Cultureshock! Russia by
CultureShock! is a dynamic and indispensable range of guides covering countless destinations around the world. The series is especially intended for travellers who are looking to truly understand the countries they are visiting and who might even consider residing there. Each title contains invaluable advice for the traveller to adapt seamlessly into the local environment and is packed with useful details on transportation, taxes, accommodation, health, shopping and festivals. Additionally, each book provides concise insights into the history, language, cuisine and business practises of each country, as well as explaining the customs, traditions and social etiquette in a lively and informative style.
It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway by
Russia today is haunted by deeds that have not been examined and words that have been left unsaid. A serious attempt to understand the meaning of the Communist experience has not been undertaken, and millions of victims of Soviet Communism are all but forgotten. In this book David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent and longtime writer on Russia and the Soviet Union, presents a striking new interpretation of Russia's great historical tragedy, locating its source in Russia's failure fully to appreciate the value of the individual in comparison with the objectives of the state. Satter explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society. He shows how it is possible for a government to deny the inherent value of its citizens and for the population to agree, and why so many Russians actually mourn the passing of the Soviet regime that denied them fundamental rights. Through a wide-ranging consideration of attitudes toward the living and the dead, the past and the present, the state and the individual, Satter arrives at a distinctive and important new way of understanding the Russian experience.
Magical Chorus by
From the reign of Tsar Nicholas II to the brutal cult of Stalin to the ebullient, uncertain days of perestroika, nowhere has the inextricable relationship between politics and culture been more starkly illustrated than in twentieth-century Russia. In the first book to fully examine the intricate and often deadly interconnection between Russian rulers and Russian artists, cultural historian Solomon Volkov brings to life the experiences that inspired artists like Tolstoy, Stravinsky, Akhmatova, Nijinsky, Nabokov, and Eisenstein to create some of the greatest masterpieces of our time. Epic in scope and intimate in detail, The Magical Chorus is the definitive account of a remarkable era in Russia's complex cultural life.
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by
Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible is a journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of oligarchs convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, Bohemian theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators, and playboy revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where life is seen as a whirling, glamorous masquerade where identities can be switched and all values are changeable. It is a completely new type of society where nothing is true and everything is possible -- yet it is also home to a new form of authoritarianism, built not on oppression but avarice and temptation. Peter Pomerantsev, ethnically Russian but raised in England, came to Moscow to work in the fast-growing television and film industry. The job took him into every nook and corrupt cranny of the country: from meetings in smoky rooms with propaganda gurus to distant mafia-towns in Siberia. As he becomes more successful in his career, he gets invited to the best parties, becomes a friend to oligarchs and strippers alike, and grows increasingly uneasy as he is drawn into the mechanics of Putin's post-modern dictatorship. Meet Vitaliy, a Mafia boss proudly starring in a film about his own crimes; Zinaida, a Chechen prostitute who parties in Moscow while her sister is drawn towards becoming a Jihadi; and many more. These 21st century Russians grew up among Soviet propaganda they never believed in, became disillusioned with democracy after the fall of communism, and are now filled with a sense of cynicism and enlightenment. Pomerantsev captures the bling effervescence of oil-boom Russia, as well as the steadily deleterious effects of all this flash and cynicism on the country's social fabric. A long-nascent conflict is flaring up in Russia as a new generation of dissidents takes to the streets, determined to defy the Kremlin and fight for a society where beliefs and values actually count for something.
Russia New Fin de SièCle by
This volume investigates Russian culture at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with scholars from Britain, Sweden, Russia, and the United States exploring aspects of culture with regard to one overarching question: What is the impact of the Soviet discourse on contemporary culture. This question comes at a time when Russia is concerned with integrating itself into European arts and culture while enhancing its uniqueness through references to its Soviet past. Thus, contributions investigate the phenomenon of post-Soviet culture and try to define the relationship of contemporary art to the past.
