The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in a tumultuous period for Russia and Ukraine. The Soviet Union broke apart, Communism was exposed as morally bankrupt, and Russian leaders turned to the West for help. In an astonishing development, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin invited a group of American evangelicals to give advice on restoring morality to Russia. The nation was moving toward democratic and religious freedoms until, one decade later, Vladimir Putin abruptly reversed cour...

After the Berlin Wall fell, a group of Christian colleges in the U.S. seized the opportunity to begin strategic faculty and student exchanges with universities inside the Soviet Union. They could not have foreseen the doors that would open next. During a 1990 visit to Russia, John Bernbaum and his colleagues received a surprising invitation from a Russian government official: come help build a faith-based university in Moscow. Thus, after seventy years of fierce religious persecution under...

Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeOne of the Best Books of the Year: The New York TimesFrom the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule le...

A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demiseIn 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four-million strong, five-thousand nuclear-tipped missiles, and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse wa...

From former NPR Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer comes an incisive portrait that draws on vivid personal stories to portray the forces that have shaped the Russian character for centuries-and continue to do so today.Russians explores the seeming paradoxes of life in Russia by unraveling the nature of its people: what is it in their history, their desires, and their conception of themselves that makes them baffling to the West? Using the insights of his d...

One of the country’s most distinguished writers and publishers returns to her roots to explore the consequences of democracy in the former Habsburg lands.In 1989 the Berlin Wall was dismantled. Communism gave way to democracy. Since that time the former borderlands of the long defunct Hapsburg Empire and the more recently dispersed Soviet Empire have been trying to invent their own versions of democracy and market-driven economics. But these experiments have led to a widening gap b...

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, former Soviet republic Ukraine has struggled against its giant neighbor to the north”-Russia- to maintain its sovereignty. In early 2014 tensions turned to conflict as Vladimir Putin, determined to keep Ukraine from forging stronger ties with the West, seized Crimea and fomented conflict in eastern Ukraine. In the latest Brookings essay, Chrystia Freeland, a former Ukrainian-based reporter with strong family ties to the country, offers a pers...

**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...

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded–and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs, Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross, drawing upon two decades of reflection, revisit this crash. In a crisp, concise, unsentimental narrative, they employ three case studies–East Germany, Romania, and Poland–to illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be ...

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • “Unforgettable . . . a book about Putin’s Russia that is unlike any other.”—Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain**From a Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin’s ruleONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—NPR, Kirkus Reviews**In this rich a...

'A compelling and illuminating account of a great drama in the history of our times which showed once again that ordinary men and women really can change the world' Jonathan Dimbleby, MAIL ON SUNDAYFor more than 40 years after the Second World War the Iron Curtain divided Europe physically, with 300 km of walls and barbed wire fences; ideologically, between communism and capitalism; psychologically, between people imprisoned under totalitarian dictatorships and the...

**Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in BiographyLonglisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionThe definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Khrushchev."Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]." —Radhika Jones, The New York Times Book Review**When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the ...