All the Kremlin's Men

All the Kremlin's Men
Author: Mikhail Zygar
Publisher: Public Affairs
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2016-09-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1610397398

"Charting the transformation of Vladimir Putin from a passionate fan of the West and a liberal reformer into a hurt and introverted outcast, All the Kremlin's Men is a historical detective story, full of intrigue and conspiracy. This is the story of the political battles that have taken place in the court of Vladimir Putin since his rise to power, and a chronicle of friendship and hatred between the Russian leader and his foreign partners and opponents..."--

The Kremlin Playbook

The Kremlin Playbook
Author: Heather A. Conley
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 86
Release: 2016-10-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442279591

Russia has cultivated an opaque web of economic and political patronage across the Central and Eastern European region that the Kremlin uses to influence and direct decisionmaking. This report from the CSIS Europe Program, in partnership with the Bulgarian Center for the Study of Democracy, is the result of a 16-month study on the nature of Russian influence in five case countries: Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Serbia.

Stalin's Folly

Stalin's Folly
Author: Konstantin Pleshakov
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0618773614

Stalin's cunning and ruthlessness brought him to supreme power in the Soviet Union. Yet in the summer of 1941 he appeared to lose his touch. With unparalleled access to the Soviet archives, this text reveals why the dictator behaved as he did.

Inside the Kremlin's Cold War

Inside the Kremlin's Cold War
Author: Vladislav Martinovich Zubok
Publisher:
Total Pages: 394
Release: 1996
Genre: Cold War
ISBN:

Using recently uncovered archival materials, personal interviews, and a broad familiarity with Russian history and culture, two young Russian historians have written a major interpretation of the Cold War as seen from the Soviet shore. Covering the volatile period from 1945 to 1962, Zubok and Pleshakov explore the personalities and motivations of the key people who directed Soviet political life and shaped Soviet foreign policy. They begin with the fearsome figure of Joseph Stalin, who was driven by the dual dream of a Communist revolution and a global empire. They reveal the scope and limits of Stalin's ambitions by taking us into the world of his closest subordinates, the ruthless and unimaginative foreign minister Molotov and the Party's chief propagandist, Zhdanov, a man brimming with hubris and missionary zeal. The authors expose the machinations of the much-feared secret police chief Beria and the party cadre manager Malenkov, who tried but failed to set Soviet policies on a different course after Stalin's death. Finally, they document the motives and actions of the self-made and self-confident Nikita Khrushchev, full of Russian pride and party dogma, who overturned many of Stalin's policies with bold strategizing on a global scale. The authors show how, despite such attempts to change Soviet diplomacy, Stalin's legacy continued to divide Germany and Europe, and led the Soviets to the split with Maoist China and to the Cuban missile crisis. Zubok and Pleshakov's groundbreaking work reveals how Soviet statesmen conceived and conducted their rivalry with the West within the context of their own domestic and global concerns and aspirations. The authors persuasively demonstrate thatthe Soviet leaders did not seek a conflict with the United States, yet failed to prevent it or bring it to conclusion. They also document why and how Kremlin policy-makers, cautious and scheming as they were, triggered the gravest crises of the Cold War in Korea, Berlin, and Cuba.

Putin's People

Putin's People
Author: Catherine Belton
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2020-06-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374712786

A New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller | A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a best book of the year by The Economist | Financial Times | New Statesman | The Telegraph "[Putin's People] will surely now become the definitive account of the rise of Putin and Putinism." —Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic "This riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades." —Peter Frankopan, Financial Times Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it? 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. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche—a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad. Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach—and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match—Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.

From Russia with Blood

From Russia with Blood
Author: Heidi Blake
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2019-11-19
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0316417211

The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad: “A compelling rendering of Putin’s frightening extensions of power into Europe and the United States” (Associated Press). They thought they had found a safe haven in the green hills of England. They were wrong. One by one, the Russian oligarchs, dissidents, and gangsters who fled to Britain after Vladimir Putin came to power dropped dead in strange or suspicious circumstances. One by one, their British lawyers and fixers met similarly grisly ends. Yet, one by one, the British authorities shut down every investigation — and carried on courting the Kremlin. The spies in the riverside headquarters of MI6 looked on with horror as the scope of the Kremlin's global killing campaign became all too clear. And, across the Atlantic, American intelligence officials watched with mounting alarm as the bodies piled up, concerned that the tide of death could spread to the United States. Those fears intensified when a one-time Kremlin henchman was found bludgeoned to death in a Washington, D.C. penthouse. But it wasn't until Putin's assassins unleashed a deadly chemical weapon on the streets of Britain, endangering hundreds of members of the public in a failed attempt to slay the double agent Sergei Skripal, that Western governments were finally forced to admit that the killing had spun out of control. Unflinchingly documenting the growing web of death on British and American soil, Heidi Blake bravely exposes the Kremlin's assassination campaign as part of Putin's ruthless pursuit of global dominance — and reveals why Western governments have failed to stop the bloodshed. The unforgettable story that emerges whisks us from London's high-end night clubs to Miami's million-dollar hideouts ultimately renders a bone-chilling portrait of money, betrayal, and murder, written with the pace and propulsive power of a thriller. Based on a vast trove of unpublished documents, bags of discarded police evidence, and interviews with hundreds of insiders, this heart-stopping international investigation uncovers one of the most important — and terrifying — geopolitical stories of our time.

