Soviet Union

From a preeminent scholar of Eastern Europe and the prizewinning author of Chernobyl, the essential history of Russian imperialism. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine -- only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries...

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.

Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Finalist! The gripping true story of the only women to fly in combat in World War II—from Elizabeth Wein, award-winning author of Code Name Verity In the early years of World War II, Josef Stalin issued an order that made the Soviet Union the first...

In a world of spycraft, betrayals, and reversals, a Stasi officer is unraveled by the cruel system he served and by the revelation of a decades-old secret, in this “story that John le Carré might have written for The Twilight Zone” (Washington Post). A BuzzFeed Best Book of 2020 On November...

“A masterpiece” (The Guardian) from the Nobel Prize–winning writer, an oral history of children’s experiences in World War II across Russia NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience...

Based on exclusive interviews with key participants, including Caspar Weinberger, George Schultz, John Poindexter, Robert McFarlane, and William Clark, Victory chronicles why and how Ronald Reagan helped to bring down the Soviet Union.

This journal of the invasion, a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv, is a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a twenty-first-century war. Andrey Kurkov has been a consistent satirical commentator on his adopted country of Ukraine. His most recent work, Grey Bees, is a dark foreshadowing of the devastation in the eastern part of Ukraine in which only two villagers remain in a village bombed to smithereens. The author has lived in Kyiv and in the remote countryside of Ukraine throughout the Russian invasion.

The assassination of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander "Sasha" Litvinenko in November 2006 -- poisoned by the rare radioactive element polonium -- caused an international sensation. Within a few short weeks, the fit forty-three-year-old lay gaunt, bald, and dying in a hospital, the...

It is 1933 and Mikhail Bulgakov's enviable career is on the brink of being dismantled. His friend and mentor, the poet Osip Mandelstam, has been arrested, tortured, and sent into exile. Meanwhile, a mysterious agent of the secret police has developed a growing obsession with exposing Bulgakov as...

Seit Jahren nehmen Zensur und Repression in Russland zu. Nur wenige wissen, wie es um die russische Gesellschaft und ihre Führung wirklich bestellt ist. Informationen darüber werden systematisch unterbunden. Wie kaum jemand sonst verfügt die Osteuropa-Expertin des Deutschlandfunks über langjährige Einblicke in den von Putin diktatorisch geführten Staat. Schwindet die Macht des Kremlchefs? Wer sind die neuen politischen, militärischen und ökonomischen Akteure? Was halten Russinnen und Russen von ihrem Land? Gibt es Grund zur Hoffnung, oder treibt die Nation in den Abgrund?

The newest immensely original undertaking from the historian who gave us the defining two-volume portrait of Hitler, Fateful Choices puts Ian Kershaw's analytical and storytelling gifts on dazzling display. From May 1940 to December 1941, the leaders of the world's six major powers made a series of related decisions that determined the final outcome of World War II and shaped the course of human destiny.

Who is Alexei Navalny? Poisoned in August 2020 and transported to Germany for treatment, the politician returned to Russia in January 2021 in the full glare of the world media. His immediate detention at passport control set the stage for an explosive showdown with Vladimir Putin. But Navalny means very different things to different people. To some, he is a democratic hero. To others, he is betraying the Motherland. To others still, he is a dangerous nationalist. Navalny explores the many dimensions of his political life.

At the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the Soviets were so caught by surprise at the start of the attack that the Germans were able to push several hundred miles into Russia across a front that stretched dozens of miles long, reaching the major cities of Leningrad and Sevastopol in just three months. The first major Russian city in their path was Minsk, which fell in only six days. In order to make clear his determination to win at all costs, Stalin had the three men in charge of the troops defending Minsk executed for their failure to hold their position.

This is a very timely study of Russia's development into a global energy power from the Russian Revolution to the present day. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russia emerged not only as a key producer but also as one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Russia's transformation into a modern global power was connected to its ability to make use of its vast natural resources and produce energy in increasing quantities.

With a practitioner's eye honed during decades of work on Russian affairs, Thomas Graham deftly traces the evolution of opposing ideas of national purpose that created an inherent tension in relations. Getting Russia Right identifies the blind spots that prevented Washington from seeing Russia as it really is and crafting a policy to advance American interests without provoking an aggressive Russian response.

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.

Kaum einer kennt Russland besser als Michael Thumann, der seit über 25 Jahren aus Osteuropa für die ZEIT berichtet. Er legt nun ein atemberaubend geschriebenes Buch vor, das Russlands Absturz in eine zunehmend totalitäre Diktatur und den Weg in Putins imperialistischen Krieg aus nächster Nähe nachzeichnet. Das Motiv des Diktators und seiner Getreuen: Revanche zu nehmen für die demokratische Öffnung nach 1991 und die vermeintliche Demütigung durch den Westen. Putins Herrschaft radikalisiert sich weiter. Es ist das bedrohlichste Regime der Welt.

In Collisions, Michael Kimmage, a historian and former State Department official who focused on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, offers a wide-angle, historically informed account of the origins of the current Russia-Ukraine war.

National Book Award winner Masha Gessen tells an important story for our era: How the American Dream went wrong for two immigrants, and the nightmare that resulted. On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing three people and wounding more...

In December 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a speech about a conflict that had some leading figures in Britain and France, including Churchill himself, briefly discussing the idea of going to war with the Soviet Union, even though they were already fighting Adolf Hitler. Of course, war makes strange bedfellows, and one year later, Churchill would find himself allied with the Soviet Union against Germany and Finland. It’s an interesting saga, one with roots in imperial Russian history and the desire of the Finns to be free in their northern forests.