When Pigs Could Fly and Bears Could Dance by
For more than seven decades the circuses enjoyed tremendous popularity in the Soviet Union. How did the circus--an institution that dethroned figures of authority and refused any orderly narrative structure--become such a cultural mainstay in a state known for blunt and didactic messages? Miriam Neirick argues that the variety, flexibility, and indeterminacy of the modern circus accounted for its appeal not only to diverse viewers but also to the Soviet state. In a society where government-legitimating myths underwent periodic revision, the circus proved a supple medium of communication. Between 1919 and 1991, it variously displayed the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution, the beauty of the new Soviet man and woman, the vulnerability of the enemy during World War II, the prosperity of the postwar Soviet household, and the Soviet mission of international peace--all while entertaining the public with the acrobats, elephants, and clowns. With its unique ability to meet and reconcile the demands of both state and society, the Soviet circus became the unlikely darling of Soviet culture and an entertainment whose usefulness and popularity stemmed from its ambiguity.
Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc by
Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc explores the rise of youth as consumers of popular culture and the globalization of popular music in Russia and Eastern Europe. This collection of essays challenges assumptions that Communist leaders and Western-influenced youth cultures were inimically hostile to one another. While initially banning Western cultural trends like jazz and rock-and-roll, Communist leaders accommodated elements of rock and pop music to develop their own socialist popular music. They promoted organized forms of leisure to turn young people away from excesses of style perceived to be Western. Popular song and officially sponsored rock and pop bands formed a socialist beat that young people listened and danced to. Young people attracted to the music and subcultures of the capitalist West still shared the values and behaviors of their peers in Communist youth organizations. Despite problems providing youth with consumer goods, leaders of Soviet bloc states fostered a socialist alternative to the modernity the capitalist West promised. Underground rock musicians thus shared assumptions about culture that Communist leaders had instilled. Still, competing with influences from the capitalist West had its limits. State-sponsored rock festivals and rock bands encouraged a spirit of rebellion among young people. Official perceptions of what constituted culture limited options for accommodating rock and pop music and Western youth cultures. Youth countercultures that originated in the capitalist West, like hippies and punks, challenged the legitimacy of Communist youth organizations and their sponsors. Government media and police organs wound up creating oppositional identities among youth gangs. Failing to provide enough Western cultural goods to provincial cities helped fuel resentment over the Soviet Union’s capital, Moscow, and encourage support for breakaway nationalist movements that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Despite the Cold War, in both the Soviet bloc and in the capitalist West, political elites responded to perceived threats posed by youth cultures and music in similar manners. Young people participated in a global youth culture while expressing their own local views of the world.
Recent History
Between Two Fires: truth, ambition, and compromise in Putin's Russia by
"From a leading journalist in Moscow and a correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin's rule"--
Yaffa introduces us to some of contemporary Russia's most remarkable figures who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise. They understand that their dreams are best-- or only-- realized through varying degrees of cooperation with the Russian government. By showing how citizens shape their lives around the demands of a capricious and frequently repressive state-- as often by choice as under threat of force-- Yaffa offers urgent lessons about the true nature of modern authoritarianism.
Pravda ha ha : true travels to the end of Europe by
Summary: In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. In that euphoric year Rory MacLean travelled from Berlin to Moscow, exploring lands that were - for most Brits and Americans - part of the forgotten half of Europe. Thirty years on, MacLean traces his original journey backwards, across countries confronting old ghosts and new fears: from revanchist Russia, through Ukraine's bloodlands, into illiberal Hungary, and then Poland, Germany and the UK. Along the way he shoulders an AK-47 to go hunting with Moscow's chicken Tsar, plays video games in St Petersburg with a cyber-hacker who cracked the US election, drops by the Che Guevara High School of Political Leadership in a non-existent nowhereland and meets the Warsaw doctor who tried to stop a march of 70,000 nationalists. Finally, on the shores of Lake Geneva, he waits patiently to chat with Mikhail Gorbachev. As Europe sleepwalks into a perilous new age, MacLean explores how opportunists - both within and outside of Russia, from Putin to Home Counties populists - have made a joke of truth, exploiting refugees and the dispossessed, and examines the veracity of historical narrative from reportage to fiction and fake news. He asks what happened to the optimism of 1989 and, in the shadow of Brexit, chronicles the collapse of the European dream.
A Brief History of Russia by
The history of Russia, the world's largest nation—from its early beginnings in the ninth century when Rurik, a Varangian king, established the first Russian state near Kiev, to the current presidency of Vladimir Putin—is extensive and fascinating.