Who Killed Kirov?

Who Killed Kirov?
Author: Amy W. Knight
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780809097036

The 1934 murder of the charismatic politician Sergei Kirov sparked Stalin's brutal purges, and speculation about it still fascinates the Russians. Who killed Kirov, and why? In Russia, conspiracy theories about Kirov have abounded, and scholars throughout the world have tackled various pieces of the story -- but definitive evidence has eluded them. Now Amy Knight has combed the recently opened Russian archives to reconstruct this fascinating crime and analyze its effect on the Russian people. The result is at once an intriguing murder mystery and a major piece of scholarship that sheds new light on the terrors of Stalin.

The Empire Must Die

The Empire Must Die
Author: Mikhail Zygar
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 711
Release: 2017-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610398327

From Tolstoy to Lenin, from Diaghilev to Stalin, The Empire Must Die is a tragedy of operatic proportions with a cast of characters that ranges from the exotic to utterly villainous, the glamorous to the depraved. In 1912, Russia experienced a flowering of liberalism and tolerance that placed it at the forefront of the modern world: women were fighting for the right to vote in the elections for the newly empowered parliament, Russian art and culture was the envy of Europe and America, there was a vibrant free press and intellectual life. But a fatal flaw was left uncorrected: Russia's exuberant experimental moment took place atop a rotten foundation. The old imperial order, in place for three hundred years, still held the nation in thrall. Its princes, archdukes, and generals bled the country dry during the First World War and by 1917 the only consensus was that the Empire must die. Mikhail Zygar's dazzling, in-the-moment retelling of the two decades that prefigured the death of the Tsar, his family, and the entire imperial edifice is a captivating drama of what might have been versus what was subsequently seen as inevitable. A monumental piece of political theater that only Russia was capable of enacting, the fall of the Russian Empire changed the course of the twentieth century and eerily anticipated the mood of the twenty-first.

Kremlin Wives

Kremlin Wives
Author: Larissa Vasilieva
Publisher: Skyhorse
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1628726385

For over seventy years the Kremlin was the bastion of the all-powerful Soviet rulers. A great deal is known about the men who held millions of fates in their iron grip, yet little is known about the women—the wives and mistresses—who shared their lives. They took part in the Revolution and its aftermath, bore children, and suffered abuse; some were arrested and sent to Siberia, driven to suicide, or even murdered. In 1991 the KGB granted the author access to its secret files, which, together with the author’s own research and interviews, provided the material for this book. Here for the first time the stark and sometimes scandalous truth about these women is revealed. Lenin’s wife worked passionately for the Revolution alongside her husband, from the time of Lenin’s exile until her death. His mistress was also a close friend of his wife. Stalin married Nadezhda Alliluyeva when she was only sixteen. Earlier, he had had a relationship with Nadezhda’s mother, and there is strong evidence that his wife may also have been his daughter. When she was found dead in a pool of blood, the official verdict was suicide, but many believe she was murdered. Secret Police Chief Lavrenti Beria, known as “The Butcher,” roamed the streets in Moscow in a curtain-drawn limousine, stalking young girls who would later be abducted by his agents. One was forced to marry Beria—his wife Nina Teimurazovna. Among the many other Kremlin “wives” portrayed here are: Alexandra Kollontai, feminist and supporter of “free love”; Larissa Reisner, Boris Pasternak’s muse; Olga Kameneva, Trotsky’s sister; Nina Khrushchev; Victoria Brezhnev; Galina Brezhneva; Tatyana Fillipovna Andropov, and Raisa Gorbachev—supposedly the only Soviet ruler’s wife to have married for love. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Palace of Treason

Palace of Treason
Author: Jason Matthews
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2015-06-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1476793751

Red Sparrow is now a major motion picture starring Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton! The thrilling sequel to Red Sparrow—CIA insider Jason Matthews’s compulsively readable New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award winner—featuring Russian spy Dominika Egorova and CIA agent Nate Nash “shimmers with authenticity. The villains are richly drawn...the scenes of them on the job are beyond chilling” (The New York Times Book Review). Captain Dominika Egorova of the Russian Intelligence Service despises the oligarchs, crooks, and thugs of Putin’s Russia—but what no one knows is that she is also working for the CIA. Her “sparrow” training in the art of sexual espionage further complicates the mortal risks she must take, as does her love for her handler Nate Nash—a shared lust that is as dangerous as treason. As Dominika expertly dodges exposure, she deals with a murderously psychotic boss, survives an Iranian assassination attempt and attempts to rescue an arrested double agent—and thwart Putin’s threatening flirtations. A grand, wildly entertaining ride through the steel-trap mind of a CIA insider, Palace of Treason is a story “as suspenseful and cinematic as the best spy movies” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)—one that feels fresh and so possible, in fact, that it’s doubtful this novel can ever be published in Russia.