Memoir Russia

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.

Michal Goleniewski, cover name Sniper, was one of the most important spies of the early Cold War. For two and a half years at the end of the 1950s, as a Lt. Colonel at the top of Poland’s espionage service, he smuggled more than 5,000 top-secret Soviet bloc intelligence and military documents, as well as 160 rolls of microfilm, out from behind the Iron Curtain. In January 1961, he abandoned his wife and children and made a dramatic defection across divided Berlin with his East German mistress to the safety of American territory.

Cutting through the confusion and the media hype surrounding the infamous Russia-Ukraine conflict, this illuminating collection offers a factual, concise, and up-to-date account of the key events and figures in this rapidly unfolding war. With a play-by-play recap of the long-running tensions between these two countries and their places on the world stage, you’ll also discover how their struggle has spilled out to impact politics across the globe.

In 1929, Stalin plunged Soviet Russia into a coercive "revolution from above", a decade-long effort to amass military-industrial power for a new war. He forced 25 million peasant families into state-run collectives and transformed the Communist Party into a servile instrument. In 1939, he concluded the pact with Hitler that enabled him to grasp at Eastern Europe while Hitler made war in the West.

Considering that he has gone down in history as Ivan the Terrible, the first tsar of Russia could hardly have been a boy scout. As his name suggests, Ivan had an utterly terrifying presence during his 37-year-long reign. Ivan's story is not only one of brutality, it is also a tale of great suffering.

Harold Lamb's superb story-telling and clear, sharp scholarship are focused on Peter the Great, his gigantic labors to raise Russia in one generation to cultural equality with Europe, and his efforts to mold and shape a sprawling empire. At the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648, the city of Moscow had extended its sway eastward through the Asiatic continent. People began to ask, "Will the city control the continent?" or "Will the continent control the city?" These were crucial questions...questions that continue to bedevil Russians to this day.

Russians needed internal visas to travel outside their place of residence. It was rare for foreigners to get such travel permission. After 30 years of corporate employment the author made an improbable career change. His new boss and two VP’s were black-listed by the KGB and could not enter Russia. The author was asked to write a business seminar proposal for Russia to see if he could open a door and get in. One of the three Russians who received the proposal got approval nine months later by Moscow’s Ministry of Education and the KGB.

From the court of Imperial Russia to Foxley Manor in Herefordshire, the story begins with the First World War. Part One takes the listener through the Russian Revolution to the formation of the Second Polish Republic and the Polish-Bolshevik war. Part Two begins at the outset to World War Two with the German invasion on September 1st, 1939, and the subsequent invasion by the Soviet Union on the 17th of the same month. The listener is taken through the early months of soviet occupation and then on to the first wave of Polish deportations to Siberia.

Previous histories have focused on the KGB, leaving military intelligence and the special service - which specialized in codes and ciphers - lurking in the shadows. Drawing on previously neglected Russian sources, Haslam reveals how both were in fact crucial to the survival of the Soviet state. This was especially true after Stalin's death in 1953, as the Cold War heated up and dedicated Communist agents the regime had relied upon - Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, Donald Maclean - were betrayed.

In this rapid-paced book, a former CIA chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence breaks open the mysterious case of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko's 1964 defection to the United States. Still a highly controversial chapter in the history of Cold War espionage, the Nosenko affair has inspired debate for more than 40 years. Was Nosenko a bona fide defector with the real information about Lee Harvey Oswald's stay in Soviet Russia, or was he a KGB loyalist, engaged in a complex game of deception?

Part Blackhawk Down, part The Riddle of the Sands, former MI6 officer Harry Ferguson has written an extraordinarily gripping non-fiction thriller. Operation Kronstadt not only reveals the early days of intelligence services but also uncovers a truly dramatic story from the Russian Revolution involving a daring rescue attempt and a "mission impossible" against the best defended naval target in Russia.

The raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics, never imagining that it would involve kidnappers, garbage bags of money, and encounters with the weird and wonderful from Mongolia to Tajikistan.

On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union just weeks before a peace summit between the two nations. The CIA concocted a cover story for President Eisenhower to deliver, assuring him that no one could have survived a fall from that altitude. But against all odds, pilot Francis Gary Powers emerged from the wreckage and was seized by the KGB. Award-winning journalist Monte Reel reveals how the U-2 spy program, principally devised by four men working in secret, upended the Cold War and carved a new mission for the CIA.

From comedian to president to freedom fighter, this is the story of Volodymyr Zelensky, the man who stood up to Vladimir Putin and forever changed the world. The authors of Zelensky chronicle his rise, discuss the changing attitudes toward him by Ukrainians there and abroad, and include some of his most stirring speeches.

Dive into the haunting world of Andrei Chikatilo, the notorious "Rostov Ripper," whose reign of terror gripped Soviet Russia for over a decade. In this meticulously researched account, The Rostov Ripper unearths the chilling details of Chikatilo’s life, his heinous crimes, and the police failures that allowed him to evade capture. From twisted motives to relentless pursuit, this true-crime narrative takes you inside the mind of a murderer and the flawed justice system that struggled to bring him to justice.

Reigning from 1894 to 1917, Nicholas II was the last emperor of Russia. His rule served as the bookends between what were essentially two Russian empires; the one that his forefathers carved out through imperial ambition and the one dictated by the zealous communists of the Soviet Union bent on socialist expansion. Nicholas was by most accounts a conflicted ruler; a man viewed as kind and generous in his mannerisms, yet alleged to be greatly disconnected and apathetic toward the subjects he was supposed to rule over.

This audiobook offers the first systematic analysis of Putin's two wars, placing the Second Chechen War and the War with Georgia of 2008 in their broader historical contexts. Drawing on extensive original Russian sources, Marcel H. Van Herpen analyzes in detail how Putin's wars were prepared and conducted and why they led to allegations of war crimes and genocide.

With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides - Pushkin and Tolstoy, among others - Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet fields and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of nationalities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Wheeler follows local guides; boards with families in modest homestays; eats roe, pelmeni, and cabbage soup; invokes recipes from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking; learns the language; and observes the pattern of outcry and silence that characterizes life under Vladimir Putin.

George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a senior officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain. Yet he was also one of the least-known double agents, and remained unrepentant. In 1961, Blake was sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for betraying to the KGB all of the Western operations in which he was involved, and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain. This was the longest sentence for espionage ever to have been handed down by a British court

Seguindo os passos do pai e do irmão, Oleg Gordievsky se tornou oficial da KGB após frequentar as melhores instituições soviéticas. Porém, ao contrário deles, nutria uma secreta aversão pelo regime da URSS. Ele resolveu assumir seu primeiro posto da inteligência russa em 1966. Em 1974, tornou-se agente duplo do MI6, o serviço de inteligência britânico, e dez anos depois era o homem mais importante da União Soviética em Londres. Gordievsky ajudou o Ocidente a virar o jogo contra a KGB na Guerra Fria.