Nikita Khrushchev was one of the most complex and important political figures of the twentieth century. Ruler of the Soviet Union during the first decade after Stalin's death, Khrushchev left a contradictory stamp on his country and on the world. His life and career mirror the Soviet experience: revolution, civil war, famine, collectivization, industrialization, terror, world war, cold war, Stalinism, post-Stalinism. Complicit in terrible Stalinist crimes, Khrushchev nevertheless retained his humanity: his daring attempt to reform communism prepared the ground for its eventual collapse; and his awkward efforts to ease the cold war triggered its most dangerous crises.This is the first comprehensive biography of Khrushchev and the first of any Soviet leader to reflect the full range of sources that have become available since the USSR collapsed. Combining a page-turning historical narrative with penetrating political and psychological analysis, this book brims with the life and excitement of a man whose story personified his era.

    From France in the 1790s to Vietnam in the 1970s, social revolutions have been rare but undeniably of enormous importance in modern world history. States and Social Revolutions provides a new frame of reference for analyzing the causes, the conflicts, and the outcomes of such revolutions. And it develops in depth a rigorous, comparative historical analysis of three major cases: the French Revolution of 1787 through the early 1800s, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the 1960s. Believing that existing theories of revolution, both Marxist and non-Marxist, are inadequate to explain the actual historical patterns of revolutions, the author urges us to adopt fresh perspectives. Above all, she maintains that states conceived as administrative and coercive organizations potentially autonomous from class controls and interests must be made central to explanations of revolutions.

    Yet like millions of others who suffered during Stalin's reign of terror, she was arrested—on trumped-up charges of being a Trotskyist terrorist and counter-revolutionary—and sentenced to prison. With an amazing eye for detail, profound strength, and an indefatigable spirit, Ginzburg recounts the years, days, and minutes she endured in prisons and labor camps, including two years of solitary confinement. A classic account of survival, Journey into the Whirlwind is considered one of the most important documents of Stalin's regime ever written.

    The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin’s dictatorship, were the result of a tight network of trusted henchmen (and women), spies, psychopaths, and thugs. At the top of this pyramid of terror sat five indispensable hangmen who presided over the various incarnations of Stalin’s secret police. Now, in his harrowing new book, Donald Rayfield probes the lives, the minds, the twisted careers, and the unpunished crimes of Stalin’s loyal assassins.Founded by Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka–the Extraordinary Commission–came to life in the first years of the Russian Revolution. Spreading fear in a time of chaos, the Cheka proved a perfect instrument for Stalin’s ruthless consolidation of power. But brutal as it was, the Cheka under Dzerzhinsky was amateurish compared to the well-oiled killing machines that succeeded it. Genrikh Iagoda’s OGPU specialized in political assassination, propaganda, and the manipulation of foreign intellectuals. Later, the NKVD recruited a new generation of torturers. Starting in 1938, terror mastermind Lavrenti Beria brought violent repression to a new height of ingenuity and sadism.As Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading Soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeev, Alexei Tolstoi, Isaak Babel, and Osip Mandelstam were all caught in Stalin’s web–courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and “accomplishments” of Stalin’s key henchmen and their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power spanning half a century.Though Beria lost his power–and his life–after Stalin’s death in 1953, the fundamental methods of the hangmen maintained their grip into the second half of the twentieth century. Indeed, Rayfield argues, the tradition of terror, far from disappearing, has emerged with renewed vitality under Vladimir Putin. Written with grace, passion, and a dazzling command of the intricacies of Soviet politics and society, Stalin and the Hangmen is a devastating indictment of the individuals and ideology that kept Stalin in power.

