Now he brings those stories to new life with in-depth reporting and deep compassion. In The Russian Notebooks, Igort investigates the murder of award-winning journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkoyskaya. Anna spoke out frequently against the Second Chechen War, criticizing Vladimir Putin. For her work, she was detained, poisoned, and ultimately murdered. Igort follows in her tracks, detailing Anna’s assassination and the stories of abuse, murder, abduction, and torture that Russia was so desperate to censor. In The Ukrainian Notebooks, Igort reaches further back in history and illustrates the events of the 1932 Holodomor. Little known outside of the Ukraine, the Holodomor was a government-sanctioned famine, a peacetime atrocity during Stalin’s rule that killed anywhere from 1.8 to twelve million ethnic Ukrainians. Told through interviews with the people who lived through it, Igort paints a harrowing picture of hunger and cruelty under Soviet rule. With elegant brush strokes and a stark color palette, Igort has transcribed the words and emotions of his subjects, revealing their intelligence, humanity, and honesty—and exposing the secret world of the former USSR.

    Baldaev's father, a respected ethnographer, taught him techniques to record the tattoos of criminals in St. Petersburg's notorious Kresty prison, where Danzig worked as a guard. He was reported to the K.G.B. who unexpectedly offered support for his work, allowing him the opportunity to travel across the former U.S.S.R. Witnessing scenes of everyday life in the Gulag, he chronicled this previously closed world from both sides of the wire. With every vignette, Baldaev brings the characters he depicts to vivid life: from the lowest zek (inmate) to the most violent tattooed vor (thief), all the practices and inhabitants of the Gulag system are depicted here in incredible and often shocking detail. In documenting the attitude of the authorities to those imprisoned, and the transformation of these citizens into survivors or victims of the Gulag system, this graphic novel vividly depicts methods of torture and mass murder undertaken by the administration, as well as the atrocities committed by criminals upon their fellow inmates.Danzig Baldaev was born in 1925 in Ulan-Ude, Buryatiya, Russia. In 1948, after serving in the army in World War II, he was ordered by the N.K.V.D. to work as a warden in the infamous Leningrad prison, Kresty, where he started drawing the tattoos of criminals. His collection of drawings, which he made in different reformatory settlements for criminals all over the former U.S.S.R. over a period of more than 50 years, have been published by Fuel in three volumes, in the bestselling Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series.

    They lived a paradox--unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state, yet forbidden to leave. "When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone" is the astonishing and inspiring story of their rescue.Journalist Gal Beckerman draws on newly released Soviet government documents as well as hundreds of oral interviews with refuseniks, activists, Zionist "hooligans," and Congressional staffers. He shows not only how the movement led to a mass exodus in 1989, but also how it shaped the American Jewish community, giving it a renewed sense of spiritual purpose and teaching it to flex its political muscle. He also makes a convincing case that the movement put human rights at the center of American foreign policy for the very first time, helping to end the Cold War.In cinematic detail, the book introduces us to all the major players, from the flamboyant Meir Kahane, head of the paramilitary Jewish Defense League, to Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, who labored in a Siberian prison camp for over a decade, to Lynn Singer, the small, fiery Long Island housewife who went from organizing local rallies to strong-arming Soviet diplomats. This multi-generational saga, filled with suspense and packed with revelations, provides an essential missing piece of Cold War and Jewish history.

    There the Poles were among the Royal Air Force's most successful ace pilots. During the Battle of Britain, the pilots of the all-Polish Kosciuszko Squadron - 303 Squadron to the RAF - shot down more German planes than any other squadron. According to Britain's wartime air force minister, without the Polish pilots 'our shortage of trained pilots would have made it impossible to defeat the German air force and so win the Battle'. This gripping book tells the story of the Polish pilots, who flew and fought for the British RAF in World War Two. It follows five of these pilots from defeat in Poland and France to victory in the Battle of Britain, from their idolisation by the public to the harrowing story of their betrayal, and Poland's, by Britain and the USA as the war came to its closing stages. This is an utterly fascinating story, heroic, inspiring and finally tragic, strikingly well-told.

    There many died of starvation, disease, and exhaustion, and some were killed by criminals and camp guards. In 1939, as the Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland, many Polish citizens found themselves swept up by the Soviet occupation and sent into the Gulag. One such victim was Julius Margolin, a Pinsk-born Jewish philosopher and writer living in Palestine who was in Poland on family matters.Margolin's Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back offers a powerful, first-person account of one of the most shocking chapters of the violent twentieth century. Opening with the outbreak of World War II in Poland, Margolin relates its devastating impact on the Jews and his arrest and imprisonment in the Gulag system. During his incarceration from 1940 to 1945, he nearly died from starvation and overwork but was able to return to Western Europe and rejoin his family in Palestine. With a philosopher's astute analysis of man and society, as well as with humor, his memoir of flight, entrapment, and survival details the choices and dilemmas faced by an individual under extreme duress. Margolin's moving account illuminates universal issues of human rights under a totalitarian regime and ultimately the triumph of human dignity and decency.This translation by Stefani Hoffman is the first English-language edition of this classic work, originally written in Russian in 1947 and published in an abridged French version in 1949. Circulated in a Russian samizdat version in the USSR, it exerted considerable influence on the formation of the genre of Gulag memoirs and was eagerly read by Soviet dissidents. Timothy Snyder's foreword and Katherine Jolluck's introduction contextualize the creation of this remarkable account of a Jewish world ravaged in the Stalinist empire--and the life of the man who was determined to reveal the horrors of the gulag camps and the plight of the zeks to the world.