Detailing the social, economic, and political changes and crises that the people of Russia have had to endure, A Brief History of Russia provides a comprehensive and accessible account of this vast country’s history. A chronology, bibliography, suggested reading, and other helpful features enrich this invaluable book.
The First Epoch by
Modern Russian literature has two "first" epochs: secular literature's rapid rise in the eighteenth century and Alexander Pushkin's Golden Age in the early nineteenth. In the shadow of the latter, Russia's eighteenth-century culture was relegated to an obscurity hardly befitting its actually radical legacy. And yet the eighteenth century maintains an undeniable hold on the Russian historical imagination to this day. Luba Golburt's book is the first to document this paradox. In formulating its self-image, the culture of the Pushkin era and after wrestled far more with the meaning of the eighteenth century, Golburt argues, than is commonly appreciated. Why did nineteenth-century Russians put the eighteenth century so quickly behind them? How does a meaningful present become a seemingly meaningless past? Interpreting texts by Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Pushkin, Viazemsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and others, Golburt finds surprising answers, in the process innovatively analyzing the rise of periodization and epochal consciousness, the formation of canon, and the writing of literary history. Winner, Marc Raeff Book Prize, Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies Association Winner, Heldt Prize for the Best Book by a Woman in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian Studies, Association for Women in Slavic Studies Winner, Best Book in Literary and Cultural Studies, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages
Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence by
This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence is the only volume that lays out how Russian and Soviet intelligence works and how its operations have impacted Russian history. It covers Russian intelligence from the imperial period to the present focusing in greatest detail on Cold War espionage cases and the Putin-era intelligence community.
Russia by
The nation of Russia - its history, culture, economy, domestic politics, and foreign relations - is the focus of this title. Russia paints a full portrait of the complex nation, from the founding of Kievan Rus'-the medieval kingdom that would become Russia- through czarist rule, revolution, civil war, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet era. Also discussed is how the country and its people have adapted to the post-Soviet era and the divisions that have emerged since the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Soviet Union by
Almost twenty years after the Soviet Unions' end, what are we to make of its existence? Was it a heroic experiment, an unmitigated disaster, or a viable if flawed response to the modern world?Taking a fresh approach to the study of the Soviet Union, this Very Short Introduction blends political history with an investigation into the society and culture at the time. Stephen Lovell examines aspects of patriotism, political violence, poverty, and ideology; and provides answers to some of the big questions about the Soviet experience.
Russian Revolution
October by
Acclaimed fantasy author China Mieville plunges us into the year the world was turned upside down The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history. In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later, it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions? This is the story of the extraordinary months between those upheavals, in February and October, of the forces and individuals who made 1917 so epochal a year, of their intrigues, negotiations, conflicts and catastrophes. From familiar names like Lenin and Trotsky to their opponents Kornilov and Kerensky; from the byzantine squabbles of urban activists to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire; from the revolutionary railroad Sublime to the ciphers and static of coup by telegram; from grand sweep to forgotten detail. Historians have debated the revolution for a hundred years, its portents and possibilities: the mass of literature can be daunting. But here is a book for those new to the events, told not only in their historical import but in all their passion and drama and strangeness. Because as well as a political event of profound and ongoing consequence, Mieville reveals the Russian Revolution as a breathtaking story.
The Russian Revolution, 1917-1945 by
For students and scholars of the Russian Revolution, there are pivotal questions that merit careful, comprehensive consideration: why did the Tsarist regime unravel in revolution? Why did the Bolsheviks come to power rather than some other party? How did Stalin--rather than a more popular and respected leader--win the mantle of Lenin and gain leadership of the ruling party? How should Stalin's regime be judged by subsequent generations of Russians, and in the context of world history? In Russian Revolution, 1917-1945, author Anthony D'Agostino discusses all these questions. His suggestions for further reading range over decades of writing on Soviet subjects and cite classics, revisionist works, curiosities, and studies done during and since the Gorbachev years. The book explores topics including the modernization of the Tsarist Russian state, World War I, the revolutionary project of Soviet Communism, the nationalist transformation of Soviet Communism under international pressures, the "Big Drive" to modernize Russia by force, and the external threat of fascism.
