Book picks similar to
Moscow Workers And The 1917 Revolution by Diane P. Koenker
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The ABC of Communism
Nikolai Bukharin - 1919
First published in 1919 and 1920 respectively, Programme of the Russian Communist Party and ABC of Communism were created as popular introductions, explanations, and commentary for the masses on the new party. Today they serve as historical documents and offer a non-Stalinist view of early Russian Communism. A new introduction and a glossary are included.
Sale of the Century: Russia's Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism
Chrystia Freeland - 2000
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.
Kolyma Tales
Varlam Shalamov - 1966
Shalamov himself spent seventeen years there, and in these stories he vividly captures the lives of ordinary people caught up in terrible circumstances, whose hopes and plans extended to further than a few hours. This new enlarged edition combines two collections previously published in the United States as Kolyma Tales and Graphite.
The Russian Revolution: A View from the Third World
Walter Rodney - 2018
Earning his PhD in 1966 at the age of 24 and publishing his influential history, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, at 30, Rodney became a leading force of dissent throughout the Caribbean and a lightning rod of controversy. The 1968 Rodney Riots erupted in Jamaica when he was prevented from returning to his teaching post at the University of the West Indies. In 1980, Rodney was assassinated in Guyana, reportedly at the behest of the government. In the mid-’70s, Rodney taught a course on the Russian Revolution at the Universtiy of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. A Pan-Africanist and Marxist, Rodney sought to make sense of the reverberations of the October Revolution in a decolonizing world marked by Third World revolutionary movements. He intended to publish a book based on his research and teaching. Now historians Jesse Benjamin, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Vijay Prashad have edited Rodney’s polished chapters and unfinished lecture notes, presenting the book that Rodney had hoped to publish.The Russian Revolution is a signal event in radical publishing, and will inaugurate Verso Books's standard edition of Walter Rodney’s works.
Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War
Stephen F. Cohen - 2009
Cohen challenges conventional wisdom about the course of Soviet and post-Soviet history. Reexamining leaders from Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin's preeminent opponent, and Nikita Khrushchev to Mikhail Gorbachev and his rival Yegor Ligachev, Cohen shows that their defeated policies were viable alternatives and that their tragic personal fates shaped the Soviet Union and Russia today. Cohen's ramifying arguments include that Stalinism was not the predetermined outcome of the Communist Revolution; that the Soviet Union was reformable and its breakup avoidable; and that the opportunity for a real post-Cold War relationship with Russia was squandered in Washington, not in Moscow. This is revisionist history at its best, compelling readers to rethink fateful events of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the possibilities ahead.In his new epilogue, Cohen expands his analysis of U.S. policy toward post-Soviet Russia, tracing its development in the Clinton and Obama administrations and pointing to its initiation of a "new Cold War" that, he implies, has led to a fateful confrontation over Ukraine.
Barbarossa
Alan Clark - 1966
It was the beginning of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, one of the most brutal campaigns in the history of warfare. Four years later, the victorious Red Army has suffered a loss of seven million lives. Alan Clark's incisive analysis succeeds in explaining how a fighting force that in one two-month period lost two million men was nevertheless able to rally to defeat the Wehrmacht. The Barbarossa campaign included some of the greatest episodes in military history: the futile attack on Moscow in the winter of 1941-42, the siege of Stalingrad, the great Russian offensive beginning in 1944 that would lead the Red Army to the historic meeting with the Americans at the Elbe and on to victory in Berlin.Barbarossa is a classic of miltary history. This paperback edition contains a new preface by the author.
Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union: An Autobiography
Robert Robinson - 1988
An Autobiography Robert Robinson
The Russian Revolution
Richard Pipes - 1990
Pipes writes trenchantly, and at times superbly....No single volume known to me even begins to cater so adequately to those who want to discover what really happened to Russia....Nor do I know any other book better designed to help Soviet citizens to struggle out of the darkness."-- Ronald Hingley, The New York Times Book ReviewGround-breaking in its inclusiveness, enthralling in its narrative of a movement whose purpose, in the words of Leon Trotsky, was "to overthrow the world," The Russian Revolution draws conclusions that have already aroused great controversy in this country-and that are certain to be explosive when the book is published in the Soviet Union. Richard Pipes argues convincingly that the Russian Revolution was an intellectual, rather than a class, uprising; that it was steeped in terror from its very outset; and that it was not a revolution at all but a coup d'etat -- "the capture of governmental power by a small minority."
The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II (Blue Jacket Bks)
Viktor Suvorov - 2000
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.
Kronstadt 1921
Paul Avrich - 1970
Under the slogan of Ofree soviets, '' they established a revolutionary commune that survived for sixteen days, until an army came across the ice to crush it. After a savage struggle, the rebels were subdued. Paul Avrich vividly describes the uprising and examines it in the context of the development of the Soviet state.Originally published in 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905."
Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War
Christopher Bellamy - 2007
Now, drawing on sources newly available since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, historian and journalist Chris Bellamy presents the first full account of this deadly conflict.Bellamy outlines the lead-up to the war—in which the fragile alliance between Hitler and Stalin was unceremoniously broken—and takes us headlong into the hostilities. He presents a shocking picture of battle in which the traditional restraints of “civilized” warfare were shed. He makes clear how the Soviets quickly rallied against Hitler, choosing homegrown despotism over foreign domination in a struggle that the Russian people call the Great Patriotic War.Bellamy charts the early gains of the German army, whose advances into Soviet territory were brought to a halt in Moscow in the winter of 1941, and whose defeat was sealed in the Battle of Stalingrad, the most merciless campaign of the bloodiest front. He shows how Soviet men—and women—joined to fight a war whose casualties were later steeply underestimated by their government, and how even the true death toll, at 27 million, does not take into account the millions of lives on both sides that lay shattered in the aftermath.Finally, Bellamy examines the far-reaching consequences of the battle’s outcome—the reverberations of which are still felt today—and argues that the cost of victory was ultimately too much for the Soviet Union to bear.A magisterial study, and an essential addition to our understanding of contemporary world history.
Moscow, 1937
Karl Schlögel - 2006
A society utterly wrecked by a hurricane of violence. In this compelling book, the renowned historian Karl Schlogel reconstructs with meticulous care the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the 'Great Terror' during which 1 1/2 million human beings lost their lives within a single year. He revisits the sites of show trials and executions and, by also consulting numerous sources from the time, he provides a masterful panorama of these key events in Russian history. He shows how, in the shadow of the reign of terror, the regime around Stalin also aimed to construct a new society. Based on countless documents, Schlogel's historical masterpiece vividly presents an age in which the boundaries separating the dream and the terror dissolve, and enables us to experience the fear that was felt by people subjected to totalitarian rule. This rich and absorbing account of the Soviet purges will be essential reading for all students of Russia and for any readers interested in one of the most dramatic and disturbing events of modern history.
My Disillusionment in Russia
Emma Goldman - 1923
Because of these activities, she was deported to Russia in 1919, where she was able to witness the Revolution's aftermath firsthand. Horrified by what she saw in major cities and revolted by the Bolshevik dictatorship, she left the country in 1921 and, soon after, set down her thoughts in two books — My Disillusionment in Russia and My Further Disillusionment in Russia. She wrote passionately about political harassment and forced labor inflicted upon the masses, rampant opportunism raging throughout the Soviet government, industrial militarization, persecution of anarchists, and the government's increased use of deportation as a political weapon. Her writings helped turn a large number of socialists against the Bolshevik government. Her two books have been combined in this Dover edition — a volume that will be of value to teachers, students, and anyone interested in the socio-economic problems of the early 20th century.
The Empress of Tears (The Autobiography of Empress Alexandra Book 2)
Kathleen McKenna Hewtson - 2016
Having given birth to daughter after daughter after daughter, she becomes desperate and turns to the first of her mystical advisors, Msgr. Philippe, who persuades her, among other things, that she is invisible.And then comes the moment of her greatest triumph with the birth of her son and the heir to the throne of all the Russias, the Tsarevich Alexei.All four volumes are (planned) as follows:1. 'The Funeral Bride' 1884-1894 - published November 20152. 'The Empress of Tears' 1895-1904 - published March 20163. 'The Pride of Eagles' 1905-1914 - to be published by November 20164. 'No Greater Crown' 1914-1918 - to be published by April 2017
Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov
Geoffrey Roberts - 2012
A man of indomitable will and fierce determination, Georgy Zhukov was the Soviet Union’s indispensable commander through every one of the critical turning points of World War II. It was Zhukov who saved Leningrad from capture by the Wehrmacht in September 1941, Zhukov who led the defense of Moscow in October 1941, Zhukov who spearheaded the Red Army’s march on Berlin and formally accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender in the spring of 1945. Drawing on the latest research from recently opened Soviet archives, including the uncensored versions of Zhukov’s own memoirs, Roberts offers a vivid portrait of a man whose tactical brilliance was matched only by the cold-blooded ruthlessness with which he pursued his battlefield objectives. After the war, Zhukov was a key player on the geopolitical scene. As Khrushchev’s defense minister, he was one of the architects of Soviet military strategy during the Cold War. While lauded in the West as a folk hero—he was the only Soviet general ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine—Zhukov repeatedly ran afoul of the Communist political authorities. Wrongfully accused of disloyalty, he was twice banished and erased from his country’s official history—left out of books and paintings depicting Soviet World War II victories. Piercing the hyperbole of the Zhukov personality cult, Roberts debunks many of the myths that have sprung up around Zhukov’s life and career to deliver fresh insights into the marshal’s relationships with Stalin, Khrushchev, and Eisenhower. A remarkably intimate portrait of a man whose life was lived behind an Iron Curtain of official secrecy, Stalin’s General is an authoritative biography that restores Zhukov to his rightful place in the twentieth-century military pantheon.