"A tour de force—exquisite and gripping."—Philippe Sands, author of East West Street

The Soviet and post-Soviet world, with its untold multitude of crimes, is a natural breeding ground for ghost stories. No one writes them more movingly than Russian author Sergei Lebedev, who in this stunning volume probes a collective guilty conscience marked by otherworldliness and the denial of misdeeds. These

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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...

Peter the Great was a giant in every way: in physical stature, willpower, enthusiasm, energy, libertinism, and refusal to accept old conventions, he stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries. He grew up in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and violent court rivalries. As a product of the system, Peter was, of necessity, ruthless and tyrannical, but what earned him his place in history was tearing his country from its traditional, oriental...

A startling and revelatory examination of Nabokov's life and works—notably Pale Fire and Lolita—bringing new insight into one of the twentieth century's most enigmatic authorsNovelist Vladimir Nabokov witnessed the horrors of his century, escaping Revolutionary Russia then Germany under Hitler, and fleeing France with his Jewish wife and son just weeks before Paris fell to the Nazis. He repeatedly faced accusations of turning a

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"How did Russia manage to emerge resurgent on the world stage and play a weak hand so effectively? Is it because Putin is a brilliant strategist? Or has Russia stepped into a vacuum created by the West's distraction with its own domestic problems and US ambivalence about whether it still wants to act as a superpower? Putin's World examines the country's turbulent past, how it has influenced Putin, the Russians' understanding of their position on the...

"The true story of two spies and their families on opposite sides of the Cold War, told from the first-person perspective of Eva Dillon, the daughter of one of these spies. With impeccable insider access to both families as well as CIA officers, Dillon offers a riveting true-life spy thriller told in the tradition of a family memoir"--Provided by publisher.

“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...

"The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secret police, the Soviet state had seemingly unprecedented capabilities based on its near monopoly of productive capital, monolithic authority, and secretive decision making. But behind the scenes, Soviet secrecy was double-edged: it raised transaction costs, incentivized indecision, compromised the effectiveness...

"In The Abyss, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-twentieth century--the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis--America President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors. Combining in-depth...

This is the first published study in English of Russian trade and commercial relations with China from the Treaty of Kiakhta (1727) to the early nineteenth century. It is a study in Russian economic and entrepreneurial history, focusing on Russian state economic policy and activity concerning China. It dwells at length on the state monopolies, but at the same time private trade with China and the Chinese is also fully explored. Originally published...