Soviet Memoirs

Arkadi Babtschenko kennt als ehemaliger Soldat die russische Armee aus ihrem Innersten; als kritischer, verfolgter Autor lebt er seit Jahren in der Ukraine und im Exil. Mit dieser einzigartigen Binnensicht beider Seiten schreibt er über die Situation seit 2014, wie niemand sonst es vermag – leidenschaftlich persönlich, stilistisch brillant und mit größter Kenntnis: Da sind die staatsnahen Medien, die mit Trash und Nationalkitsch einen "russischen Infantilismus" heranzüchten, ohne Würde und Scham.

Stingray’s memoir vividly shows how the energy of youth culture and an international love affair with rock ‘n’ roll forged alliances among a new generation who brought an end to the U.S.S.R.

No Smiling Allowed is a comedic take on life in the former Soviet Union, as an immigrant in America. Julia Bendis has compiled many years of funny stories about her old-fashioned and traditional Russian parents, their understanding of how life works in the United States, their hilarious adventures, and her own younger generation's view of what it was like to blend in as a weird-looking kid from Russia.

Partly out of dire circumstances and partly from a cultural worldview, it was the Soviet Union who first pressed female pilots into direct combat when Hitler invaded Russia. Ahead of Stalingrad, Stalin publicly declared that “women should be given the right to fly and fight for their country.” As a result, more than 800,000 women served in the Soviet military during the war years.

The World War II era produced many leaders of titanic determination, men whose strengths and weaknesses left an extraordinary imprint on historical affairs. The struggle between massively divergent ideologies, exacerbated by huge social changes affected by the world’s technological metamorphosis into the machine age, catapulted some individuals unexpectedly onto the world stage. This audiobook details the lives of two such men: Josip Broz Tito, better known to history as Marshal Tito, and Nicolae Ceaușescu, one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictators.

Prostitution, Raub, Drogen, Terror, Menschenhandel, Umweltverbrechen – nahezu allen kriminellen Taten ist eines gemeinsam: Sie lohnen sich nur, wenn Kriminelle die Herkunft ihrer schmutzigen Erträge verschleiern können – durch Geldwäsche. Geld ist eine Waffe: Kriminelle bestechen Politiker, beeinflussen Parlamentswahlen durch Fake News und destabilisieren mit Cyberattacken die Demokratie. Klar ist: Nimmt man Kriminellen das dreckige Geld, trifft man sie am härtesten. Doch Deutschland tut in dieser Hinsicht praktisch nichts.

In Deutschland wurde Alexej Nawalny erst dadurch bekannt, dass er nur knapp einen Giftanschlag überlebte, für den er den russischen Geheimdienst verantwortlich macht. Nach seiner Behandlung in Deutschland wurde er bei seiner Rückkehr umgehend festgenommen, veröffentlichte aber gleichzeitig ein Video über Putin, das millionenfach geklickt wurde, Hunderttausende gingen auf die Straße.

Spies are a feature of countless works of fiction in which they often discover secrets on which the fate of nations hang in the balance. Reality is generally rather more mundane as spies often gather low-level intelligence that only makes sense when it is examined by analysts and compared to information from other sources. Espionage provides clues to what the enemy is planning, but on its own it rarely changes the course of a war. Moreover, real spies are generally anonymous and not the bold, swashbuckling action heroes depicted in fiction.

John Cairncross was among the most damaging spies of the 20th century. A member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring, he leaked highly sensitive documents from Bletchley Park, MI6, and the Treasury to the Soviet Union...Based on newly released archival materials, this biography will be the first to cover the life and espionage of this singularly important spy. 

On a sunny September day in 1931, Soviet spy Stanislav Shumovsky walked down the gangplank of the SS Europa and into New York, concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students. Joseph Stalin had sent him to acquire American secrets to help close the USSR’s yawning technology gap. In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the listener on a journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation, piecing together every aspect of Shumovsky’s life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives.

Witty, sharp, and unflinching, I Named My Dog Pushkin will have fans of Samantha Irby and Jenny Lawson howling with laughter at Margarita’s catastrophes, her victories, and her near misses as she learns to grow as both a woman and an immigrant in a world that often doesn’t appreciate either.