Soviet Politics

Russian meddling: These are two words that just about everyone has come to know very well in the last few years. Only a fool - or someone with an agenda of a sinister kind - would deny that such meddling occurred. But how many know that, for decades, the Russians secretly used the UFO phenomenon as a means to try and destabilize the West?

“Hilarious. . . . To understand Russia, read A Terrible Country.” —Time "This artful and autumnal novel, published in high summer, is a gift to those who wish to receive it." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Hilarious, heartbreaking . . . A Terrible Country may be one of the best...

The thrilling never-before-told story of Agent Sniper, one of the Cold War's most effective counter-agents Michal Goleniewski, cover name Sniper, was one of the most important spies of the early Cold War. For almost three years, as a Lieutenant Colonel at the top of Poland’s espionage service...

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.

Early one morning in West Berlin, a nervous courier delivers the handwritten manuscript of a dissident Russian novel to Paul Christopher. Minutes after the handoff, the courier's spine is neatly snapped by an impact with a passing black sedan. Meanwhile, in Rome, Christopher's wife Cathy takes a famous film director as a lover to stir her husband out of the stoicism that defines his personality.

In the early hours of February 24, 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine. The brutality of the Russian assault has horrified the world. But Russians themselves appear to be watching an entirely different war—one in which they are the courageous underdogs and kind-hearted heroes successfully battling a malign Ukrainian foe.

History didn't end. Democracy didn't triumph. America’s leading role in the world is no longer assured. Instead, authoritarian rule is on the rise, and the global order established after 1945 is under attack. This is the phenomenon Katie Stallard tackles in Dancing on Bones as she examines how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule.

Russia's World Order describes the civilizational theory that has come to dominate Russian official discourse, and that has come to dominate Russian official discourse and that is being used to justify its clashes with the West. Whereas the West promotes a vision of history that drives all nations toward convergence on a single model, Russia's political leaders increasingly portray the world as consisting of numerous distinct civilizations, each diverging toward its own destination.

This book explores why there is a major war again in Europe. Putin's actions need to be understood if not forgiven. With the Ukraine conflict seen as a proxy war of NATO versus Russia, how likely is the fighting to spread?

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.

L’interferenza nelle elezioni americane, il sostegno alle forze populiste in Italia e in tutta Europa, la guerra in Ucraina. Negli ultimi anni, la Russia di Vladimir Putin ha condotto una poderosa campagna per espandere la sua influenza e indebolire le istituzioni occidentali. Come è potuto accadere? E, soprattutto, chi si nasconde dietro questo piano ambizioso? Catherine Belton, giornalista investigativa già corrispondente da Mosca, racconta la storia segreta dell’ascesa al potere di Vladimir Putin e del ristretto gruppo di ex agenti del KGB che lo circonda.

The end of Communism and breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of euphoria around the world, but Russia today is violently anti-American and dangerously nationalistic. So how did we go from the promise of those days to the autocratic police state of Putin's new Russia? The Invention of Russia reaches back to the darkest days of the Cold War to tell the story of the fight for the soul of a nation.

Crisis constantly lurks around the corner, monitored by spies who are always with us. In this breathtaking thriller, a spectacular mole hunt is under way, one that involves not just the CIA—"The Company" to insiders—but Mossad, MI6, and the KGB as well. Robert Littell, master of the espionage novel, has crafted an exciting story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an enemy that is amoral, elusive, and formidable. The Company also lays bare a warfare within the CIA itself, adding another dimension to the spy vs. spy game.

During the Cold War, the political leadership of the Soviet Union avidly sought intelligence about its main adversary, the United States. Although effective on an operational level, Soviet leaders and their intelligence chiefs fell short when it came to analyzing intelligence. There were, however, important changes over time. Ultimately the views of an enlightened Soviet leader, Gorbachev, trumped the ideological blinders of his predecessors and the intelligence service's dedication to an endless duel.

Initially a victory line where Allies met at the end of WWII, the Iron Curtain quickly became the front of a new kind of war. But what has the Iron Curtain left in its wake? Timothy Phillips travels its full 3,000-mile route to craft this new people's history of a defining twentieth-century conflict. Here, in the borderlands where a powerful clash of civilizations took form in concrete and barbed wire, he uncovers the remarkable stories of everyday people forever imprinted by life in the Curtain's shadow.

The Three Sisters is Anton Chekhov's 1901 play about the Prosorov family, who are stuck in a provincial Russian town. The sisters - Olga, Masha, and Irina - fantasize about one day returning to Moscow. Meanwhile, their brother Andrey courts village girl Natasha, and the family socializes with the soldiers stationed nearby. Dreams, longing, and illicit love drive the action of Chekhov's comic drama.

An awe-inspiring account of the afterlife and what happens when it spills over into the world of the living. The new novel from the most exciting new voice in the genre since Neal Stephenson. Loss is a thing of the past. Murder is obsolete. Death is just the beginning. In 1938, death is no longer feared but exploited. Since the discovery of the afterlife, the British Empire has extended its reach into Summerland, a metropolis for the recently deceased. Yet Britain isn't the only contender for power in this life and the next.

This audiobook is the first to offer a concise, accessible overview of the evolution of the Soviet Union as a multiethnic empire. It reflects on how the Soviet Union was home to many ethnic minorities, and how their fates, and that of the USSR itself, were bound to the question of how the Soviet state responded variously throughout its existence to the fundamental question of ethnic difference across its vast and diverse territory. The audiobook then examines how the Soviet collapse in 1991 fractured the Union along markedly national lines.

No nation is a stranger to war, but for Russians war is a central part of who they are. Their "motherland" has been the battlefield where some of the largest armies have clashed, the most savage battles have been fought, the highest death tolls paid. Having prevailed over Mongol hordes and vanquished Napoleon and Hitler, many Russians believe no other nation has sacrificed so much for the world.

A new, expanded collection of both new and previously published essays and articles from one of the mainstays of the Washington, DC underground rock-and-roll scene, The Psychic Soviet is the most complete collection of writings by Ian Svenonius. The selections are written in a scholarly yet engaging style, filled with parody and biting humor that subvert capitalist culture, and cover such topics as the ascent of the DJ as a star, the “cosmic depression” that followed the defeat of the USSR, and the status of rock and roll as a religion.