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In his timely new audiobook, Mikhail Shishkin, argues that Russia is not a 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma': we just don't know enough about it. So what is the real story behind Putin's autocratic regime and its invasion of Ukraine? In My Russia: War or Peace? Shishkin traces the roots of Russia's problems, from the 'Kievan Rus' via the Grand Duchy of Moscow, empire, revolution and Cold War, to the now thirty-year-old Russian Federation. 

This book is a comprehensive guide to modern Ukraine and to the versions of its past propagated by both Russians and Ukrainians. Andrew Wilson provides the most acute, informed, and up-to-date account available of the Ukrainians and their country. Concentrating on the complex relation between Ukraine and Russia, the book begins with the myth of common origin in the early medieval era, then looks closely at the Ukrainian experience under the tsars and Soviets, the experience of minorities in the country, and the path to independence in 1991.

The Second World War was the defining moment in the history of the Soviet Union. With Stalin at the helm, it emerged victorious at a huge economic and human cost. But even before the fighting had ended, Stalin began to turn against the architects of success. In this original and comprehensive study, Alfred J. Rieber examines Stalin as a wartime leader, arguing that his policies were profoundly paradoxical.

Arkadi Babtschenko kennt als ehemaliger Soldat die russische Armee aus ihrem Innersten; als kritischer, verfolgter Autor lebt er seit Jahren in der Ukraine und im Exil. Mit dieser einzigartigen Binnensicht beider Seiten schreibt er über die Situation seit 2014, wie niemand sonst es vermag – leidenschaftlich persönlich, stilistisch brillant und mit größter Kenntnis: Da sind die staatsnahen Medien, die mit Trash und Nationalkitsch einen "russischen Infantilismus" heranzüchten, ohne Würde und Scham.

Die bekannte ZDF-Korrespondentin Katrin Eigendorf berichtet seit vielen Jahren regelmäßig aus der Ukraine. So auch während der dramatischen Tage und Wochen nach dem 24. Februar 2022, als Wladimir Putin mit seinem grausamen Angriff auf die Ukraine den Krieg zurück nach Europa getragen hat. Angesichts der Bilder aus Mariupol, Charkiw und Kyiw ist auch Deutschland aufgewacht, nachdem es über viele Jahre Wladimir Putin verharmlost hat. Katrin Eigendorf erzählt hier vom Krieg, den Putin mit aller Härte führt, vor allem gegen die Bevölkerung.

In April 1945, German troops withdrawing from the Seelow Heights were encircled by the Soviet Army near the small town of Halbe, south-east of Berlin. Rather than surrender, their orders were to attempt to break out, westward, and join up with the German twelfth Army. A brutal battle ensued, with an estimated 30,000 German and 20,000 Russian soldiers killed, along with thousands of civilians. 

The Soviet Union killed over six hundred thousand whales in the twentieth century, many of them illegally and secretly. That catch helped bring many whale species to near extinction by the 1970s, and the impacts of this loss of life still ripple through today's oceans. In this new account, based on formerly secret Soviet archives and interviews with ex-whalers, environmental historian Ryan Tucker Jones offers a complete history of the role the Soviet Union played in the whales' destruction. 

For months, the omens had pointed in one scarcely believable direction: Russia was about to invade Ukraine. And yet, the world was stunned by the epochal scale of the assault that began in February 2022. It was an attempt by one nation to devour another. The Kremlin wanted nothing less than a new world order. Invasion is Luke Harding's gripping chronicle of the war that changed everything.

"What journey within our immediate world today would be remotely as interesting, enchanting, instructive and exciting as that to Russia? While our Europe, and especially the capitals, are subject to the inexorably contemporary process of mutual assimilation and resemblance, Russia remains utterly unparalleled." Stephen Zweig, 1928. After Stefan Zweig's bourgeois world collapsed with the First World War, he went searching for alternative forms of society, which culminated in a journey through the at that time still young Soviet Union.

During the spring and summer of 1918, with World War I still undecided, British, French and American agents in Russia developed a breathtakingly audacious plan. Led by Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, a dashing, cynical, urbane thirty-year-old Scot, they conspired to overthrow Lenin’s newly established Bolshevik regime, and to install one that would continue the war against Germany on the Eastern Front. In the back streets of Petrograd and Moscow, in nightclubs, in cells beneath Lubianka prison, the conspirators engaged in a deadly game of wits for the highest possible stakes.