    In the 1980s the Spomeniks still attracted millions of visitors from the Eastern bloc; today they are largely neglected and unknown, their symbolism lost and unwanted. Antwerp-based photographer Jan Kempenaers travelled the Balkans photographing these eerie objects, presented in this book as a powerful typological series. The beauty and mystery of the isolated, crumbling Spomeniks informs Kempenaer's enquiry into memory, found beauty, and whether former monuments can function as pure sculpture.

    During Khrushchev s first state visit to Helsinki, Dosha, star rider of the Soviet Dressage Team and her horse defect with the help of local Gypsies. The novel follows the life of Dosha, a Gypsy in disguise. It offers unique insight into the tribal life of nomadic Gypsies, who under Stalin joined partisans fighting Nazi invaders, only to face entrapment during Khrushchev s Thaw. By then Dosha and her talented circus horse have been drafted into the dressage team in Leningrad. Navigating political intrigue, narrowly escaping discovery by the KGB, she enters a love forbidden to Gypsy women. One goal remains uppermost in her mind leading her tribe and her horse to freedom in the West.   Discoveries:  A Kircus Service:    "Meyer's writing is crisp and speedy, crackling with sharp metaphors and rich descriptions." Julia Ann Charpentie,Foreword Reviews: " Edgy, entertaining, and filled with political stratagem, even a jaded fan of novels set during the Soviet era will not be disappointed. Indeed, Meyer's knowledge and research shine on every page."   Dorothy Morkis, US Olympic Dressage Rider: "The brilliance with which Sonia Meyer portrays both the magical connection between a horse and rider performing the intricate movements of dressage, and the intuitive love and feeling are to my mind unsurpassed in fiction." Rene Schwiesow, Massachusetts poet and writer, co-host of Plymouth's Art of Words:    " There is richness to her images, depth in her characters, and fluidity in her narration."

    In this penetrating analysis and comprehensive refutation of three recently-published biographies of Leon Trotsky by well-known British historians -- Professors Robert Service, Ian Thatcher and Geoffrey Swain -- David North raises troubling questions about the state of contemporary historical scholarship.In the June 2011 edition of the prestigious American Historical Review historian Bertrand Patenaude gives North's book high praise: "A careful examination of North's book shows his criticism of Service to be exactly what Trotsky scholar Baruch Knei-Paz, in a blurb on the back cover, says it is: 'detailed, meticulous, well-argued and devastating.'"Scott McClemee, a columnist for Inside Higher Education, writes, "I can only suggest that any research library that has added Service's book to its collection should consider acquiring David North's as well."Exposing recent efforts to denigrate Trotsky's historical role by falsifying history, North insists that their aim is to forestall a resurgence of interest in the great revolutionist at a time when millions of people are becoming disenchanted with capitalism. North reviews the decisive and often overlooked impact of Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution on the events of October 1917. He challenges today's historians to once again turn serious and honest attention to Trotsky's life and ideas.

