It has been demonized—its more sinister aspects used as an anti-Communist battering ram throughout the Cold War—and glorified, as exemplified by John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World. Much has been written about the key figures—Lenin, Trotsky, Kerensky, and the rest—while the various political movements have been relentlessly analyzed. Yet there is another side to it, a more human story.What was life like for a peasant or a manual worker in Petrograd or Moscow in 1917? How much did a tram driver, his wife, or a common soldier know or understand about Bolshevism? What was the price of a loaf of bread or a pair of boots? Who kept the power stations running, the telephone exchanges, bakeries, farms, and hospitals working? These are just some of the details historian Roy Bainton brings to life, not through memoirs of politicians and philosophers, but in the memories of ordinary working people. As witnessed on the streets of Petrograd, Bainton brings us the indelible events of the most momentous year in Russian history.

    It is a work of history on a grand scale, at once sweeping and detailed, closely reasoned and passionately argued, that succeeds in painting an unforgettable picture--alive with conspirators and philosophers, utopians and nihilists--of the making of the modern world.

    Hope Against Hope was first published in English in 1970. It is Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir of her life with Osip, who was first arrested in 1934 and died in Stalin's Great Purge of 1937-38. Hope Against Hope is a vital eyewitness account of Stalin's Soviet Union and one of the greatest testaments to the value of literature and imaginative freedom ever written. But it is also a profound inspiration--a love story that relates the daily struggle to keep both love and art alive in the most desperate of circumstances.

    An effective refutation of revisionist interpretations of Marxist doctrine, it defines the position of scientific socialism on the issues of social reforms, the state, democracy, and the character of the proletarian revolution.

    To Stalin, he was such a threat that he warranted murder by pickax. This polarizing figure set up a world conflict that lasted through the twentieth century, and in Trotsky: A Graphic Biography, the renowned comic artist Rick Geary uses his distinct style to depict the stark reality of the man and his times. Trotsky's life becomes a guide to the creation of the Soviet Union, the horrors of World War I, and the establishment of international communism as he, Lenin, and their fellow Bolsheviks rise from persecution and a life underground to the height of political power. Ranging from his boyhood in the Ukraine to his fallout with Stalin and his moonlight romance with Frida Kahlo, Trotsky is a stunning look at one of the twentieth century's most important thinkers and the far-reaching political trends that he launched.

    With their lives and liberty on the line, TRANCE was hurriedly condensed from courtroom testimony into a book form and privately published by the authors in September 1995.ACCESS DENIED For Reasons of National Security is the rest of their true life's story, which required 16 years for the authors to survive and 3 years for them to write. This book is an amazing testament to the strength of the human spirit and one you will never forget for as long as your thoughts remain free.While TRANCE has become known worldwide in many licensed translations as one of the most successful US government whistleblowers' books ever written, it was never intended for the public who had no reference for understanding mind control nor was it to be considered a book. Rather it is what it is, a true and to date, uncontested document for the US Congressional Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Oversight. TRANCE is Cathy O'Brien's documented testimony she provided to US courts, US Congress, and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights Abuses of her existence as a CIA MK-Ultra mind control project's slave.ACCESS DENIED is a real book of answers, solutions and positive hope for all of u.s. and our allies around the world. This book was written for everyone and especially for the thousands who have read TRANCE and were left to imagine pertinent details that could not be included.How did Cathy recover from being tortured "out of her mind" until age 30 when intelligence insider Mark Phillips triggered and rescued her and her daughter Kelly away from their CIA operative handler?What are the documented details of how Mark & Cathy survived the state and federal and Congressional judicial gristmill aptly called the criminal justice system?Last but not least, what are the facts as to how Mark & Cathy were able to survive long enough to globally expose the criminal acts of some of the most politically powerful people who are still in control of our planet to this very day?ACCESS DENIED is a whistleblowers' living guide to success.

    The Russian cosmonaut was everything the Aaronovitch family wished for - a popular and handsome embodiment of modern communism.But who were they, these ever hopeful, defiant and (had they but known it) historically doomed people? Like a non-magical version of the wizards of J. K. Rowling's world, they lived secretly with and parallel to the non-communist majority, sometimes persecuted, sometimes ignored, but carrying on their own ways and traditions. Where others went to church they went to Socialist Sunday School, society’s up was their down and its heroes were their villains. Who wanted American TV when you could have Russian movies?A memoir of early life among communists, Party Animals first took David Aaronovitch back through his own memories of belief and action. But there was much more to it. He found himself studying the old secret service files, uncovering the unspoken shame and fears that provided the unconscious background to his own existence as a party animal.Only then did he begin to understand what had come before – both the obstinate heroism and the monstrous cowardice. And the elements that shape our fondest beliefs.

    Vollmann turns his trenchant eye to the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century. Assembling a composite portrait of these two warring leviathans and the terrible age they defined, the narrative intertwines experiences both real and fictional—a young German who joins the SS to expose its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich laboring under Stalinist oppression. Through these and other lives, Vollmann offers a daring and mesmerizing perspective on human actions during wartime.