    He has written the history of a utopian illusion and the tragic consequences it had for the people of the Soviet Union and the world." -- David Remnick, The New York Review of Books "In Martin Malia, the Soviet Union had one of its most acute observers. With this book, it may well have found the cornerstone of its history." -- Francois Furet, author of Interpreting the French Revolution "The Soviet Tragedy offers the most thorough scholarly analysis of the Communist phenomenon that we are likely to get for a long while to come...Malia states that his narrative is intended 'to substantiate the basic argument,' and this is certainly an argumentative book, which drives its thesis home with hammer blows. On this breathtaking journey, Malia is a witty and often brilliantly penetrating guide. He has much wisdom to impart." -- The Times Literary Supplement "This is history at the high level, well deployed factually, but particularly worthwhile in the philosophical and political context -- at once a view and an overview." -- The Washington Post

    The siege was not lifted for two and a half years, by which time some three quarters of a million Leningraders had died of starvation.Anna Reid's Leningrad is a gripping, authoritative narrative history of this dramatic moment in the twentieth century, interwoven with indelible personal accounts of daily siege life drawn from diarists on both sides. They reveal the Nazis' deliberate decision to starve Leningrad into surrender and Hitler's messianic miscalculation, the incompetence and cruelty of the Soviet war leadership, the horrors experienced by soldiers on the front lines, and, above all, the terrible details of life in the blockaded city: the relentless search for food and water; the withering of emotions and family ties; looting, murder, and cannibalism- and at the same time, extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice.Stripping away decades of Soviet propaganda, and drawing on newly available diaries and government records, Leningrad also tackles a raft of unanswered questions: Was the size of the death toll as much the fault of Stalin as of Hitler? Why didn't the Germans capture the city? Why didn't it collapse into anarchy? What decided who lived and who died? Impressive in its originality and literary style, Leningrad gives voice to the dead and will rival Anthony Beevor's classic Stalingrad in its impact.

    The most informative, balanced, and up-to-date short study of Catherine the Great and her reign, written by an eminent scholar of Russian history"Not just another biography of Catherine but a panoramic view of Russia's social, political, economic, and cultural development and of its emergence as a formidable power in the international arena during the thirty-four years of her reign."—Anthony Cross, New York Times Book Review This edition includes a new preface dealing with recently discovered sources and revised interpretations of the period.Praise for the earlier edition: “A panoramic view of Russia’s social, political, economic, and cultural development and of its emergence as a formidable power in the international arena during the thirty-four years of [Catherine’s] reign.”—Anthony Cross, New York Times Book Review “De Madariaga’s book will be the standard and an essential guide for all students and scholars of Russian and European history of the second half of the eighteenth century.”—Marc Raeff, Journal of Modern History

    Now that Dmitri Volkogonov, historian and former general in the Soviet Army, has been entrusted with the management of the archives as a Special Assistant to Boris Yeltsin, we at last have a chance to find out. For the last three years he has combed through more than 3700 once-secret documents covering every piece of information in the archive system concerning Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin and his legacy. He has woven this mountain of information into a compelling story of the Soviet founding father and the system he created. Volkogonov offers a radical departure from the traditional interpretation of Lenin as an idealist. Many of the characteristics of so-called Stalinism, he shows, arose in Lenin's lifetime, often on Lenin's direct orders. From the creation of concentration camps, to brutal repression of the church and the media, to the strategic cultivation of a cult of personality, Lenin's leadership was cruel and totalitarian. Volkogonov also offers select revelations from the post-Lenin years in order to demonstrate that the worst excesses of the Soviet state all had their roots in its founding father. In Volkogonov's words, for years "we asked ourselves where Stalin had acquired the cruelty which he inflicted on his fellow countrymen. None of us - the present author included - could begin to imagine that the father of domestic Russian terrorism, merciless and totalitarian, could have been Lenin."

    He left carrying the original manuscript of Pasternak’s first and only novel, entrusted to him with these words: “This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world.” Pasternak believed his novel was unlikely ever to be published in the Soviet Union, where the authorities regarded it as an irredeemable assault on the 1917 Revolution. But he thought it stood a chance in the West and, indeed, beginning in Italy, Doctor Zhivago was widely published in translation throughout the world. From there the life of this extraordinary book entered the realm of the spy novel. The CIA, which recognized that the Cold War was above all an ideological battle, published a Russian-language edition of Doctor Zhivago and smuggled it into the Soviet Union. Copies were devoured in Moscow and Leningrad, sold on the black market, and passed surreptitiously from friend to friend. Pasternak’s funeral in 1960 was attended by thousands of admirers who defied their government to bid him farewell. The example he set launched the great tradition of the writer-dissident in the Soviet Union.  In The Zhivago Affair, Peter Finn and Petra Couvée bring us intimately close to this charming, passionate, and complex artist. First to obtain CIA files providing concrete proof of the agency’s involvement, the authors give us a literary thriller that takes us back to a fascinating period of the Cold War—to a time when literature had the power to stir the world.(With 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)

    His political role as the power behind the throne is as much obscured today, as it was then, by the fascination with his morality and private life. Andrew Cook’s re-investigation of Rasputin’s death will reveal for the first time the real masterminds behind the murder of the "mad monk."

