Author: Vladimir N. Brovkin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000985024
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
This book integrates Soviet and post-Soviet Russian history into a coherent whole by focusing on the culture, role models, habits and behavior patterns that provide continuity between various political regimes, systems, and rulers from Vladimir Lenin to Vladimir Putin. The unifying theme of all these periods is the central question of identity – how the Russians have defined themselves, their country, and their values. Why did the Bolsheviks try to erase any trace of Old Russia and with what did they try to replace it? Why did Stalin wipe out the kulaks and the old Bolsheviks? What were the political consequences of the Great Patriotic War on the Russians as people? When post-Stalin Russia slowly weakened and gave way to the humanism and Westernization that led to the collapse of the Soviet system, why did the 1990s generate a resurgence of anti-western nationalism? And how to explain the slow and steady break with the West under President Putin? This will be a core textbook for undergraduate and graduate students of Russian and European history, and a valuable text for all those interested in how the Russian past influenced and shaped current politics, and in the international East–West divide in particular.
Author: Robert Service
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1509883029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
In Kremlin Winter, Robert Service, acclaimed biographer of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky and one of the finest historians of modern Russia, brings his deep understanding of that country to bear on the man who leads it. 'One of our most accomplished, erudite and prolific historians of modern Russia.' – Rodric Braithwaite, New Statesman Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics since Boris Yeltsin relinquished the presidency in his favour in May 2000. He served two terms as president, before himself relinquishing the post to his prime minister, Dimitri Medvedev, only to return to presidential power for a third time in 2012. Putin’s rule, whether as president or prime minister, has been marked by a steady increase in domestic repression and international assertiveness. Despite this, there have been signs of liberal growth and Putin – and Russia – now faces a far from certain future. Robert Service reveals a premier who cannot take his supremacy for granted, yet is determined to impose his will not only on his closest associates but on society at large. Kremlin Winter is a riveting insight into power politics as Russia faces a blizzard of difficulties both at home and abroad. 'A masterful portrait of Putin and Russia' – Jack Coleman, Daily Telegraph
Author: Michel Eltchaninoff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849049335
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
Does Vladimir Putin deserve his reputation as a modern Machiavelli? Is he really a great strategic thinker? And where does he get his ideas?
Author: Barnes Carr
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643133993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
It remains the most audacious spy plot in American history—a bold and extremely dangerous operation to invade Russia, defeat the Red Army, and mount a coup in Moscow against Soviet dictator Vladimir Ilich Lenin. After that, leaders in Washington, Paris, and London aimed to install their own Allied-friendly dictator in Moscow as a means to get Russia back into the war effort against Germany. The Lenin Plot had the “entire approval” of President Woodrow Wilson. As he ordered a military invasion of Russia, he gave the American ambassador, the U.S. Consul General in Moscow, and other State Department operatives a free hand to pursue their covert action against Lenin. The result was thousands of deaths, both military and civilian, on both sides. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the true beginning of the Cold War, The Lenin Plot tells the shocking story of this untold episode in American history in fascinating and striking detail.
Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096603
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
In the fall of 1961, KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky defected to West Germany. After spilling his secrets to the CIA, Stashinsky was put on trial in what would be the most publicized assassination case of the entire Cold War. The publicity stirred up by the Stashinsky case forced the KGB to change its modus operandi abroad and helped end the career of Aleksandr Shelepin, one of the most ambitious and dangerous Soviet leaders. Stashinsky's testimony, implicating the Kremlin rulers in political assassinations carried out abroad, shook the world of international politics. Stashinsky's story would inspire films, plays, and books-including Ian Fleming's last James Bond novel, The Man with the Golden Gun. A thrilling tale of Soviet spy craft, complete with exploding parcels, elaborately staged coverups, double agents, and double crosses, The Man with the Poison Gun offers unparalleled insight into the shadowy world of Cold War espionage.
