Book picks similar to
Kronstadt 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy by Israel Getzler
history
russia
soviet-history
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The End of the Line: The Siege of Khe Sanh
Robert Pisor - 1982
It was the most spectacular battle of the entire war. For 6,000 trapped marines, it was a nightmare; for President Lyndon Johnson, an obsession. For General Westmoreland, it was to be the final vindication of technological weaponry; and for General Giap, the architect of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, it was a spectacular ruse masking troops moving south for the Tet offensive. In a compelling narrative, Robert Pisor sets forth the history, the politics, the strategies, and, above all, the desperate reality of the battle that became the turning point of the United States's involvement in Vietnam.
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
Bertrand Russell - 1963
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).
Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942
David M. Glantz - 1999
Designed to dislodge the German Army from its position west of Moscow, Mars cost the Soviets an estimated 335,000 dead, missing, and wounded men and over 1,600 tanks. But in Russian history books, it was a battle that never happened. It became instead another victim of Stalin's postwar censorship.David Glantz now offers the first definitive account of this forgotten catastrophe, revealing the key players and detailing the major events of Operation Mars. Using neglected sources in both German and Russian archives, he reconstructs the historical context of Mars and reviews the entire operation from High Command to platoon level.Orchestrated and led by Marshal Georgy Kostantinovich Zhukov, one of the Soviet Union's great military heroes, the twin operations Mars and Uranus formed the centerpiece of Soviet strategic efforts in the fall of 1942. Launched in tandem with Operation Uranus, the successful counteroffensive at Stalingrad, Mars proved a monumental setback. Fought in bad weather and on impossible terrain, the ambitious offensive faltered (despite spectacular initial success in some sectors). Zhukov kept sending in more troops and tanks only to see them decimated by the entrenched Germans.Illuminating the painful progress of Operation Mars with vivid battle scenes and numerous maps and illustrations, Glantz presents Mars as a major failure of Zhukov's renowned command. Yet, both during and after the war, that failure was masked from public view by the successful Stalingrad operation, thus eliminating any stain from Zhukov's public image as a hero of the Great PatrioticWar.For three grueling weeks, Operation Mars was one of the most tragic and agonizing episodes in Soviet military history. Glantz's reconstruction of that failed offensive fills a major gap in our knowledge of World War II, even as it raises important questions about the reputations of national military heroes.
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
Antony C. Sutton - 1975
In a courageous investigation, Antony Sutton establishes tangible historical links between US capitalists and Russian communists. Drawing on State Department files, personal papers of key Wall Street figures, biographies and conventional histories, Sutton reveals: the role of Morgan banking executives in funneling illegal Bolshevik gold into the US; the co-option of the American Red Cross by powerful Wall Street forces; the intervention by Wall Street sources to free the Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, whose aim was to topple the Russian government; the deals made by major corporations to capture the huge Russian market a decade and a half before the US recognized the Soviet regime; and, the secret sponsoring of Communism by leading businessmen, who publicly championed free enterprise. "Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution" traces the foundations of Western funding of the Soviet Union. Dispassionately, and with overwhelming documentation, the author details a crucial phase in the establishment of Communist Russia. This classic study - first published in 1974 and part of a key trilogy - is reproduced here in its original form. (The other volumes in the series include "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler" and a study of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "1933 Presidential election in the United States").
Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October - From the Soviet Naval Hero Who Was There
David Hagberg - 2008
In 1984, Tom Clancy released his blockbuster novel, The Hunt for Red October, an edge-of-your seat thriller that skyrocketed him into international notoriety. The inspiration for that novel came from an obscure report by a US naval officer of a mutiny aboard a Soviet warship in the Baltic Sea. The Hunt for Red October actually happened, and Boris Gindin lived through every minute of it. After decades of silence and fear, Gindin has finally come forward to tell the entire story of the mutiny aboard the FFG Storozhevoy, the real-life Red October. It was the fall of 1975, and the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States were climbing. It seemed the two nations were headed for thermonuclear war, and it was that fear that caused most of the crewman of the FFG Storozhevoy to mutiny. Their goal was to send a message to the Soviet people that the Communist government was corrupt and major changes were needed. That message never reached a single person. Within hours the orders came from on high to destroy the Storozhevoy and its crew members. And this would have happened if it weren't for Gindin and few others whose heroism saved many lives. Now, with the help of USA Today bestselling author David Hagberg, Gindin relives every minute of that harrowing event. From the danger aboard the ship to the threats of death from the KGB to the fear that forced him to flee the Soviet Union for the United States, Mutiny reveals the real-life story behind The Hunt for Red October and offers an eye-opening look at the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.
History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of West Virginia
Wills De Hass - 1851
This area was dangerous and many who had ventured there alone had never returned.
But slowly over the course of this century settlers continued to push further west until regions such as West Virginia were populated with more and more adventurous young men and women. The settlement of these lands did not occur without difficulties and colonizers frequently came into conflict with the local Native American populations. Wills De Hass’s remarkable book History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of West Virginia is a fascinating history of how the lands of the west were first settled by white emigrants in the eighteenth century and how these settlers came into frequent strife with the Native American tribes who had previously lived there. Beginning with Columbus’ discovery of this great continent Wills De Hass charts the colonization of this expansive land. He records with brilliant detail the early encounters that Europeans had with the men and women that they found already living across the region and explains how various nations from across the Atlantic made their first tentative footholds on this newly discovered land. De Hass records how settlers were not only conflict with Native Americans but also with each other as this region descended into war, firstly during the French and Indian War and shortly afterwards during the American War of Independence. Particularly fascinating throughout the book are the biographical sketches of various well-known frontiersmen who were particularly influential in the Ohio Valley and northwestern Virginia. This book is perfect for anyone interested in the early settlement of western regions prior to 1795 and how this area was frequently in conflict as settlers attempted to assert their rights against the wishes of the Native American populations. Wills de Hass was a lecturer and writer on archaeological and historical subjects. His book History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia was first published in 1851 and De Hass passed away 1910.
