The Bolsheviks, however, pursued their goals with an iron fist rather than with a free and idealistic hope that nurtured the individual. Russell was also staunchly opposed to the way that Bolshevism saw itself as a religion, with practices and beliefs that could brook no doubt. This, he determined, was no better than the Catholic Church, which he opposed.Anyone with an interest in Communism and the Soviet Union will find this a deeply thoughtful book.British philosopher and mathematician BERTRAND ARTHUR WILLIAM RUSSELL (1872-1970) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Among his many works are Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), and My Philosophical Development (1959).

    In Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance, he reveals the truth about how the subprime lending business spiraled out of control, pushed home prices to unsustainable levels, and turned unqualified applicants into qualified borrowers through creative financing. Learn about the ways the mortgage industry can be fixed with his twenty suggestions for critical change.

    Traveling to Baghdad and then to Mosul with the 1st Cavalry Division, McDonell offers an unforgettable look at the way things stand now—at the translators stranded in a country that doesn’t look kindly on their cooperation, at the infantrymen struggling to make something out of the soft counterinsurgency missions they call chai-ops, at the commanders inured to American journalists and Iraqi officials both—and what the so-called “end of major combat operations” means for where they’re going.

    So hold your nose, kiss the babies, and just think how good you would look on a stamp.Now, before we go into your media responsibilities, you must understand the true history of political power, so you don't accidentally act on the naive idealism you are required to project to the general public.The reality of political power is very simple: bad farmers own crops and livestock -- good farmers own human beings...

    Wilde argues that under capitalism the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism-are forced, indeed, so to spoil them: instead of realizing their true talents, they waste their time solving the social problems caused by capitalism, without taking their common cause away. Thus, caring people seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty, but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it because, the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

    The book refutes the classical attacks against Stalin: Lenin's testament, the collectivization imposed by a totalitarian party, the forced industrialization, the liquidation of the old Bolsheviks, the blind and absurd terror of the purges, the cooperation between Stalin and Hitler, etc...In Another View of Stalin, the reader will find an enormous quantity of information from Western academic sources that has long remained unknown to a wider public.

    More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the outside world, and dominates Western media coverage of it to an extraordinary extent. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention for detractors and supporters alike. But as Tony Wood argues, this overwhelming focus on the president and his personality means that we understand Russia less than we ever did before. Too much attention is paid to the man, and not enough to the country outside the Kremlin's walls. In this timely and provocative analysis, Wood looks beyond Putin to explore the profound changes Russia has undergone since 1991. In the process, he challenges many of the common assumptions made about contemporary Russia. Though commonly viewed as an ominous return to Soviet authoritarianism, Putin's rule should instead be seen as a direct continuation of Yeltsin's in the 1990s. And though many of Russia's problems today are blamed on legacies of the Soviet past, Wood argues that the core features of Putinism--a predatory, authoritarian elite presiding over a vastly unequal society--are integral to the system set in place after the fall of Communism.What kind of country has emerged from Russia's post-Soviet transformations, and where might it go in future? Russia Without Putin culminates in an arresting analysis of the country's foreign policy--identifying the real power dynamics behind its escalating clashes with the West--and with reflections on the paths Russia might take in the 21st century.

    Simultaneously a political, social and oral history, this book will quickly become the preeminent short history of Russia's recent past. Photos.

    This rare opportunity took the famous travellers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad - now Volgograd - but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. A RUSSIAN JOURNAL is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. Steinbeck and Capa recorded the grim realities of factory workers, government clerks, and peasants, as they emerged from the rubble of World War II. This is an intimate glimpse of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle

    This is her journey.Nick Abadzis blends fiction and fact in the intertwined stories of three compelling lives. Along with Laika, there is Korolev, once a political prisoner, now a driven engineer at the top of the Soviet space program, and Yelena, the lab technician responsible for Laika's health and life.

    However, few can match Hans Sturm in his astonishing rise from a mere private in an infantry regiment, thrown into the bloody maelstrom of the Eastern Front, to a highly decorated war hero. A young man who had displayed fearless heroism in combat, earning him some of Germany's highest military awards, Sturm hated bullies and injustice, and reacted in his normal pugnacious and outspoken manner when confronted with wrongdoing. From striking a member of the feared Sicherheitsdienst for his treatment of a Jewish woman, to refusing to wear a decoration he felt was tainted because of the treatment of enemy partisans, Sturm repeatedly stuck to his moral values no matter what the risk. Even with the war finally over, Sturm's travails would not end for another eight years as he languished in a number of Soviet labour camps until he was finally released in 1953. ** This electronic edition includes 60 black-and-white photographs **