    Using his own experiences as a journalist and propagandist with the Red Army during the war against Poland, Babel brings to life an astonishing cast of characters from the exuberant, violent era of early Soviet history: commissars and colonels, Cossacks and peasants, and among them the bespectacled, Jewish writer/intellectual, observing it all and trying to establish his role in the new Russia.Drawn from the acclaimed, award-winning Complete Works of Isaac Babel, this volume includes all of the Red Cavalry cycle; Babel's 1920 diary, from which the material for the fiction was drawn; and his preliminary sketches for the stories—the whole constituting a fascinating picture of a great writer turning life into art.

    Locked in a complex, uniquely Russian partnership, Berezovsky and Abramovich battled their way through the “Wild East” of Russia with Berezovsky acting as the younger man’s krysha — literally, his roof, his protector.Written with the heart-stopping pacing of a thriller—but even more compelling because it is true—this story of amassing obscene wealth and power depicts a rarefied world seldom seen up close. Under Berezovsky’s krysha, Abramovich built one of Russia’s largest oil companies from the ground up and in exchange made cash deliveries—including 491 million dollars in just one year. But their relationship frayed when Berezovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin in the media—and had to flee to the UK. Abramovich continued to prosper. Dead bodies trailed Berezovsky’s footsteps, and threats followed him to London, where an associate of his died painfully and famously of Polonium poisoning. Then Berezovsky himself was later found dead, declared a suicide.Exclusively sourced, capturing a momentous period in recent world history, Once Upon a Time in Russia is at once personal and political, offering an unprecedented look into the wealth, corruption, and power behind what Graydon Carter called “the story of our age.”

    He did extensive research into the stereotypes of the Russian people--from that work he produced this book which reveals the nature of the Russian People.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    He wrote Conversations With Stalin in '61, between arrests. The book is a diary of his three voyages to Moscow in '43, '44 & '48. Djilas, memories no doubt leavened by hindsight, titles the three meetings "Raptures", "Doubts" & "Disappointments". As these names indicate, the book chronicles his growing disillusionment with Soviet-led socialism. Djilas was an educated man, a sophisticated thinker & a writer. So that when we read passages in the "Raptures" section such as, "My entire being quivered from the joyous anticipation of an imminent encounter with the Soviet Union", it seems clear he was not the naïf that he makes himself out to be. Rather, given his circumstances at the time that he was writing, he was heightening the sense of his early fascination with all things Soviet so that his later disenchantment is all the more palpable. The book fascinates with its detail. He travels to Moscow as a foreign dignitary to discuss Yugoslav-Soviet policies. He must cool his heels for days before he's finally summoned to meet Stalin. Then the meetings are typically all night dinners with copious drinking & byzantine political subtext to the conversation. Stalin dominates the discussion so thoroughly that when he insists that the Netherlands was not a member of the Benelux union, nobody dares correct him. Djilas recognizes traits of greatness in Stalin, his ruthlessness & farsightedness. He describes these not out of regard or respect, but because they are precisely the qualities which make Stalin evil. "Every crime was possible to Stalin, for there was not one he had not committed." As doubts begin to creep in, he records the development of his own cynicism. "In politics, more than in anything else, the beginning of everything lies in moral indignation & in doubt of the good intentions of others". His portraits of Krushchev, open-minded & clever; of Molotov, Stalin's taciturn lieutenant; Dimitrov, the powerful Bulgarian kept on Stalin's string; Beria, sinister & drunk; & a host of other prominent figures make this book required reading for those interested in the era. The descriptions of machinations surrounding Yugoslav-Albanian-Bulgarian politics & his unflattering characterization of Croatian hero Andrija Hebrang are of great interest to students of Balkan history.