Chernobyl by
Journalist Adam Higginbotham's definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster--and a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century's greatest disasters.
Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering history's worst nuclear disaster. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute.
Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham has written a harrowing and compelling narrative which brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a masterful nonfiction thriller, and the definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth.
Midnight in Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of one of the great disasters of the twentieth century, of human resilience and ingenuity, and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will--lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary.
Letters from Vladivostok, 1894-1930 by
In 1894, Eleanor L. Pray left her New England home to move to Vladivostok in the Russian Far East with her husband, a merchant apprentice. Over the next thirty-six years--from the time of Tsar Alexander III to the early years of Stalin's rule--she wrote over 2,000 letters chronicling her family life and the tumultuous social and political events she witnessed. Vladivostok, 5,600 miles east of Moscow, was shaped by a rich intersection of European and Asian cultures, and Pray's witty and observant writing paints a vivid picture of the city and its denizens during a period of momentous social change. The book offers highlights from Pray's letters along with illuminating historical and biographical information."
The New Nobility by
In The New Nobility, two courageous Russian investigative journalists open up the closed and murky world of the Russian Federal Security Service. While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse. The security services have played a central and often mysteriousrole at key turning points in Russia during these tumultuous years: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya and the Beslan massacre. The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But what is clear is that after the chaotic 1990s, when they were sidelined, they have made a remarkable return to power, abetted by their most famous alumnus, Putin.
The Next Generation in Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan by
In the past twenty years, the countries that used to make up the former Soviet Union have seen plenty of change. There have been revolutions, youth-led protest movements, and other forms of incredible political upheaval. At the center of all of this were young leaders fighting to be heard and clamoring for change. In Nadia Diuk's meticulously researched and insightful book. The Next Generation in Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan, she shows how those young leaders have risen up and become a part of the new political system. Using unique public opinion polling data and personal interviews, she explores how the new generation of leaders is shaping the political system and how the young people of today continue to exhort pressure for reform. This book is important to anyone interested in Eastern European studies, political transitions, protest movements, or youth and politics.
Not by Bread Alone by
Since its independence in 1991, Russia has struggled with the growing pains of defining its role in international politics. After Vladimir Putin ascended to power in 2000, the country undertook grandiose foreign policy projects in an attempt to delineate its place among the world’s superpowers. With this in mind, Robert Nalbandov examines the milestones of Russia’s international relations since the turn of the twenty-first century. He focuses on the specific goals, engagement practices, and tools used by Putin’s administration to promote Russia’s vital national and strategic interests in specific geographic locations. His findings illuminate Putin’s foreign policy objective of reinstituting Russian global strategic dominance. Nalbandov argues that identity-based politics have dominated Putin’s tenure and that Russia’s east/west split is reflected in Asian-European politics. Nalbandov’s analysis shows that unchecked domestic power, an almost exclusive application of hard power, and determined ambition for unabridged global influence and a defined place as a world superpower are the keys to Putin’s Russia.
The Road to Terror by
This documentary collection, continuing Yale's pioneering Annals of Communism series, tackles questions surrounding the paroxysm of the purges in 1937^-38. One thing Stalin had was a long memory, and the hitherto mysterious Riutin Platform (the contents here at last seeing the light) must have rankled him. The platform was a 1932 call by Bolshevik veterans to remove him. The course culminating in the extirpation of all opposition was complex, and the authors' commentary underscores that a politics of sorts continued up to the point when full-blown terror was unleashed, a politics that pitted the central apparatus of Stalin and his associates in Moscow against the regional party bosses. The authors track one such Stalinist's fate in detail, as they do that of Bukharin, Stalin's opponent in the 1920s. The 200 documents here will astonish anyone familiar with the era, yet it is a specialized tome whose public library appeal could be checked against the circulation stats for the indubitably popular Who Killed Kirov? by Amy Knight. IGilbert Taylor
Russia by
This vital volume explores Russia's role in international politics, and whether Russia is moving toward a democracy. Readers will analyze the relationship the West should foster with Russia, and how Russian culture is changing. The viewpoints are selected from a wide range of highly respected and often hard-to-find sources and publications. By choosing from such diverse sources including both popular and unpopular views, readers are exposed to many sides of a debate, which promotes issue awareness as well as critical thinking.