    Less than three weeks before, on 22 June Hitler had unleashed his Wehrmacht's [Armed Forces] massive invasion of the Soviet Union code-named Operation Barbarossa, which sought to defeat the Soviet Union's Red Army, conquer the country, and unseat its Communist ruler, Josef Stalin. Between 22 June and 10 July, the Wehrmacht advanced up to 500 kilometers into Soviet territory, killed or captured up to one million Red Army soldiers, and reached the western banks of the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, by doing so satisfying the premier assumption of Plan Barbarossa that the Third Reich would emerge victorious if it could defeat and destroy the bulk of the Red Army before it withdrew to safely behind those two rivers. With the Red Army now shattered, Hitler and most Germans expected total victory in a matter of weeks. The ensuing battles in the Smolensk region frustrated German hopes for quick victory. Once across the Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, a surprised Wehrmacht encountered five fresh Soviet armies. Despite destroying two of these armies outright, severely damaging two others, and encircling the remnants of three of these armies in the Smolensk region, quick victory eluded the Germans. Instead, Soviet forces encircled in Mogilev and Smolensk stubbornly refused to surrender, and while they fought on, during July, August, and into early September, first five and then a total of seven newly-mobilized Soviet armies struck back viciously at the advancing Germans, conducting multiple counterattacks and counterstrokes, capped by two major counteroffensives that sapped German strength and will. Despite immense losses in men and materiel, these desperate Soviet actions derailed Operation Barbarossa. Smarting from countless wounds inflicted on his vaunted Wehrmacht, even before the fighting ended in the Smolensk region, Hitler postponed his march on Moscow and instead turned his forces southward to engage "softer targets" in the Kiev region. The 'derailment" of the Wehrmacht at Smolensk ultimately became the crucial turning point in Operation Barbarossa. This groundbreaking new study, now significantly expanded, exploits a wealth of Soviet and German archival materials, including the combat orders and operational of the German OKW, OKH, army groups, and armies and of the Soviet Stavka, the Red Army General Staff, the Western Main Direction Command, the Western, Central, Reserve, and Briansk Fronts, and their subordinate armies to present a detailed mosaic and definitive account of what took place, why, and how during the prolonged and complex battles in the Smolensk region from 10 July through 10 September 1941. The structure of the study is designed specifically to appeal to both general readers and specialists by a detailed two-volume chronological narrative of the course of operations, accompanied by a third volume, and perhaps a fourth, containing archival maps and an extensive collection of specific orders and reports translated verbatim from Russian. The maps, archival and archival-based, detail every stage of the battle. Within the context of a fresh appreciation of Hitler's Plan Barbarossa, this volume reviews the first two weeks of Operation Barbarossa and then describes in unprecedented detail Plan Barbarossa, Opposing Forces, and the Border Battles, 22 June-1 July 1941; Army Group Center's Advance to the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers and the Western Front's Counterstroke at Lepel' 2-9 July 1941; Army Group Center's Advance to Smolensk and the Timoshenko "Counteroffensive," 13-15 July 1941; Army Group Center's Encirclement Battle at Smolensk, 16 July-6 August 1941; The First Soviet Counteroffensive, 23-31 July 1941; The Battles on the Flanks (Velikie Luki and Rogachev-Zhlobin), 16-31 July 1941; The Siege of Mogilev, 16-28 July 1941; Armeegruppe Guderian's Destruction of Group Kachalov, 31 July-6 August 1941; Armeegruppe Guderian's and Second Army's Southward March and the Fall of Gomel', 8-21 August 1941; The Second Soviet Counteroffensive: The Western Front's Dukhovshchina Offensive, 6-24 August 1941 and the Reserve Front's El'nia Offensive, 8-24 August 1941; The Struggle for Velikie Luki, 8-24 August 1941. Based on the analysis of the vast mass of documentary materials exploited by this study, David Glantz presents a number of important new findings, notably: Soviet resistance to Army Group Center's advance into the Smolensk region was far stronger and more active than the Germans anticipated and historians have previously described; The military strategy Stalin, the Stavka, and Western Main Direction Command pursued was far more sophisticated than previously believed; Stalin, the Stavka, and Timoshenko's Western Main Direction Command employed a strategy of attrition designed to weaken advancing German forces; This attrition strategy inflicted far greater damage on Army Group Center than previously thought and, ultimately, contributed significantly to the Western and Kalinin Fronts' victories over Army Group Center in December 1941. Quite simply, this series breaks new ground in World War II Eastern Front and Soviet military studies.

    She examines the use of housing to alter gender relations, and the ways in which domestic space was differentially experienced by men and women.  Much of Attwood’s material comes from Soviet magazines and journals, which enables her to demonstrate how official ideas on housing and daily life changed during the course of the Soviet era, and were propagandized to the population.  Through a series of in-depth interviews, she also draws on the memories of people with direct experience of Soviet housing and domestic life. Attwood has produced not just a history of housing, but a social history of daily life which will appeal both to scholars and those with a general interest in Soviet history.

    The three-volume series, written by leading international experts in the field, elucidates how the Cold War evolved from the geopolitical, ideological, economic and socio-political environment of the two World Wars and the interwar era, and explains the global dynamics of the Cold War international system. It emphasises how the Cold War bequeathed conditions, challenges and conflicts that shape international affairs today. With discussions of demography and consumption, women and youth, science and technology, ethnicity and race, the volumes encompass the social, intellectual and economic history of the twentieth century, shedding new light on the evolution of the Cold War. Through its various geographical and national angles, the series signifies a transformation of the field from a national primarily American to a broader international approach."

    Police Aesthetics offers a revealing and responsible approach to such materials. Taking advantage of the partial opening of the secret police archives in Russia and Romania, Vatulescu focuses on their most infamous holdings—the personal files—as well as on movies the police sponsored, scripted, or authored. Through the archives, she gains new insights into the writing of literature and raises new questions about the ethics of reading. She shows how police files and films influenced literature and cinema, from autobiographies to novels, from high-culture classics to avant-garde experiments and popular blockbusters. In so doing, she opens a fresh chapter in the heated debate about the relationship between culture and politics in twentieth-century police states.