Schwitzen im Proberaum einer Moskauer Rockband. Ehemalige Sowjetrepubliken, die Kabardino-Balkarien heißen. Ein Stripclub an der Wolga. Techno Clubs, in denen nichts zufällig passiert. Und das Krankenzimmer eines Moskauer Hospitals. Diane Hielscher diskutiert auf Kinderspielplätzen über die Postmoderne, tanzt mit Jugendlichen am schwarzen Meer, trinkt in dunklen Bars und fremden Wohnzimmern. Nebenbei erlernt sie die Feinheiten der russischen Vulgärsprache - während im Kaukasus gerade der Krieg ausbricht.

In 2014, Sonya Bilocerkowycz is a tourist at a deadly revolution. At first she is enamored with the Ukrainians' idealism, which reminds her of her own patriotic family. But when the romantic revolution melts into a war with Russia, she becomes disillusioned, prompting a return home to the US and the diaspora community that raised her. As the daughter of a man who studies Ukrainian dissidents for a living, the granddaughter of war refugees, and the great-granddaughter of a gulag victim, Bilocerkowycz has inherited a legacy of political oppression. 

Protests continue in Belarus in the aftermath of 2020's fraught presidential election. In this updated edition of his exploration of Belarus's complicated road to nationhood since it gained independence in 1991, Andrew Wilson has added two new chapters that reveal the extent of Aliaksandr Lukashenka's grip on power, the growth of the opposition movement and the violent crackdown that followed the vote. Wilson also examines the prospects for Europe as a whole of either Lukashenka's downfall or his survival with Russian support.

In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries came to power in the war-torn Russian Empire in a way that defied all predictions. Scarcely a lifespan later, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed as accidentally as it arose. The decades between witnessed drama on an epic scale-the chaos and hope of revolution, famines and purges, hard-won victory in history's most destructive war, and worldwide geopolitical conflict, all entwined around the dream of building a better society.

The Cold War meets Mad Men in the form of Karel Koecher, a double agent whose shifting loyalties and over-the-top hedonism reverberated from New York to Moscow. In the mid-1970s, the CIA and KGB were both watching Karel Koecher closely—and they were both convinced he was working for the enemy...

Too often, we are told that Russia plays a weak hand well. But, perhaps the nation's cards are better than we know. Russia ranks behind the US and China by traditional measures of power: GDP, population size and health, and military might. Yet twenty-five years removed from its mid-1990s nadir following the collapse of the USSR, Russia has become a supremely disruptive force in world politics. Kathryn E. Stoner assesses the resurrection of Russia and argues that we should look beyond traditional means of power to assess its strength in global affairs.

De bittra striderna i Stalingrads ruiner, fasorna på floden Volgas mörka vatten och det intensiva luftkriget över Stalingrad kostade hundratusentals soldater och civila livet. Slaget var så krävande och grymt att inte ens andra världskrigets mest hårdföra generaler kunde undgå att ­beröras av de massiva förlusterna som bara två män ryckte på axlarna åt: Adolf Hitler och Josef Stalin. Utan att blinka skickade de man efter man i döden under slaget om Stalingrad som blev det ultimata kraftprovet mellan historiens två grymmaste diktatorer som båda vägrade ge upp.

Accessible to students, tourists, and general listeners alike, this book provides a broad overview of Russian history since the ninth century. Paul Bushkovitch emphasizes the enormous changes in the understanding of Russian history resulting from the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, new material has come to light on the history of the Soviet era, providing new conceptions of Russia's pre-revolutionary past.

I 1780’erne er meget under forandring i kongeriget Danmark. Kronprins Frederik forsøger at overtage magten fra sin far ved et kup. Mikkel er bare en simpel bondesøn, men ved en tilfældighed ender han som Frederiks fortrolige, og gennem ham hører vi om kronprinsens kupplaner. Vi følger også Nikoline, der syer, væver og spinder for grevinden på herregården. På den måde følger vi med i både de adelige og de fattige arbejderes liv i 1780’ernes Danmark.

An exhilarating, immersive journey into the Exclusion Zone of Chornobyl by one of Ukraine's most exciting young authors. The 1,000-square-mile Chornobyl Exclusion Zone is, for many, a symbol of total disaster: a reminder of shattered ideals and lost lives, now a toxic, dangerous no-man's-land. For Markiyan Kamysh, it became a site of pilgrimage. He and dozens like him call themselves 'stalkers': wild adventurers who sneak past border patrols to spend days getting lost in this apocalyptic environment of dense swampland and desolate villages.