The Unquiet Ghost by
Although some twenty million people died during Stalin's reign of terror, only with the advent of glasnost did Russians begin to confront their memories of that time. In 1991, Adam Hochschild spent nearly six months in Russia talking to gulag survivors, retired concentration camp guards, and countless others. The result is a riveting evocation of a country still haunted by the ghost of Stalin.
Gorbachev by
When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR was one of the world's two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system's gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America's arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev's unique character that, by Gorbachev's own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced?
Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman's intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev's remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.
Lenin by
Drawing on new research, including the diaries, memoirs, and personal letters of both Lenin and his friends, Victor Sebestyen's biography--the first in English in nearly two decades--is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the twentieth century, but a portrait of Lenin the man."-- "Victor Sebestyen's riveting biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin--the first major biography in English in nearly two decades--is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the twentieth century but also a fascinating portrait of Lenin the man. Brought up in comfort and with a passion for hunting and fishing, chess, and the English classics, Lenin was radicalized after the execution of his brother in 1887. Sebestyen traces the story from Lenin's early years to his long exile in Europe and return to Petrograd in 1917 to lead the first Communist revolution in history. Uniquely, Sebestyen has discovered that throughout Lenin's life his closest relationships were with his mother, his sisters, his wife, and his mistress. The long-suppressed story told here of the love triangle that Lenin had with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and his beautiful, married mistress and comrade, Inessa Armand, reveals a more complicated character than that of the coldly one-dimensional leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. With Lenin's personal papers and those of other leading political figures now available, Sebestyen gives us new details that bring to life the dramatic and gripping story of how Lenin seized power in a coup and ran his revolutionary state. The product of a violent, tyrannical, and corrupt Russia, he chillingly authorized the deaths of thousands of people and created a system based on the idea that political terror against opponents was justified for a greater ideal. An old comrade who had once admired him said that Lenin "desired the good ... but created evil." This included his invention of Stalin, who would take Lenin's system of the gulag and the secret police to horrifying new heights. In Lenin, Victor Sebestyen has written a brilliant portrait of this dictator as a complex and ruthless figure, and he also brings to light important new revelations about the Russian Revolution, a pivotal point in modern history."
Vladimir Putin
All the Kremlin's Men by
"Charting the transformation of Vladimir Putin from a passionate fan of the West and a liberal reformer into a hurt and introverted outcast, All the Kremlin's Men is a historical detective story, full of intrigue and conspiracy. This is the story of the political battles that have taken place in the court of Vladimir Putin since his rise to power, and a chronicle of friendship and hatred between the Russian leader and his foreign partners and opponents. Russia's most prominent independent journalist Mikhail Zygar has had unprecedented access to people who are either currently or were formerly allied with Putin, but have only now agreed to reveal their impressions of the powerful president and his circle of power. Zygar's in-depth interviews include Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, former Kremlin chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov, former presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, former presidents of Ukraine and Georgia Viktor Yushchenko and Mikhail Saakashvili, and many other key Russian and Western politicians and diplomats. For many people from Putin's closest circle, it was the first time they could tell their stories. Each chapter has a main character, who gives an insight into the origins of Vladimir Putin's transformation. Cumulatively, All the Kremlin's Men explains to the English-speaking audience what has happened to Russia, what the role of the West is in its destiny, and how this destiny could play out going forward. It is a delicious portrait of the strangeness of modern Russia, a country swirling with intrigue and paranoia, peppered with fateful missteps and confusion, and the brooding, volatile, magnificently unpredictable figure of Vladimir Putin"-- "Charting the transformation of Vladimir Putin from a passionate fan of the West and a liberal reformer into a hurt and introverted outcast, All the Kremlin's Men is a historical detective story, full of intrigue and conspiracy. This is the story of the political battles that have taken place in the court of Vladimir Putin since his rise to power, and a chronicle of friendship and hatred between the Russian leader and his foreign partners and opponents. Russia's