    There has never existed such a revolution of such significance and scale in the history of humanity’. – Hồ Chí Minh From Cuba to Vietnam, from China to South Africa, the October Revolution remains as an inspiration. After all, that Revolution proved that the working class and the peasantry could not only overthrow an autocratic government but that it could form its own government, in its image. It proved decisively that the working class and the peasantry could be allied. It proved as well the necessity of a vanguard party that was open to spontaneous currents of unrest, but which could guide a revolution to completion. This book explains the power of the October Revolution for the Third World. It is not a comprehensive study, but a small book with a large hope – that a new generation will come to see the importance of this revolution for the working class and peasantry in that part of the world that suffered under the heel of colonial domination. Vijay Prashad is the Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (both from LeftWord). He is a columnist for Frontline and Alternet. He is Chief Editor at LeftWord Books.

    Its uniquely qualified author, a diplomat and historian who represented this country as our Ambassador to the Soviet Union, George F. Kennan believes like Thucydides that the history of the past is our best source of guidance for the present. Mr. Kennan’s narrative takes the reader through three decades of the most profound violence and change, tracing diplomatic relations between the Western powers and the Soviet Union from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the end of World War II. At every stage of the story Mr. Kennan points up the successive dilemmas, sometimes leading to tragedy, which grew out of ignorance and mutual distrust. From the deposition of the Russian Tsar in 1917 to the illusions and errors of 1945, one confrontation after another has expanded from misunderstanding to hostility. The Allied intervention in Russia, into which we muddled ourselves in 1918 while our gaze was fixed on winning the first World War in Europe; the Russian fixation on their domestic revolution at the expense of waging the war against Germany; the conflicting and short-sighted aims of the Western statesmen at the Versailles conference in 1919; the incredible Western stuffiness (the only word for it) which drove a renascent Germany into Russia’s arms at Rapallo in 1922; Stalin’s bottomless mistrust, not only of foreign statesmen, but of his own most intimate colleagues in Moscow, which hurled Russia into the bloody purges of 1934-1938; the Russian cupidity in China; the fantastic yet grimly tragic story of events leading up to the Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact of 1939, and the cynical piracy which Hitler and Stalin practised on each other thereafter; and the unquenchable innocence governing the actions of Roosevelt and the Western military leaders during World War II and culminating in Yalta — all of these episodes serve Mr. Kennan as the raw material for lessons for the present day. As he takes us with him on this dangerous dramatic path of frustration and misunderstanding, Mr. Kennan pauses to illuminate the hazards attendant upon all summit meetings; to speculate on the perennial fantasy inherent in Western notions about China; to question the extent to which world events can be controlled from any central point, whether it be Moscow or Washington; to comment on the havoc raised by the conduct of two World Wars with the objective of unconditional surrender; to etch brilliant portraits of such figures as Woodrow Wilson, Rathenau, Lenin, Curzon, Chicherin, Stalin, Molotov, Hitler, Ribbentrop, Roosevelt and those others who on both sides have been entrusted with our destinies for the last forty-five years. The result is a narrative which the publishers are proud to present as a world-significant contribution to history. It will be read with fascination and with profit by both the specialist and the intelligent general reader—and it is urgently needed at a time when the Soviet historians are fabricating their interpretations of these very years in a way that is deeply discreditable to the free world.

    ClarkeSpace was one of the most fiercely fought battlegrounds of the Cold War, the Moon its ultimate beachhead.In this dual autobiography, Apollo 15 commander David Scott and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first man to ever walk in space, recount their exceptional lives and careers spent on the cutting edge of science and space exploration—and their participation in the greatest technological race ever—to land a man on the Moon.With each mission fraught with perilous tasks, and each space program touched by tragedy, these parallel tales of adventure and heroism read like a modern-day thriller. Cutting fast between their differing recollections, this book reveals, in a very personal way, the drama of one of the most ambitious contests ever embarked on by man, set against the conflict that once held the world in suspense: the clash between Communism and Western democracy.Through the men's memoirs, their courage, passion for exploration, and determination to push themselves to the limit, emerge not only through their triumphs but also through their perseverance in times of extraordinary difficulty and danger."Two Sides of the Moon is unique among space histories. If you are looking for a balanced, interesting, and personal account of the American and Soviet space programs during the 1960s and 1970s this is it."---Astronomy magazine

    Beschloss is the author of Kennedy and Roosevelt: An Uneasy Alliance and Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair. Photos.