Author: Peter Baker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743281799
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 475
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Book Description
In the tradition of Hedrick Smith's The Russians, Robert G. Kaiser's Russia: The People and the Power, and David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb comes an eloquent and eye-opening chronicle of Vladimir Putin's Russia, from this generation's leading Moscow correspondents. With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia launched itself on a fitful transition to Western-style democracy. But a decade later, Boris Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, a childhood hooligan turned KGB officer who rose from nowhere determined to restore the order of the Soviet past, resolved to bring an end to the revolution. Kremlin Rising goes behind the scenes of contemporary Russia to reveal the culmination of Project Putin, the secret plot to reconsolidate power in the Kremlin. During their four years as Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser witnessed firsthand the methodical campaign to reverse the post-Soviet revolution and transform Russia back into an authoritarian state. Their gripping narrative moves from the unlikely rise of Putin through the key moments of his tenure that re-centralized power into his hands, from his decision to take over Russia's only independent television network to the Moscow theater siege of 2002 to the "managed democracy" elections of 2003 and 2004 to the horrific slaughter of Beslan's schoolchildren in 2004, recounting a four-year period that has changed the direction of modern Russia. But the authors also go beyond the politics to draw a moving and vivid portrait of the Russian people they encountered -- both those who have prospered and those barely surviving -- and show how the political flux has shaped individual lives. Opening a window to a country on the brink, where behind the gleaming new shopping malls all things Soviet are chic again and even high school students wonder if Lenin was right after all, Kremlin Rising features the personal stories of Russians at all levels of society, including frightened army deserters, an imprisoned oil billionaire, Chechen villagers, a trendy Moscow restaurant king, a reluctant underwear salesman, and anguished AIDS patients in Siberia. With shrewd reporting and unprecedented access to Putin's insiders, Kremlin Rising offers both unsettling new revelations about Russia's leader and a compelling inside look at life in the land that he is building. As the first major book on Russia in years, it is an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of the country and promises to shape the debate about Russia, its uncertain future, and its relationship with the United States.
Author: Victor Sebestyen
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101871644
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 675
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Book Description
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 is 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 what 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. (With 16 pages of black-and-white photographs)
Author: Vladimir Putin
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 0786723270
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
Who is this Vladimir Putin? Who is this man who suddenly--overnight and without warning--was handed the reigns of power to one of the most complex, formidable, and volatile countries in the world? How can we trust him if we don't know him? First Person is an intimate, candid portrait of the man who holds the future of Russia in his grip. An extraordinary compilation of over 24 hours of in-depth interviews and remarkable photographs, it delves deep into Putin's KGB past and explores his meteoric rise to power. No Russian leader has ever subjected himself to this kind of public examination of his life and views. Both as a spy and as a virtual political unknown until selected by Boris Yeltsin to be Prime Minister, Putin has been regarded as man of mystery. Now, the curtain lifts to reveal a remarkable life of struggles and successes. Putin's life story is of major importance to the world.
Author: Steven Lee Myers
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307961613
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 594
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Book Description
"The epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president-- of his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history." --
Author: Edmund Wilson
Publisher: FSG Classics
ISBN: 0374533458
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609
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Book Description
One of the great works of modern historical writing, the classic account of the ideas, people, and politics that led to the Bolshevik Revolution Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station is intellectual history on a grand scale, full of romance, idealism, intrigue, and conspiracy, that traces the revolutionary ideas that shaped the modern world from the French Revolution up through Lenin's arrival at Finland Station in St. Petersburg in 1917. Fueled by Wilson's own passionate engagement with the ideas and politics at play, it is a lively and vivid, sweeping account of a singular idea—that it is possible to construct a society based on justice, equality, and freedom—gaining the power to change history. Vico, Michelet, Bakunin, and especially Marx—along with scores of other anarchists, socialists, nihilists, utopians, and more—all come to life in these pages. And in Wilson's telling, their stories and their ideas remain as alive, as provocative, as relevant now as they were in their own time.
