Great Powers and the new states would ultimately lead to the rise of Hitler and a new, terrible world war only two decades later.

The New York Times bestselling author of Dark Invasion and The Last Goodnight once again illuminates the lives of little-known individuals who played a significant role in America’s history as he chronicles the incredible true story of a critical, recently declassified counterintelligence...

The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad: “A compelling rendering of Putin’s frightening extensions of power into Europe and the United States” (Associated Press). They thought they had found a safe haven in the green hills of England...

Leo Tolstoy was born to an aristocratic Russian family, became a world-famous influential novelist, and then chose to lead the simple life of a peasant. Dating from this last part of his life, Tolstoy’s influential book What I Believe takes readers along on the path to a life modeled literally on Jesus Christ’s "Sermon on the Mount" and the teachings of the Gospels. In revealing and frank essays he reimagines a faith without dogma, centered solely on Jesus’ doctrine of love, humility, and self-denial.

Packed with insider information based on interviews, declassified files, and forensic analysis of company reports, The Hacker and the State sets aside fantasies of cyber-annihilation to explore the real geopolitical competition of the digital age. Tracing the conflict of wills and interests among modern nations, Ben Buchanan reveals little-known details of how China, Russia, North Korea, Britain, and the United States hack one another in a relentless struggle for dominance.

In the latest pulse-pounding thriller from Edgar and Barry Award finalist Mike Lawson, beloved Washington, DC, “troubleshooter” Joe DeMarco finds himself assigned an impossible case: help take down the president of the United States. Brandon Cartwright was a rich guy worth a couple billion...

From the Wall Street Journal's award-winning international investigations team comes a spellbinding account of a spy war between the U.S. and Russia that transformed into a ruthless game of hostage-taking, in which Putin held all the cards. Narrated with the propulsive drive of a spy thriller...

After narrowly avoiding a firing squad when he was just twenty-eight years old, Dostoevsky never took things lightly. His great novels burst upon the European literary scene like a succession of thunderbolts. His understanding of the darker and more extreme recesses of the human mind cast a forceful light into these areas of experience. The raw psychology and passionate involvement of his books galvanized writers and thinkers as disparate as Nietzsche and Kafka.

Paul Samson is living in London and picking up some extra work for a private security company when he is almost killed by a thuggish assassin while tailing a mysterious and gifted young employee of a powerful environmental NGO. The murder of legendary spy Robert Harland, the poisoning of billionaire philanthropist Denis Hisami with a neurotoxin in the United States House of Representatives, and a second attempt on Samson's own life send him on the run to Estonia to figure out who is trying to kill him, and why.

Media and public discussion tends to understand Russian politics as a direct reflection of Vladimir Putin's seeming omnipotence or Russia's unique history and culture. Yet Russia is remarkably similar to other autocracies - and recognizing this illuminates the inherent limits to Putin's power. Weak Strongman challenges the conventional wisdom about Putin's Russia, highlighting the difficult trade-offs that confront the Kremlin on issues ranging from election fraud and repression to propaganda and foreign policy.

In 2015, a major story broke exposing Hillary Clinton's role in approving the sale of an American uranium company to the Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom. An indispensable guide to the hidden background of recent events, Fallout shows how Putin's bid for nuclear dominance produced a series of political scandals that ultimately posed one of the greatest threats to our democracy in modern American history.