Soviet Union History

At 01:23:40 on April 26th 1986, Alexander Akimov pressed the emergency shutdown button at Chernobyl's fourth nuclear reactor. It was an act that forced the permanent evacuation of a city, killed thousands, and crippled the Soviet Union. The event spawned decades of conflicting, exaggerated, and inaccurate stories.

The best-selling author of Bringing Down the House (63 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and the basis for the hit movie 21) and The Accidental Billionaires (the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network) delivers an epic drama of wealth, rivalry, and betrayal among megawealthy Russian oligarchs - and its international repercussions.

Since its publication in 2003, the first edition of Black Garden has become the definitive study of how Armenia and Azerbaijan, two southern Soviet republics, were pulled into a conflict that helped bring them to independence, spell the end the Soviet Union, and plunge a region of great strategic importance into a decade of turmoil. This important volume is both a careful reconstruction of the history of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict since 1988 and on-the-spot reporting of the convoluted aftermath.

In 1979, alarmed Soviet leaders watched the growing civil war in Afghanistan with trepidation. Russia’s neighbor had been a close ally for many years, acting as a buffer between Russia and British India, proving vital in the “Great Game” between the two empires. Various coups had, by this point, led to a Moscow-friendly government in Kabul, but things were not playing out as the Soviets had hoped.

On a sunny September day in 1931, Soviet spy Stanislav Shumovsky walked down the gangplank of the SS Europa and into New York, concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students. Joseph Stalin had sent him to acquire American secrets to help close the USSR’s yawning technology gap. In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the listener on a journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation, piecing together every aspect of Shumovsky’s life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives.

This book explores the dramatic difference between the Russian and US approach to warfare, which manifests itself across the whole spectrum of activities from art and the economy to the respective national cultures; illustrates the fact that Russian economic, military, and cultural realities and power are no longer what American "elites" think they are by addressing Russia's new and elevated capacities in the areas of traditional warfare, as well as cyberwarfare and space; and studies several ways in-depth in which the US can simply stumble into conflict with Russia and what must be done to avoid it.

All the Kremlin's Men is a gripping narrative of an accidental king and a court out of control. Based on an unprecedented series of interviews with Vladimir Putin's inner circle, this book presents a radically different view of power and politics in Russia. The image of Putin as a strongman is dissolved. In its place is a weary figurehead buffeted - if not controlled - by the men who at once advise and deceive him. The regional governors and bureaucratic leaders are immovable objects, far more powerful in their fiefdoms than the president himself.

Dark Shadows is a compelling portrait of Kazakhstan, a country that is little known in the West. Strategically located in the heart of Central Asia, sandwiched between Vladimir Putin's Russia, its former colonial ruler, and Xi Jinping's China, this vast oil-rich state is carving out its place in the world as it contends with its own complex past and present. Journalist Joanna Lillis paints a vibrant picture of this emerging nation through vivid reportage based on seventeen years of on-the-ground coverage.

As World War II comes to a close, the United States and the Soviet Union emerge as the two greatest world powers on extreme opposites of the political spectrum. After the United States showed its hand with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the Soviets refuse to be left behind. With communism sweeping the globe, the two nations begin a neck-and-neck competition to build even more destructive bombs and conquer the Space Race. In their battle for dominance, spy planes fly above, armed submarines swim deep below, and undercover agents meet in the dead of night.

War in Korea! November 1950... Red China launches a full-scale attack to help North Korea crush South Korea and conquer the peninsula. Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union joins the fight by creating a “false flag” event to shift world opinion about America’s “police action,” alienate her allies, and ultimately trigger World War Three. But when Mao Tse-tung’s trusted interpreter, Marya Zhōu-Rostov, discovers her hometown on the Yalu River is ground zero for the “event,” she teams up with Flyboy and a CIA paramilitary team, risking life and limb to keep Stalin’s false flag from ...

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.

Enter Averell Harriman: a railroad magnate and, at the start of the war, the fourth-richest man in America. At Roosevelt’s behest, he traveled to Britain to serve as a liaison between the president and Churchill and to spearhead what became known as the Harriman Mission. Together with his fashionable young daughter Kathy, an unforgettable cast of British diplomats, and Churchill himself, he would eventually manage to wrangle Stalin into the partnership the Allies needed to defeat Hitler.

Drawing on a wealth of previously classified intelligence archives, in multiple countries and languages, it reveals how Western and Eastern governments used spies, sabotage, subversion, and information warfare to battle each other during the conflict that dominated the twentieth century. Far from being a closed historical chapter, however, it shows that conflict's ghosts are still alive.

The sleepy village of Suomassalmi, Pekka’s hometown, is key to controlling Central Finland. The otherwise unremarkable village, home to several lumber mills sits astride a pivotal crossroads. Critical to the Soviet invasion plan, the town is the first step on the road to Oulu and cutting Finland in half. With the 163rd Rifle Division already in possession of the town, the situation for Finland is grim. Attempting to seal Finland’s fate, the Soviet Union has dispatched the elite 44th Motorized Rifle Division. These fresh reinforcements, ten thousand strong, are moving to link up with the...

In today’s chaotic world, where the multiplication of information sources creates competing narratives, credibility is the key to winning the war of ideas. This is the reason why governments and corporations resort to astroturfing - creation of ostensibly grassroots movements set up to advance political agendas and commercial campaigns. The democratization of information and polarization of politics offer a perfect storm.

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....

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.

CNN’s chief national security correspondent reveals the invisible fronts of 21st-century warfare and identifies the ongoing battles being waged - often without the public’s full knowledge - from disinformation campaigns to advanced satellite weaponry.

It is June 1936. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) has finally been granted a visa for asylum in Norway, having been banned first from living in Paris, and then the whole of France. With him comes the draft of The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, which is completed and sent to the publishers on the 4th of August. The book, published by Faber in 1937, is considered to be Trotsky’s major work on Stalinism.

This book is Khodorkovsky's account of what is happening in Russia today and what could happen in the future. Putin will not last forever: sooner or later, there will be a post-Putin era. But Russia's history has been deeply shaped by an autocratic trap: a revolution against an autocracy has produced another autocracy, followed by another revolution and another autocracy, and so on. If Russia is to find its place as a constructive partner in a global community of civilized nations, then it has to escape this vicious cycle.