The story of the dynasty's dramatic end has exerted a lasting fascination. This book seeks to widen the picture, looking at the lives of members of the family during the last century of imperial rule, and setting this into the context of the grand palaces in which they lived. It was a time of contrasts, a period in which the Tsars reached the peak of their wealth, prestige and power, yet also faced the growth of forces which would destroy them. In 1817, 100 years before the Revolution, the first Nicholas and Alexander were married in the Winter Palace. This book tells their story, and the stories of their successors, Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II, each trying to steer their own course. It also looks at the lives of their sisters and brothers, and other members of the large Russian royal family, detailing their daily lives.

    Over the next thirty years he would become her lover, co-ruler, and husband in a secret marriage that left room for both to satisfy their sexual appetites. Potemkin proved to be one of the most brilliant statesmen of the eighteenth century, helping Catherine expand the Russian empire and deftly manipulating allies and adversaries from Constantinople to London.This acclaimed biography vividly re-creates Potemkin’s outsized character and accomplishments and restores him to his rightful place as a colossus of the eighteenth century. It chronicles the tempestuous relationship between Potemkin and Catherine, a remarkable love affair between two strong personalities that helped shape the course of history. As he brings these characters to life, Montefiore also tells the story of the creation of the Russian empire. This is biography as it is meant to be: both intimate and panoramic, and bursting with life.

    But the heroic images of Boris Yeltsin atop a tank in front of Moscow's White House soon turned to grim new realities: a currency in freefall and a war in Chechnya; on the street, flashy new money and a vicious Russian mafia contrasted with doctors and teachers not receiving salaries for months at a time. If this was what capitalism brought, many Russians wondered if they weren't better off under the communists.This new society did not just appear ready-made: it was created by a handful of powerful men who came to be known as the oligarchs and the young reformers. The oligarchs were fast-talking businessmen who laid claim to Russia's vast natural resources. The young reformers were an elite group of egghead economists who got to put their wild theories into action, with results that were sometimes inspiring, sometimes devastating. With unparalleled access and acute insight, Chrystia Freeland takes us behind the scenes and shows us how these two groups misused a historic opportunity to build a new Russia. Their achievements were considerable, but their mistakes will deform Russian society for generations to come.Along with a gripping account of the incredible events in Russia's corridors of power, Freeland gives us a vivid sense of the buzz and hustle of the new Russia, and inside stories of the businesses that have beaten the odds and become successful and profitable. She also exposes the conflicts and compromises that developed when red directors of old Soviet firms and factories yielded to -- or fought -- the radically new ways of doing business. She delves into the loophole economy, where anyone who knows how to manipulate the new rules can make a fast buck. Sale of the Century is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall economic thriller -- an astonishing and essential account of who really controls Russia's new frontier.

    In "Night of Stone," Catherine Merridale asks Russians difficult questions about how their country's volatile past has affected their everyday lives, aspirations, dreams, and nightmares. Drawing upon evidence from rare Imperial archives, Soviet propaganda, memoirs, letters, newspapers, literature, psychiatric studies, and interviews, "Night of Stone" provides a highly original and revealing history of modern Russia.

    

    The book includes documentary source material and photographs of film stars like Greta Garbo wearing couture designed by Russian emigres.

    It is a dramatically new view of where we have been and where we are as a result of the development of nuclear weapons. There is an indepth study of Stanley Kubrck's movie sub titled; "How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb". The book is erudite in that it examines all the relevent literature. And it has wonderful drawings by David Levine of all the major players. But, above all, this is a hopeful book for as the author puts it; "...if nothing can be done it may seem that nothing NEED be done. Naturally enough, those who take comfort in that view tend to leave the arena of debate to those who want to do something. Thus the more believers in the power of deterrence, the fewer advocates for action. Dr.Strangelove and the Hideous Epoch reviews the debate's history from the viewpoint of that less representative side and argues the the end of the hideous epoch...is now within view."

    Focusing on the critical relationship between Ukraine and Russia, renowned scholar Roman Szporluk chronicles the final two decades in the history of the Soviet Union and presents a story that is often lost in the standard interpretations of the collapse of communism.

    a book of signal significance” (The Saturday Review) “gives a vivid picture of (Soviet) courts at work, and therefore, since it is very good reporting, as sharp a picture of (Soviet) life and people... it is an entrancing book.” (The Economist) “The most vivid reportage in years.” —The New Statesman Extraordinary, compelling (and) an inspired achievement,” (The London Listener) it is “the most interesting, perceptive and refreshing book by an American on life in the Soviet Union since time out of mind.” (Newsweek)

    Their collection of art, antiquities, and decorative objects, assembled over five centuries, was rivaled only by the holdings of the tsar. This book, the companion volume to a major traveling exhibition, reassembles masterworks of the Stroganoff collection for the first time since the 1917 Revolution. The more than 200 objects showcased here are extraordinarily varied: exquisite 16th-century icons; European old-master paintings by Botticelli, Poussin, van Dyck, and Watteau; rare antiquities from around the world; and stunning decorative objects, such as the great malachite coupe from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Complete with photographs of that fabled Baroque palace, which is now under restoration, this book will be a revelation to art lovers everywhere. 245 illustrations, 220 in full color, mapes, 9 x 11 7/8"

    Codenamed 'Operation Bagration', this campaign climaxed five weeks later with the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw. The Wehrmacht's Army Group Center was routed, a total of 17 Wehrmacht divisions were utterly destroyed, and over 50 other German divisions were shattered. It was the most calamitous defeat of the German armed forces in World War II.

    A former Soviet army intelligence officer, the author explains that Stalin's strategy leading up to World War II grew from Vladimir Lenin's belief that if World War I did not ignite the worldwide Communist revolution, then a second world war would be needed to achieve it. Stalin saw Nazi Germany as the power that would fight and weaken capitalist countries so that Soviet armies could then sweep across Europe. Suvorov reveals how Stalin conspired with German leaders to bypass the Versailles Treaty, which forbade German rearmament, and secretly trained German engineers and officers and provided bases and factories for war. He also calls attention to the 1939 nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany that allowed Hitler to proceed with his plans to invade Poland, fomenting war in Europe.Suvorov debunks the theory that Stalin was duped by Hitler and that the Soviet Union was a victim of Nazi aggression. Instead, he makes the case that Stalin neither feared Hitler nor mistakenly trusted him. Suvorov maintains that after Germany occupied Poland, defeated France, and started to prepare for an invasion of Great Britain, Hitler's intelligence services detected the Soviet Union's preparations for a major war against Germany. This detection, he argues, led to Germany's preemptive war plan and the launch of an invasion of the USSR. Stalin emerges from the pages of this book as a diabolical genius consumed by visions of a worldwide Communist revolution at any cost--a leader who wooed Hitler and Germany in his own effort to conquer the world. In contradicting traditional theories about Soviet planning, the book is certain to provoke debate among historians throughout the world.