    This classic by an associate of Yugoslavia's Tito created a sensation when it was published in 1957 because it was the first time that a ranking Communist had publicly analyzed his disillusionment with the system.

    He was an effective military strategist and an adept diplomat, who staked the fate of the Bolshevik revolution on the meager foundation of a Europe-wide Communist upheaval. He was a master politician who played his cards badly in the momentous struggle for power against Stalin in the 1920s. And he was an assimilated, indifferent Jew who was among the first to foresee that Hitler’s triumph would mean disaster for his fellow European Jews, and that Stalin would attempt to forge an alliance with Hitler if Soviet overtures to the Western democracies failed.Here, Trotsky emerges as a brilliant and brilliantly flawed man. Rubenstein offers us a Trotsky who is mentally acute and impatient with others, one of the finest students of contemporary politics who refused to engage in the nitty-gritty of party organization in the 1920s, when Stalin was maneuvering, inexorably, toward Trotsky’s own political oblivion.As Joshua Rubenstein writes in his preface, “Leon Trotsky haunts our historical memory. A preeminent revolutionary figure and a masterful writer, Trotsky led an upheaval that helped to define the contours of twentieth-century politics.” In this lucid and judicious evocation of Trotsky’s life, Joshua Rubenstein gives us an interpretation for the twenty-first century.

    Under Vladimir Putin's leadership, the country has annexed Crimea, begun a war in Eastern Ukraine, used chemical weapons on the streets of the UK and created an army of Internet trolls to meddle in the US presidential elections. How should we understand this apparent relapse into aggressive imperialism and militarism?In this book, Sergei Medvedev argues that this new wave of Russian nationalism is the result of mentalities that have long been embedded within the Russian psyche. Whereas in the West, the turbulent social changes of the 1960s and a rising awareness of the legacy of colonialism have modernized attitudes, Russia has been stymied by an enduring sense of superiority over its neighbours alongside a painful nostalgia for empire. It is this infantilized and irrational worldview that Putin and others have exploited, as seen most clearly in Russia's recent foreign policy decisions, including the annexation of Crimea.This sharp and insightful book, full of irony and humour, shows how the archaic forces of imperial revanchism have been brought back to life, shaking Russian society and threatening the outside world. It will be of great interest to anyone trying to understand the forces shaping Russian politics and society today.

    One can understand that men as indispensable as Marx and Engels should be the partisans of a programme which, consecrating and approving political power, opens the door to all ambitions. Since there will be political power there will necessarily be subjects, got up in Republican fashion, as citizens, it is true, but who will none the less be subjects, and who as such will be forced to obey.

    Between 1900 and 1920, Russia underwent a complete and irreversible transformation: by the end of these two decades, a new regime was in place, the economy had collapsed, and over 20 million Russians had died during the revolution and what followed. Still, Bolshevik power remained intact due to a remarkable combination of military prowess, violent terror tactics, and the failures of their opposition. And as McMeekin shows, Russia's revolutionaries were aided at nearly every step by countries like Germany and Sweden who sought to benefit—politically and economically—from the chaotic changes overtaking the country.The first comprehensive history of these momentous events in a decade, The Russian Revolution combines cutting-edge scholarship and a fast-paced narrative to shed new light on a great turning point of the twentieth century.

    The consequences of the popular rebellion and Russian President Putin’s attempt to strangle it remain uncertain. In this book, Andrew Wilson combines a spellbinding, on-the-scene account of the Kiev Uprising with a deeply informed analysis of what precipitated the events, what has developed in subsequent months, and why the story is far from over.   Wilson situates Ukraine’s February insurgence within Russia’s expansionist ambitions throughout the previous decade. He reveals how President Putin’s extravagant spending to develop soft power in all parts of Europe was aided by wishful thinking in the EU and American diplomatic inattention, and how Putin’s agenda continues to be widely misunderstood in the West. The author then examines events in the wake of the Uprising—the military coup in Crimea, the election of President Petro Poroshenko, the Malaysia Airlines tragedy, rising tensions among all of Russia's neighbors, both friend and foe, and more. Ukraine Crisis provides an important, accurate record of events that unfolded in Ukraine in 2014. It also rings a clear warning that the unresolved problems of the region have implications well beyond Ukrainian borders.

    It found its way into the libraries of the CIA, the FBI, the White House, and homes all across America and overseas in Spanish and excerpted in other languages. In this hard-hitting book an urgent need is finally fulfilled. In one exciting, readable volume, the incredible story of Communism is graphically told. We believe this to be the most vivid and comprehensive book on the subject ever published. It contains a distillation of more than a hundred books and treatises on Communism, many written by Marxist authors. We see the Communist the way he sees himself---stripped of propaganda and pretense. Hence the title, "The Naked Communist." Here is explained Communism's amazing appeal, its history, and its basic and unchanging concepts---even its secret time-table of conquest! Vital questions are clearly answered---Who gave Russia the A-bomb? How did the FBI fight the battle of the underground? Why did the West lose 600 million allies after World War II? What really happened in Korea? What is Communism's great secret weapon? Is there an answer to Communism? What lies ahead?