most prominent independent journalist Mikhail Zygar has had unprecedented access to people who are either currently or were formerly allied with Putin, but have only now agreed to reveal their impressions of the powerful president and his circle of power. Zygar's in-depth interviews include Putin's press secretary, Deputy Prime Minister, former finance minister, former Kremlin chief of staff, former mayor of Moscow, former presidential candidate, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, former presidents of Ukraine and Georgia Viktor Yushchenko and Mikhail Saakashvili, and many other key Russian and Western politicians and diplomats. For many people from Putin's closest circle, it was the first time they could tell their stories. Each chapter has a main character, who gives an insight into the origins of Vladimir Putin's transformation. Cumulatively, All the Kremlin's Men explains to the English-speaking audience what has happened to Russia, what the role of the West is in its destiny, and how this destiny could play out going forward. It is a delicious portrait of the strangeness of modern Russia, a country swirling with intrigue and paranoia, peppered with fateful missteps and confusion, and the brooding, volatile, magnificently unpredictable figure of Vladimir Putin"--
Putin Country by
"Portrait of the mid-size city of Chelyabinsk and how it is faring in the new Russia"-- "A revealing look into the lives of ordinary Russians. More than twenty years ago, the longtime NPR correspondent Anne Garrels began to visit the region of Chelyabinsk, an aging military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow that is home to the Russian nuclear program. Her goal was to chart the social and political aftershocks of the USSR's collapse. On her trips to an area once closed to the West, Garrels discovered a populace for whom the new democratic freedoms were as traumatic as they were delightful. The region suffered a severe economic crisis in the early 1990s, and the next twenty years would only bring more turmoil as well as a growing identity crisis and antagonism toward foreigners. The city of Chelyabinsk became richer and more cosmopolitan, even as corruption and intolerance grew more entrenched. In Putin Country, Garrels crafts a necessary portrait of the nation's heartland. We meet upwardly mobile professionals, impassioned activists, and ostentatious mafiosi. We discover surprising subcultures, such as a vibrant underground gay community and a group of determined evangelicals. And we watch doctors and teachers try to cope with a corrupt system. Drawing on these encounters, Garrels explains why Vladimir Putin commands the loyalty of so many Russians, even those who decry the abuses of power they encounter from day to day. Her portrait of Russia's silent majority is both essential and engaging reading at a time when Cold War tensions are resurgent"--From publisher's online catalog.
The Glory of the Kirov by
From the early days of this century, the Maryinsky Ballet, later the Kirov, dazzled audiences with the beauty of the dance. Five years research in Russia's archives has unearthed fascinating footage, much of it never before available in the West, of many of the company's great dancers.
Peter the Great : The Tyrant Reformer (Biography) by
Towering over his countrymen, literally and figuratively, he virtually single-handedly modernized his immense nation. From 1696 to 1725, he ruled Russia with an iron hand, and his life and legacy have captivated generation after generation ever since.
Russia's War, Blood Upon the Snow: The History of the Stalin Years (1924-1953) by
Provides an in-depth account of the country's history from 1924-53, the period of Stalin's rule. Told in ten parts, this astonishing documentary provides the real-life pictures, the witnesses, the documents, and the footage, and gives a remarkable insight into what led to the death of sixty-five million Soviets during Stalin's reign of terror.
Vladimir Lenin by
Biography profiles the fanatical philosopher who was catapulted to power by an incredible combination of passion, luck and unlikely alliances.
Russian Avant-Garde by
The Russian Avant-garde was born at the turn of the 20th century in pre-revolutionary Russia. The intellectual and cultural turmoil had then reached a peak and provided fertile soil for the formation of the movement. For many artists influenced by European art, the movement represented a way of liberating themselves from the social and aesthetic constraints of the past. It was these Avant-garde artists who, through their immense creativity, gave birth to abstract art, thereby elevating Russian culture to a modern level. Such painters as Kandinsky, Malevich, Goncharova, Larionov, and Tatlin, to name but a few, had a definitive impact on 20th-century art.
Russian Literature by 
The Portable Nineteenth-Century Russian Reader by
Includes stories by Chekhov, Gorky, Bunin, Zamyatin, Babel, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, and Voinovich; excerpts from Andrei Bely's Petersburg, Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, and Sasha Sokolov's A School for Fools, as well as the complete text of Yuri Olesha's 1927 masterpiece Envy; and poetry by Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, and Osip Mandelstam.
The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader by
Gathers writings by Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Pasternak, Babel, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, and Sokolov