The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939
J. Arch Getty - 1999
The nearly 200 documents -- dossiers, police reports, private letters, secret transcripts, and more -- expose the hidden inner workings of the Communist Party and the dark inhumanity of the purge process.
Into Egypt Again With Ships: A Message To The Forgotten Israelites
Elisha J. Israel - 2009
This book also reveals the biblical solution that will lead to the complete liberation of a people. All those who have descended from slaves, and consider themselves to be "Negro", "Black", or "African American" should have the audacity to read this book.
Killing Goldfinger: The Secret, Bullet-Riddled Life and Death of Britain's Gangster Number One
Wensley Clarkson - 2017
During the late 1990s, Palmer was rated as rich as The Queen by the Sunday Times Rich List.Palmer earned his nickname Goldfinger after smelting (in his back garden) tens of millions of pounds worth of stolen gold bullion from the 20th century's most lucrative heist; the Brink's-Mat robbery. Palmer then used his share of the millions to become the vicious overlord of a vast illegal timeshare property empire in Tenerife. At the same time, Goldfinger financed huge international drugs shipments as well as some of the most notorious UK robberies of the past 30 years, including the £50m Securitas heist in Kent in 2006 and, many believe, the Hatton Garden heist in 2015.Palmer vowed to hunt down all his underworld enemies. But in the end it was those same criminals who decided to bring his life to an end. Murdered in June 2015, with charges of fraud, money laundering and worse pending, this book tells his murky story for the first time.As outrageous and bullet-riddled as the hit Netflix series Narcos, Killing Goldfinger tells the true story of Britain's underworld kingpin, who turned the sunshine holiday island of Tenerife into his very own Crime Incorporated and then paid the ultimate price.
Sashenka
Simon Sebag Montefiore - 2008
Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Young Ladies, an English governess is waiting for her young charge to be released from school. But so are the Tsar’s secret police… Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her part in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction. Twenty years on, Sashenka has a powerful husband with whom she has two children. Around her people are disappearing, but her own family is safe. But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair which will have devastating consequences. Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century, until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heart-breaking tale of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism - and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice.
Masters of Rome Collection Books I - V: First Man in Rome, The Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar
Colleen McCullough - 2014
From the marbled columns of the Senate to the squalid slums of the Subura, the city is about to be plunged into a conflict that will set rich against poor, Roman against Italian, father against son, a conflict destined to destroy the Republic but leave, in its stead, an Empire. From the seven hills of Rome to the Sahara desert, from Britannia to Bithynia, here is the stuff of legend: unbearable cruelty, martial brilliance, murderous ambition and heroic destiny. Colleen McCullough's epic MASTERS OF ROME captures the soul of Rome in a way no other writer has ever managed. Included in this box set are the novels: THE FIRST MAN IN ROME. THE GRASS CROWN. FORTUNE'S FAVOURITES. CAESAR'S WOMEN. CAESAR.
Please note: This ebook contains all the original maps and illustration.
Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Roger Keeran - 2004
For the authors of this work, however, it instead represented the disappearance of a counterweight to colonialism and imperialism. They ask whether the Soviet demise was indeed inevitable, as the triumphalist right has claimed, suggesting that without the policies of Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s the answer is "no." They examine the policies of Gorbachev as the product of ideological debates that had been continuing in the Communist Party since Lenin's time and as a response to the development of a second private economy within the overall socialist framework. Gorbachev's reforms of 1987, seen as comparable to policies pushed by Kruschev during 1954-1963 and advocated by Bukharin in the 1920s, discarded central tenets of Marxism-Leninism and prompted the collapse of the Soviet order. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union
Loren R. Graham - 1993
As if rising from an uneasy grave, Palchinsky's ghost leads us through the miasma of Soviet technology and industry, pointing out the mistakes he condemned in his time, the corruption and collapse he predicted, the ultimate price paid for silencing those who were not afraid to speak out. The story of this visionary engineer's life and work, as Loren Graham relates it, is also the story of the Soviet Union's industrial promise and failure.We meet Palchinsky in pre-Revolutionary Russia, immersed in protests against the miserable lot of laborers in the tsarist state, protests destined to echo ironically during the Soviet worker's paradise. Exiled from the country, pardoned and welcomed back at the outbreak of World War I, the engineer joined the ranks of the Revolutionary government, only to find it no more open to criticism than the previous regime. His turbulent career offers us a window on debates over industrialization. Graham highlights the harsh irrationalities built into the Soviet system--the world's most inefficient steel mill in Magnitogorsk, the gigantic and ill-conceived hydroelectric plant on the Dnieper River, the infamously cruel and mislocated construction of the White Sea Canal. Time and again, we see the effects of policies that ignore not only the workers' and consumers' needs but also sound management and engineering precepts. And we see Palchinsky's criticism and advice, persistently given, consistently ignored, continue to haunt the Soviet Union right up to its dissolution in 1991.The story of a man whose gifts and character set him in the path of history, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer is also a cautionary tale about the fate of an engineering that disregards social and human issues.
I Chose Freedom
Victor Kravchenko - 1946
It is the work of an average communist party member during the Stalin era. Kravchenko was a technocrat who miraculously cut through the totalitarian fabric of Stalinist ideology to demonstrate the bureaucratization of Soviet life and the annihilation of genuine intermediate social structures, such as families, trade unions, professional and religious organizations. If one is to acquire a real appreciation of the magnitude of changes underway in the Soviet Union, one must first review the actual character of the totalitarian inheritance.
Another View of Stalin
Ludo Martens - 1994
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.