Originally published in 1932, the author, a Polish journalist, in this book directs his hostility against the fundamentals of Bolshevism, but nonetheless achieves impartiality. With regard to Russian culture, Soviet Russia appears to the author as the home of an almost Victorian puritanism. Daily life under the Bolsheviks is discussed, as is the meeting on a train with a man who claimed to have been present at the murder of the Imperial Family.

A New York Times bestseller that brings to life one of the bloodiest battles of World War II—and the beginning of the end of the Third Reich.On August 5, 1942, giant pillars of dust rose over the Russian steppe, marking the advance of the 6th Army, an elite German combat unit dispatched by Hitler to capture the industrial city of Stalingrad and press on to the oil fields of Azerbaijan. The Germans were supremely confident; in three years, they had not suffe...

This biography of the longest reigning monarch of Imperial Russia is "a vivid portrait of a sensual and intellectual woman" ( Washington Post ).Dutiful daughter, frustrated wife, passionate lover, domineering mother, doting grandmother, devoted friend, tireless legislator, generous patron of artists and philosophers—the Empress Catherine II, the Great, was all these things, and more. Her reign lasted from 1762 until her de...

“A riveting look at today’s Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.”—The Kingston ObserverIn Putin’s Labyrinth, acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, who lived inand reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, provides a gripping account of modern Russia. In a penetrating narrative that recounts the lives and deaths of six Russians, LeVine portrays the growth of a “culture of death”—from targeted assassinations of the state’s...

“A wonderful job! So lucid, beautfully written, with greatrange and insight. This will set a new standard for shortgeneral histories of China.”—Michael Gasster,professor emeritus of history at Rutgers UniversityNewly updated and revised, China: Its History and Culture,Fourth Edition, incorporates the crucial social and economicchanges that have taken place in China over the last decade.Through rich detail and engaging illustrations, the book tracesChina’s ...

**The Pulitzer Prize-winning look at the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe“The definitive account of what the transition away from communism in Eastern Europe has meant in moral terms. Brilliant and impassioned.” —LA Times Book Review**In four newly democratic countries in Eastern Europe, communism’s former victims and jailers are struggling to make sense of their history—and sometimes rewrite it. In this groundbreaking, stylishly reported book, a journalist ...

A selection from The Magic Lantern, Timothy Garton Ash’s classic first-person history of the Revolution of ’89 and the end of the Cold War—an on-the-ground glimpse of the fall of the Berlin Wall.“In the beginning was the Wall itself.” So writes matchless chronicler and observer Timothy Garton Ash on the strange life and stranger death of the Wall that divided two worlds. Garton Ash takes the reader with him as he walks through the Wall and across no-man’s land in early Nov...

The Russian Jaeger regiments and Napoleon's Young Guard clashed repeatedly during the campaigns of 1812–14.The Russian Jaeger were light infantry who gained enormous experience and prestige during the struggle to rid Europe of Napoleon's armies, while the Young Guard was expanded to become the main strike force of the French field armies. In appalling winter conditions in 1812, the Young Guard turned to confront their opponents, including Jaeger forces, at Krasnyi....

There is a dialectical logic to why an individual like Putin came to power in Russia. His policies in the past were controversial at best, but now, after the annexation of Crimea and turmoil in Ukraine, Russia's future is not expected to be bright. Why do Russia's leaders always seem embroil the country in one conflict after another?Every nation has a character—the sum of its temperament, values, traditions, and mindset—that explains its history and its present, and helps define its...

Exam Board: AQA, Edexcel, OCR & WJECLevel: A-levelSubject: HistoryFirst Teaching: September 2015First Exam: June 2016This is an OCR endorsed resource.Give your students the best chance of success with this tried and tested series, combining in-depth analysis, engaging narrative and accessibility. Access to History is the ...

The monumental battles of World War II’s Eastern Front—Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk—are etched into the historical record. But there is another, hidden history of that war that has too often been ignored in official accounts.Boris Gorbachevsky was a junior officer in the 31st Army who first saw front-line duty as a rifleman in the 30th Army. Through the Maelstrom recounts his three harrowing years on some of the war’s grimmest but forgotten battlefields: the campaign for Rzhe...

The golden age of Soviet cinema, in the years following the Russian Revolution, was a time of both achievement and contradiction, as reflected in the films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Kuleshov. Tensions ran high between creative freedom and institutional constraint, radical and reactionary impulses, popular and intellectual cinema, and film as social propaganda and as personal artistic expression. In less than a decade, the creative ferment ended, subjugated by the ideological forces that...