Soviet Politics

Sisters Vera and Marya were brought up as good Soviets: obedient despite hardships of poverty and tragedy, committed to communist ideals, and loyal to Stalin. Several years after fighting on the Eastern front, both women find themselves deep in the mire of conflicts shaping a new world order in 1947 Berlin. When Marya, an interpreter, gets entangled in Vera’s cryptic web of deceit and betrayal, she must make desperate choices to survive—and protect those she loves.

This is the intimate story of 20 tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Simon Sebag Montefiore's gripping chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence, and wild extravagance, with a global cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries, and poets, from Ivan the Terrible to Tolstoy and Pushkin.

It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump’s inauguration as president of the US. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin’s long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and Mafia kingpins had ensnared Trump in, starting more than 20 years ago with the massive bailout of a string of Trump hotel and casino failures. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence.

The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War—and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime—and Russia itself—at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience working in Moscow, journalist Owen Matthews provides the answer. He takes us inside the COVID bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of nationalist fantasy and bad information.

A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of Hells Angels convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, bohemian theatre directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators and oligarch revolutionaries.

Angela Merkel has always been an outsider. A pastor’s daughter raised in Soviet-controlled East Germany, she spent her twenties working as a research chemist, entering politics only after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And yet within fifteen years, she had become chancellor of Germany and, before long, the unofficial leader of the West. In this “masterpiece of discernment and insight” (The New York Times Book Review), acclaimed biographer Kati Marton sets out to pierce the mystery of Merkel’s unlikely ascent.

In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe.

While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top-secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States.

A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the US confronted the USSR during the Cold War.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In this authoritative account, he traces the war’s decisive moments—from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the gruelling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over Bakhmut—to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against Russia, one of the world’s great military powers, in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath.

It is 1990 when Melvina Donleavy arrives in Soviet Belarus on her first undercover mission with the CIA, alongside three fellow agents—none of whom know she is playing two roles. To the prying eyes of the KGB, she is merely a secretary; to her CIA minders, she is the only one who can stop the flow of nuclear weapons from the crumbling Soviet Union into the Middle East. For Mel has a secret; she is a “super recognizer,” someone who never forgets a face. But no training could prepare her for the reality of life undercover, and for the streets of Minsk.

The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution, and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history. In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions?

The Story of Russia is about how the Russians defined themselves―and repeatedly reinvented such definitions along the way. Moving from Russia’s agrarian beginnings in the first millennium to subsequent periods of monarchy, totalitarianism, and perestroika, all the way up to Vladimir Putin and his use of myths of Russian history to bolster his regime, celebrated historian Orlando Figes examines the ideas that have guided the country’s actions.

In the greatest intelligence operation in the history of the world, Donald Trump was made president of the United States with the assistance of a foreign power. For the first time, The Plot to Destroy Democracy reveals the dramatic story of how blackmail, espionage, assassination, and psychological warfare were used by Vladimir Putin and his spy agencies to steal the 2016 US election. It will show how Russia and its fifth column allies tried to flip the cornerstones of democracy in order to reengineer the world political order that kept most of the world free since since 1945.

Russia's World Order describes the civilizational theory that has come to dominate Russian official discourse, and that has come to dominate Russian official discourse and that is being used to justify its clashes with the West. Whereas the West promotes a vision of history that drives all nations toward convergence on a single model, Russia's political leaders increasingly portray the world as consisting of numerous distinct civilizations, each diverging toward its own destination.

A memoir of service by the American ambassador who was on the diplomatic front lines when Putin invaded Ukraine, Midnight in Moscow is the first behind-the-scenes account of how U.S.-Russia relations hit their nadir—and a playbook for our unfolding confrontation.

Drawing on new and often startling information from newly opened Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives, this thrilling account explores the strategic dynamics that drove the Cold War, provides illuminating portraits of its major personalities, and offers much fresh insight into its most crucial events. Riveting, revelatory, and wise, it tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand as America once more faces an implacable ideological enemy.

In June 2023, the Wagner Group assembled an armed convoy that included tanks and rocket launchers and set out on what seemed like a journey to take control of Moscow. The last person to attempt such a venture was Adolf Hitler. Wagner’s power began from patronage, then grew from international theft and extortion, until it was so great it exposed the weakness of Russia’s conventional military and became a threat to the Russian state, one that was not demonstrably eliminated until a private jet containing Wagner’s core commanders was blown up in midair.

Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.

The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to its own people and to the world.