Vladimir Putin has turned Russia from fledgling democracy into a police state, and in 2020 a constitutional change gave him the means to stay in power until 2036. In this acclaimed political biography, former BBC Moscow correspondent Angus Roxburgh charts the dramatic fight for Russia's future under Putin. Roxburgh shows how the former KGB man evolved from reformer to autocrat, how he sought the West's respect but earned its fear and contempt.Drawing on dozens of exclusive intervie...

A British journalist offers an intimate view of Russia from the Cold War to the rise of Putin through his personal experiences as a correspondent.In the course of the past 45 years, Angus Roxburgh has translated Tolstoy, met four successive Russian presidents and been jinxed by a Siberian shaman. He has come under fire in war zones and been arrested by Chechen thugs. During the Cold War he was wooed by the KGB, who then decided he would make a lousy spy and expelle...

Russia under Vladimir Putin has proved a prickly partner for the West, a far cry from the democratic ally many hoped for when the Soviet Union collapsed. Abroad, he has used Russia's energy might as a foreign policy weapon, while at home he has cracked down on opponents, adamant that only he has the right vision for his country's future.Former BBC Moscow correspondent Angus Roxburgh charts the dramatic fight for Russia's future under Vladimir Putin - how the former KGB man changed ...

Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and His Times is not a memoir and does not pretend to be one. It is an anthology of everything the composer was able to get into print between 1926 and his death in 1975 - newspaper articles, congress speeches, radio interviews, concert-programme notes, obituary tributes - arranged strictly by year, each item footnoted to its source in Pravda, Izvestia, Sovetskaya Muzyka, Literaturnaya Gazeta or a provincial evening paper. L. Grigoryev and Ya. Platek supp...

Most volumes of this kind apply a theory. This one states it.Rostislav Ulyanovsky was the Soviet Union's foremost theorist of what Moscow called the non-capitalist path of development, or socialist orientation - the doctrine that a backward, pre-industrial nation with barely a working class could cross to socialism without passing through capitalism, guided by revolutionary democrats and underwritten by the USSR. That doctrine organises a whole shelf of Soviet writing on Asia and A...

**WINNER OF THE 2026 PULITZER PRIZE FOR OPINION WRITINGThe National Book Award winner's biography of a ruthless man's ascent to near-absolute power.**“In a country where journalists critical of the government have a way of meeting untimely deaths, Gessen has shown remarkable courage in researching and writing this unflinching indictment of the most powerful man in Russia.” —The Wall Street Journal“Thanks to fearless reporting and ac...

Winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize 2023*A Telegraph Book of the Year*A Times Best Book of Summer 2023*Shortlisted for the Parliamentary Book Awards*An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol.The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis ...

Meet the world's most dangerous man.Who is the real Vladimir Putin? What does he want? And what will he do next?Despite the millions of words written on Putin's Russia, the West still fails to truly understand one of the world's most powerful politicians, whose influence spans the globe and whose networks of power reach into the very heart of our daily lives.Professor Mark Galeotti uncovers the man behind the myth, addressing the key misperceptions ...

Acclaimed author Andrey Kurkov gives powerful insight into life in Kyiv following the 2013 protests and before the 2022 Russian invasion.-16°C, sunlight, silence. I drove the children to school, then went to see the revolution. I walked between the tents. Talked with revolutionaries. They were weary today. The air was thick with the smell of old campfires.Ukraine Diaries is acclaimed writer Andrey Kurkov's first-hand account of the ongoing...

**WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZEWINNER OF THE CORNELIUS RYAN AWARDFINALIST FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZEFINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR“Fast-paced and excellently written…much needed, dispassionate and eminently readable.” —New York Times“Filled with sparkling prose and deep analysis.” –The Wall Street Journal**The breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of optimism around the world, but Russia today is actively involved in subversiv...

"A beautifully written and very lively study of Russia that argues that the political order created by Vladimir Putin is stagnating" ( Financial Times).From Kaliningrad on the Baltic to the Russian Far East, journalist Ben Judah has traveled throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics, conducting extensive interviews with President Vladimir Putin's friends, foes, and colleagues, government officials, business tycoons, mobsters, and ordinary Russian c...

The stunning story of Russia's slide back into a dictatorship-and how the West is now paying the price for allowing it to happen.The ascension of Vladimir Putin-a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB-to the presidency of Russia in 1999 was a strong signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years-as America and the world's other leading powers have continued to appease him-Putin has grown not only into a dictator but an internati...