Soviet History

With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy was thought to be absolute. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. But we now know this to be premature. Authoritarianism first returned in Russia, as Putin developed a political system...

Germany's winter campaign of 1941-1942 has commonly been seen as its "first defeat". In Retreat from Moscow, David Stahel argues that, in fact, it was its first strategic success in the east. Though the Red Army managed to push the Wehrmacht back from Moscow, the Germans lost far fewer men (one to six), frustrated their enemy's strategic plan, and emerged in the spring unbroken and poised to recapture the initiative.

2021 GRAMMY Winner for Best Spoken Word Album #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy—Winner Take All “A rollickingly well-written book, filled with fascinating, exciting, and alarming stories about the impact of the oil and gas industry on the world today...

Mansur Abdulin fought in the front ranks of the Soviet infantry against the German invaders at Stalingrad, Kursk, and on the banks of the Dnieper. This is his extraordinary story. His vivid firsthand account of a ruthless war on the Eastern Front gives rare insight into the reality of the fighting and into the tactics and mentality of the Red Army's soldiers.

A “devilishly fun” (New York Times Book Review) account of a deadly serious business: the undercover spies and the tactics they developed to survive the Cold War in Moscow, from legendary former-CIA operatives. Antonio Mendez and his future wife Jonna were CIA operatives working to spy on...

Drawing on new and often startling information from newly opened Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives, this thrilling account explores the strategic dynamics that drove the Cold War, provides illuminating portraits of its major personalities, and offers much fresh insight into its most crucial events. Riveting, revelatory, and wise, it tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand as America once more faces an implacable ideological enemy.

In just four weeks in the summer of 1941 the German Wehrmacht wrought unprecedented destruction on four Soviet armies, conquering central Ukraine and killing or capturing three quarters of a million men. This was the Battle of Kiev - one of the largest and most decisive battles of World War II and, for Hitler and Stalin, a battle of crucial importance. For the first time, David Stahel charts the battle's dramatic course and aftermath.

Western interpretations of the Cold War--both realist and neoconservative--have erred by exaggerating either the Kremlin's pragmatism or its aggressiveness, argues Vladislav Zubok. Explaining the interests, aspirations, illusions, fears, and misperceptions of the Kremlin leaders and Soviet elites, Zubok offers a Soviet perspective on the greatest standoff of the 20th century.

A "chilling" and "expertly" written history of the 1939 September Campaign and the onset of World War II (Times of London). For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's soldiers invaded...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The riveting inside story of three heroic astronauts who took on the challenge of mankind’s historic first mission to the Moon, from the bestselling author of Shadow Divers. “Robert Kurson tells the tale of Apollo 8 with novelistic detail and immediacy...

Vladimir Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency, he appeared to commit himself to friendship with the West, suggesting that Russia could join the European Union or even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin of those years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist, dedicated to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A new book by Hall of Fame goalie and bestselling author Ken Dryden celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Summit Series SEPTEMBER 2, 1972, MONTREAL FORUM, GAME ONE: The best against the best for the first time. Canada, the country that had created the game; the...

Charlie Wilson's War is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War and how it fueled the rise of militant Islam. George Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from east Texas, conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful covert operation in the agency's history.

1951. The Cold War is heating up. With Soviet troops amassing across Eastern Europe, and the arrests of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for spilling nuclear secrets, President Harry Truman assigned General Curtis LeMay the task of installing nuclear forces in Britain. On March 22, a massive C-124 Globemaster cargo plane—possibly carrying a "Fat Man" bomb—was dispatched to Britain with passengers and crew including elite specialists in atomic warfare. Then tragedy struck....

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.

Prit Buttar retraces the ebb and flow of the various battles and campaigns fought throughout the Ukraine and Romania in 1944. January and February saw Army Group South encircled in the Korsun Pocket. Although many of the encircled troops did escape, in part due to Soviet intelligence and command failures, the Red Army would endeavour to not make the same mistakes again. Indeed, in the coming months the Red Army would demonstrate an ability to learn and improve, reinventing itself as a war-winning machine, demonstrated clearly in its success in the Iasi-Kishinev operation.

A close-up, action-filled account of the crucial role the U.S. Navy played in the early years of the Cold War, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Fleet at Flood Tide and The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors “A lucid, fast-moving and fitting finale to [Hornfischer’s] career...

The Berlin Airlift is one of the century’s most dangerous and least understood crises of the twentieth century. Inexperienced and armed to the teeth, the world’s superpowers surveyed each other for the first time. The Cold War began in this city in 1948-49, just as it would end there forty years later.

In September 1984, Lisa Paul, an American college student and nanny living in Moscow, entered Inna Meiman’s house for her first Russian language lesson. And so began a two–year friendship and a fight for Inna’s life. In Swimming in the Daylight, Lisa chronicles her friend’s struggle to shed her refusenik status, obtain a visa to America, and find medical treatment for her malignant cancer. Inna endured a perverse reality as a citizen of the Soviet Union....

The ascension of Vladimir Putin - a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB - to the presidency of Russia in 1999 should have been a signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years - as America and the world's other leading powers have continued to appease him - Putin has grown into not only a dictator but a global threat. With his vast resources and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault on political liberty.