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The Soviet invasion of its neighbour Afghanistan in December 1979 sparked a nine-year conflict until Soviet forces withdrew in 1988–89, dooming the communist Afghanistan government to defeat at the hands of the Mujahideen, the Afghan popular resistance backed by the USA and other powers. Gregory Fremont-Barnes reveals how the Soviet invasion had enormous implications on the global stage; it prompted the US Senate to refuse to ratify the hard-won SALT II arms-limitation treaty, and the USA and 64 other countries boycotted the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics.

It was known as 'the vast prison without a roof'. From the beginning of the 19th century until the Russian Revolution, the tsars exiled more than one million prisoners and their families beyond the Ural Mountains to Siberia. Daniel Beer illuminates both the brutal realities of this inhuman system and the tragic and inspiring fates of those who endured it.

In 1979, alarmed Soviet leaders watched the growing civil war in Afghanistan with trepidation. Russia’s neighbor had been a close ally for many years, acting as a buffer between Russia and British India, proving vital in the “Great Game” between the two empires. Various coups had, by this point, led to a Moscow-friendly government in Kabul, but things were not playing out as the Soviets had hoped.

Anne Applebaum, ganadora del Premio Pulitzer por Gulag y finalista del National Book Award por El Telón de Acero, cuenta en Hambruna roja la reveladora historia de uno de los peores crímenes de la era soviética. En 1929, la gran colectivización puesta en marcha por Stalin forzó a millones de campesinos a entregar sus tierras. El resultado fue una hambruna sin precedentes; al menos cinco millones de personas perecieron entre 1931 y 1934 en la URSS, de los cuales cuatro eran ucranianos.

From learning about Lenin and the Red Army to discovering how and why Stalin rose to power and his eventual leadership during World War II and beyond, this book provides an essential look at one of the most important periods in Russian history. Listeners will be enthralled by this fascinating tale that delves into every aspect of Russia's struggles and successes.

Their wings were weak, their talons broken…yet they flew the Soviets into winning the war against the Nazis. They were ignored, laughed at, and forced to do chores beneath their ranks. Why? They were the "weaker" gender. Despite being capable, they were initially denied entry into combat. And when they did enlist, their treatment only worsened: They were assigned worn-out uniforms and left to the mercy of rusted equipment on the battlefield. These adversities didn’t stop the Soviet female fighters from going ahead and showing unprecedented excellence in warfare.

In 1946, after five years as a prisoner - first as a Soviet POW in Nazi concentration camps, then as a deportee in the Arctic Gulag - 29-year-old Lev Mishchenko unexpectedly received a letter from Sveta, the sweetheart he had hardly dared hope was still alive. Amazingly, over the next eight years, the lovers managed to exchange more than 1,500 messages and even to smuggle Sveta herself into the camp for secret meetings. Their recently discovered correspondence is the only known real-time record of life in Stalin's Gulag.

Historia de una ilusión compartida y una gran desilusión que no fue tolerada. El viaje de André Gide a Rusia en los años treinta es un recorrido por la accidentada geografía de la intolerancia: más allá de la URSS, por las patrias presentes y futuras de la utopía totalitaria.

Chechnya’s modern history is marked by its fluctuating ties with the Russian Empire and, later, the Soviet Union. A notable dark chapter was in 1944 when Joseph Stalin ordered the mass deportation of Chechnya’s entire population. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, tensions between ethnic Russians and Chechens escalated into two full-blown wars. The first, in 1994, saw Russian forces invade Chechnya.

El triunfo de la Revolución rusa transformó al mundo y fue trascendental para la historia de la política contemporánea. Este audio libro, riguroso y ameno, nos ayudará a entender los motivos que provocaron el derrocamiento de los Románov y el triunfo de la Revolución.

Fair warning. This is not a page-turning memoir. Marshal Rokossovskiy (who is editor, not author) and the gang of military men who helped him produce this tome did not set out to write a novel. This is a compendium of military reports, and analysis of those reports, dealing with the entire campaign of which Stalingrad was the centerpiece. It is an exhaustive detailing of events taking place between July 1942 and February 1943 as far north as Voronezh Oblast', as far west as Ukraine and as far south as Dagestan. In translating other books dealing with Stalingrad, I was left wondering why I ...

The implosion of the Soviet Union was the culmination of a gripping game played out between two men who intensely disliked each other and had different concepts for the future. Mikhail Gorbachev, a sophisticated and urbane reformer, sought to modernize and preserve the USSR; Boris Yeltsin, a coarse and a hard drinking “bulldozer,” wished to destroy the union and create a capitalist Russia. The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt, carried out by hardline communists, shook Gorbachev’s authority and was a triumph for Yeltsin.

This timely book offers a world history of insurgencies and of counterinsurgency warfare. Jeremy Black moves beyond the conventional Western-centric narrative, reaching back to antiquity to trace the pre-modern origins of war within states. His sweeping study will be essential material for all students of military history.

Coming of age in America in the 1970s and 80s, Joe Weisberg was a Cold Warrior. After briefly studying Russian in Leningrad, he joined the CIA in 1990 - just in time to watch the Soviet Union collapse. But less than a decade after the first Cold War ended, a new one broke out. Russia changed in many of the ways that America hoped it might - more capitalist, more religious, more open to Western ideas. But US sanctions have crippled Russia's economy; and Russia's interventions have exacerbated political problems in America.

In the winter of 1959, a group of nine young and experienced hikers embarked on a journey into the Ural Mountains of Russia. Although they had previously undertaken cold-weather trips, this particular expedition would tragically be their last. During their trek, the hikers encountered something unexpected in the supposedly desolate region, resulting in the demise of the entire group. The exact events of that fateful night remain unknown, but the incident has since become one of the world's most perplexing mysteries.

At last a book about the so-called "Mad Monk" of Imperial Russia that lays to rest the myths and reveals the truth about one of the most controversial characters in human history while exploring the impact his murder had on a dynasty, a people, and a country.

Russia is an assortment of the world’s most beautiful cultures and religions. But how did Russia become home to such a diverse population and tradition that is redolent of so many parts of the world? How much does Russia owe to its spellbinding steppe in respect to its unparalleled history? This audiobook uncovers the mystery behind this and many other little known facts about Russia.

Russia is the largest country in the world, with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. Over a thousand years this multifaceted nation of shifting borders has been known as Rus, Muscovy, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Thirty years ago, it was reinvented as the Russian Federation. Russia is not an enigma, but its past is violent, tragic, sometimes glorious, and certainly complicated. Like the rest of us, the Russians constantly rewrite their history. They too omit episodes of national disgrace in favour of patriotic anecdotes, sometimes more rooted in myth than reality.

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Romanovs and Nicholas II, then pay attention.

Grigori Rasputin began life as a peasant in the poorest reaches of Siberia and ended his life as the virtual second-in-command of Tsarist Russia. How did he achieve such a rapid change in fortunes? Was it through palace intrigue or magic and mind control? Or perhaps, the causes were a combination of hypnosis and hemophilia? The tsar’s son Nicholas had been born with the dreaded “royal disease” otherwise known as the blood clotting deficiency named hemophilia. The self-proclaimed healer managed to convince the royal family that he was the only way that their son would stay alive.