Kings of the Kremlin

Kings of the Kremlin PDF Author: Sol Shulman
Publisher: Potomac Books
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
"For 850 years the walls of Moscow's Kremlin have witnessed the 'reigns' of a kaleidoscope of characters - the weird and wonderful, the cruel, criminal and conniving, the stealthy, wealthy and wise, the eccentrics, the extroverts and the extraordinary. If it is true that we achieve the best understanding of history by studying its personalities, then the reader will gain a fine knowledge of Russia's past from Sol Shulman's profiles of its leaders. From the truly terrible Ivan and the great Peter to the more recent, with the dour Lenin, the ruthless Stalin, the ambitious Gorbachev and the cavalier Yeltsin, all the kings of the Kremlin have had distinctive traits." "The author's style is both light and thorough with quotes validating an already lively and informative text. He offers sufficient background data to enable his subjects to be placed in context but, in the main, concentrates on the men themselves, how they reached the top position, how they influenced the national strategy, how they changed the Kremlin and how it changed them." "Those seeking new insights into Russia and its leaders will gain much from this account whilst historians and students will relish the opportunity to be led through this time-chart of Russian rule by a native of that land."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Kings of the Kremlin

Kings of the Kremlin PDF Author: Sol Shulman
Publisher: Potomac Books
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
"For 850 years the walls of Moscow's Kremlin have witnessed the 'reigns' of a kaleidoscope of characters - the weird and wonderful, the cruel, criminal and conniving, the stealthy, wealthy and wise, the eccentrics, the extroverts and the extraordinary. If it is true that we achieve the best understanding of history by studying its personalities, then the reader will gain a fine knowledge of Russia's past from Sol Shulman's profiles of its leaders. From the truly terrible Ivan and the great Peter to the more recent, with the dour Lenin, the ruthless Stalin, the ambitious Gorbachev and the cavalier Yeltsin, all the kings of the Kremlin have had distinctive traits." "The author's style is both light and thorough with quotes validating an already lively and informative text. He offers sufficient background data to enable his subjects to be placed in context but, in the main, concentrates on the men themselves, how they reached the top position, how they influenced the national strategy, how they changed the Kremlin and how it changed them." "Those seeking new insights into Russia and its leaders will gain much from this account whilst historians and students will relish the opportunity to be led through this time-chart of Russian rule by a native of that land."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

All the Kremlin's Men

All the Kremlin's Men PDF Author: Mikhail Zygar
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1610397398
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
"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..."--

The Red Mirror

The Red Mirror PDF Author: Gulnaz Sharafutdinova
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197502938
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The return of the 'Soviet' or the 'national' in Putin's Russia? -- The white knight and the red queen : blinded by love -- Shared mental models of the late soviet period -- The new Russian identity and the burden of the Soviet past -- Constructing the collective trauma of the -- MMM for VVP : building the modern media machine -- Le cirque politique a la russe : political talk shows and public opinion leaders in Russia -- Searching for a new mirror : on human and collective dignity in Russia.

Warrior Kings of Sweden

Warrior Kings of Sweden PDF Author: Gary Dean Peterson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476604118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
For a hundred years, Sweden was the international military power of Northern Europe, in control of the entire Baltic region and among the first to colonize in Africa and America. But the history of Sweden, Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, and Prussia is largely neglected in American classrooms and scholarship. This book fills a large void in European history as it is generally presented to the American student and reader. This narrative covers Sweden's Age of Greatness (1632-1718) and the warrior-kings who governed that age. It chronologically describes the political and religious events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and reveals how these events produced the climate for European global expansion, including the exploration and colonization of the New World. The story traces history through the reigns of Sweden's ambitious rulers, beginning with the presumably Swedish Goths who ravaged the Roman Empire in the 2nd century CE and continuing through the end of the empire in the early eighteenth century. A thorough epilogue documents the cultural flowering in the arts and sciences that commenced in the Age of Greatness and continued to blossom in the centuries that followed. This final section of the book pays special attention to the personalities that drove Sweden's far-reaching cultural progress.

Godfather of the Kremlin

Godfather of the Kremlin PDF Author: Paul Klebnikov
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156013307
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Chronicles the life of the head of one of Moscow's gangster families, who financed the reelection of Boris Yeltsin and became on of his key advisors.

George, Nicholas and Wilhelm

George, Nicholas and Wilhelm PDF Author: Miranda Carter
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 1400043638
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
In the years before World War I, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Tsar Nicholas II. Carter uses the cousins' correspondence and a host of historical sources to tell their tragicomic stories.

