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..."--

Weak Strongman

Weak Strongman PDF Author: Timothy Frye
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691246289
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"Media and public discussion tends to understand Russian politics as a direct reflection of Vladimir Putin's seeming omnipotence or Russia's unique history and culture. Yet Russia is remarkably similar to other autocracies -- and recognizing this illuminates the inherent limits to Putin's power. Weak Strongman challenges the conventional wisdom about Putin's Russia, highlighting the difficult trade-offs that confront the Kremlin on issues ranging from election fraud and repression to propaganda and foreign policy. Drawing on three decades of his own on-the-ground experience and research as well as insights from a new generation of social scientists that have received little attention outside academia, Timothy Frye reveals how much we overlook about today's Russia when we focus solely on Putin or Russian exceptionalism. Frye brings a new understanding to a host of crucial questions: How popular is Putin? Is Russian propaganda effective? Why are relations with the West so fraught? Can Russian cyber warriors really swing foreign elections? In answering these and other questions, Frye offers a highly accessible reassessment of Russian politics that highlights the challenges of governing Russia and the nature of modern autocracy. Rich in personal anecdotes and cutting-edge social science, Weak Strongman offers the best evidence available about how Russia actually works"--

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.

War with Russia?

War with Russia? PDF Author: Stephen F. Cohen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510745823
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Is America in a new Cold War with Russia? How does a new Cold War affect the safety and security of the United States? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? What should Donald Trump and America’s allies do? America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril. In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Topics include: Distorting Russia US Follies and Media Malpractices 2016 The Obama Administration Escalates Military Confrontation With Russia Was Putin’s Syria Withdrawal Really A “Surprise”? Trump vs. Triumphalism Has Washington Gone Rogue? Blaming Brexit on Putin and Voters Washington Warmongers, Moscow Prepares Trump Could End the New Cold War The Real Enemies of US Security Kremlin-Baiting President Trump Neo-McCarthyism Is Now Politically Correct Terrorism and Russiagate Cold-War News Not “Fit to Print” Has NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer? Why Russians Think America Is Attacking Them How Washington Provoked—and Perhaps Lost—a New Nuclear-Arms Race Russia Endorses Putin, The US and UK Condemn Him (Again) Russophobia Sanction Mania Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create. War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?

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


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 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.