The Alhambra and the Kremlin

The Alhambra and the Kremlin PDF Author: Samuel Irenæus Prime
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description


The Kremlin's Confidant

The Kremlin's Confidant PDF Author: David S Tonge
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399059424
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Martin Packard is an extraordinary man who has led an extraordinary life. An idealist and a man of liberal instincts, his enthusiasms resulted in him having an inside track in several major events of recent decades, including the coup and bloody dictatorship in Greece and the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Easy going, warm and generous with his friendship, his life story is a ripping read. – Peter Murtagh, journalist and author of The Rape of Greece (Simon & Schuster, London, 1994) His story needed telling. – Peter Preston, editor of The Guardian 1975-1995 This gripping biography is a classic tale of fact being stranger than fiction. Martin Packard was an incurable romantic who thought he could do ethical business in the chaos of Gorbachev's perestroika Russia, but was constantly thwarted by more ruthless rivals or incompetent partners. He was a Don Quixote of the Cold War. His story is a fascinating, alternative and very personal view on the confrontations of his times, from the cynical US and UK policies towards Greece and Cyprus, to the chaotic collapse of the USSR. His tale suggests that cock-up, not conspiracy, is usually the most plausible explanation of history. - Quentin Peel, former Moscow Correspondent and Foreign Editor of the Financial Times. Wonderful. They don’t make men like that anymore. - Helena Smith, Correspondent of The Guardian for Greece and Cyprus. This biography describes how a British naval officer became a Kremlin favorite and CIA target as Gorbachev’s Kremlin decided to open the Soviet economy to the west. In 1985, Moscow reached out to Martin Packard, a retired British naval commander. He was promised unrivalled access to the hidden riches of the Soviet Empire with a cornucopia spread before him as he traveled this long closed land from the Baltic to the Bering Sea. A harbinger of the technology and foreign exchange needed to halt the Soviet decline, to some Russians he was the most important foreign businessman in the Soviet Union. But, as the Communist Party imploded, this previously-undescribed offer turned into a Faustian bargain, and his life became a captivating saga of rags-to-riches-to-rags. This book describes his rise, the details of his freelancing for Gorbachev – and his fall. A former intelligence analyst at the British Mediterranean command in Malta, Packard’s role as Scarlet Pimpernel of the Greek Colonels saw him forced out of the Royal Navy. He then became one of the largest jeans manufacturers in Europe. In this capacity, the insiders of Gorbachev’s perestroika identified him to help them lift the life of the Soviet peoples, an unlikely partnership of the Kremlin and a quintessential Briton, a scion of Empire, Church and Navy, but a non-conformist in every sense. It is a political tale, where Packard clashes with the British Foreign Office and the CIA in Cyprus and the Colonels’ Greece. Forced out of the Navy, he heads the English Cell of the Greek resistance, shipping printing presses, passports and petards across Europe to Athens. He then becomes an intimate of the wayward but brilliant Dom Mintoff and survives a mysterious poison attempt by ‘Erica’ at a Moscow airport. It is also a deeply human tale, of a charismatic figure who rose so high, mingled with the mighty of East and West, and then lost it all.

Pearson's Magazine

Pearson's Magazine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 752

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Book Description


Russians

Russians PDF Author: Gregory Feifer
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 1455509655
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
From former NPR Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer comes an incisive portrait that draws on vivid personal stories to portray the forces that have shaped the Russian character for centuries-and continue to do so today. Russians explores the seeming paradoxes of life in Russia by unraveling the nature of its people: what is it in their history, their desires, and their conception of themselves that makes them baffling to the West? Using the insights of his decade as a journalist in Russia, Feifer corrects pervasive misconceptions by showing that much of what appears inexplicable about the country is logical when seen from the inside. He gets to the heart of why the world's leading energy producer continues to exasperate many in the international community. And he makes clear why President Vladimir Putin remains popular even as the gap widens between the super-rich and the great majority of poor. Traversing the world's largest country from the violent North Caucasus to Arctic Siberia, Feifer conducted hundreds of intimate conversations about everything from sex and vodka to Russia's complex relationship with the world. From fabulously wealthy oligarchs to the destitute elderly babushki who beg in Moscow's streets, he tells the story of a society bursting with vitality under a leadership rooted in tradition and often on the edge of collapse despite its authoritarian power. Feifer also draws on formative experiences in Russia's past and illustrative workings of its culture to shed much-needed light on the purposely hidden functioning of its society before, during, and after communism. Woven throughout is an intimate, first-person account of his family history, from his Russian mother's coming of age among Moscow's bohemian artistic elite to his American father's harrowing vodka-fueled run-ins with the KGB. What emerges is a rare portrait of a unique land of extremes whose forbidding geography, merciless climate, and crushing corruption has nevertheless produced some of the world's greatest art and some of its most remarkable scientific advances. Russians is an expertly observed, gripping profile of a people who will continue challenging the West for the foreseeable future.