Russia Books - Page 4

Wonderland: A Fairytale of the Soviet Monolith

Jason Eskenazi

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Editorial Review:

The story of Communism is the story of the twentieth century. For many, the Soviet Union existed, like their childhood, as a fairy tale where many of the realities of life were hidden from plain view. When the Berlin Wall finally fell, so too did the illusion of that utopia. Wonderland is a photographic exploration that portrays both the reality beneath the veneer of a utopian USSR and the affirmation of hope that should never be abandoned. And like all fairy tales try to teach us: the hard lessons of self-reliance.

Jason Eskenazi was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Taylor Prize.

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 Abridged: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (P.S.)

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

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Total reviews: 108 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A STYLISTIC ACHIEVEMENT ALSO 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The original three volumes of this book changed my life, my world, my soul. There is little I can add to what others have already said except for one thing. This bitter humor, the voice of incredulity, the moments when Stalin's mask slips (for instance a scientific article are about the discovery of a frozen mammoth in the Siberian tundra and the casual reference to how it tasted - only Gulag prisoners would eat a 10,000 year old mammoth).

Overall let me put it this way. This is the greatest exercise in SUSTAINED IRONIC TONE in the history of literature. The derisive, incredulous, witnessing voice never stops digging for the Truth.

The single greatest literary work of the twentieth century. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The title of this review is truly the way I feel about this book. The first volume relates stories of arrest and interrogation, the second volume tells of life in the camps, and the third talks of life in internal exile.

The second volume, in particular, is at times haunting and at others uplifting in ways that are absolutely beyond description. The story of the woman who was set aside to starve to death simply because she "wasn't worth her bread ration" is one of the many that will stay with you forever.

The book was absolutely earth-shattering when it was published as the Soviet Union was still at the height of its power, but in bringing forth reports of Stalin's brutality it creates universal, timeless themes. Anyone who wishes to understand the human experience and to truly examine one's own soul must read this book.

In this book Solzhenitsyn describes the intelligentsia as those who are preoccupied with the spiritual side of life. Reading this book will focus you on the spiritual in ways you could never imagine. A beautiful, stunning work. Monumental.

Editorial Review:

Solzhenitsyn's gripping epic masterpiece, the searing record of four decades of Soviet terror and oppression, in one abridged volume, authorized by the author

White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard

Daniel Johnson

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Daniel Johnson -- journalist, editor, scholar, and chess enthusiast who
once played Garry Kasparov to a draw in a simultaneous exhibition --
is the perfect guide to one of history's most remarkable periods,
when chess matches were front-page news and captured the world's imagination.

The Cold War played out in many areas: geopolitical alliances, military
coalitions, cat-and-mouse espionage, the arms race, proxy wars -- and
chess. An essential pastime of Russian intellectuals and revolutionaries,
and later adopted by the Communists as a symbol of Soviet power, chess
was inextricably linked to the rise and fall of the "evil empire." This original
narrative history recounts in gripping detail the singular part the
Immortal Game played in the Cold War. From chess's role in the Russian
Revolution -- Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky were all avid players -- to the 1945
radio match when the Soviets crushed the Americans, prompting Stalin's
telegram "Well done lads!"; to the epic contest between Bobby Fischer
and Boris Spassky in 1972 at the height of détente, when Kissinger told
Fischer to "go over there and beat the Russians"; to the collapse of the
Soviet Union itself, White King and Red Queen takes us on a fascinating
tour of the Cold War's checkered landscape.

He Leadeth Me

Walter J. Ciszek, Daniel Flaherty

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

He Leadeth Me is the deeply moving personal story of one man's spiritual odyssey and the unflagging faith which enabled him to survive the horrendous ordeal that wrenched his body and spirit to near collapse.

Captured by the Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a "Vatican spy," American Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent some 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. He here recalls how it was only through an utter reliance on God's will that he managed to endure. He tells of the courage he found in prayer-a courage that eased the loneliness, the pain, the frustrations, the anguish, the fears, the despair. For, as Ciszek relates, the solace of spiritual contemplation gave him an inner serenity upon which he was able to draw amidst the "arrogance of evil" that surrounded him. Learning to accept even the inhuman work of toiling in the infamous Siberian salt mines as a labor pleasing to God, he was able to turn adverse forces into a source of positive value and a means of drawing closer to the compassionate and never-forsaking Divine Spirit.

He Leadeth Me is a book to inspire all Christians to greater faith and trust in God-even in their darkest hour.

Putin's Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia

Steve Levine

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The new Russia is marching in an alarming direction. Emboldened by escalating oil wealth and newfound prominence as a world power, Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has veered back toward the authoritarian roots planted in Imperial/Czarist times and firmly established during the Soviet era. Though Russia has a new president, Dmitri Medvedev, Putin remains in control, rendering the democratic reforms of the post-Soviet order irrelevant. Now, in Putin’s Labyrinth, acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, who lived in and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, provides a penetrating account of modern Russia under the repressive rule of an all-powerful autocrat. LeVine portrays the growth of a “culture of death”–from targeted assassinations of the state’s enemies to the Kremlin’s indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered.

Drawing on new interviews with eyewitnesses and the families of victims, LeVine documents the bloodshed that has stained Putin’s two terms as president. Among the incidents chronicled in these pages: The 2002 terrorist takeover of a crowded Moscow theater–which led to the government gassing the building, and the deaths of more than a hundred terrified hostages–seen here from new angles, through the riveting words of those who survived; and the murder of courageous investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, shot in the elevator of her apartment building on Putin’s birthday, purportedly as a malicious “gift” for the president from supporters. Finally, a shocking story that made international headlines–the 2006 death of defector Alexander Litvinenko in London–is dramatized as never before. LeVine traces the steps of this KGB-spy-turned-dissident on his way to being poisoned with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope. And in doing so, LeVine is granted a rare series of interviews with a KGB defector who was nearly killed in strangely similar circumstances fifty years earlier. Through LeVine’s exhaustive research, we come to know the victims as real people, not just names in brief news accounts of how they died.

Putin’s Labyrinth is more than an immensely readable exposé. It is highly personal, with the flavor of a memoir. It is a thoughtful book that examines the perplexing question of how Russians manage to negotiate their way around the ever-present danger of violence. It calculates the emotional toll that this lethal maze is exacting on ordinary people, even as they enjoy a dramatically heightened standard of living. Most ominously, it assesses the reopening of hostilities with the West, and the forces that are driving this major new confrontation.

Imperium

Ryszard Kapuscinski

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Sine qua non 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

A lyrical masterpiece by this superlative writer! Nowhere have I found a dissection of the Evil Empire done with such fluid verse. He goes from the periphery into the heart of the beast and everywhere he discovers that appearances deceive and what seems to signal change is really a re-hash of old. Kapuczinski's sharp analysis and trenchant comments will be sorely missed!

Recommended 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I purchased this book after reading about the author in the Wall Street Journal. He died earlier this year. The author, a journalist, kept two notebooks while on assignments throughout the world, one for his assignment and one for himself. In this book he combined his observations from several trips he took within Russia and its states over a span of many decades. At times his writing style can be quite poetic, and the book is not unlike a travel book, although Soviet Russia was not a friendly place at the times of his visits. I intend to read his other books, and highly recommend this one.

Perhaps history will never be told better 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Perhaps history will never be told better than through the eye of this travelling writer (or is it a writing traveller?). Read and be awed by the staggering proportions of recent history in the vast empire that is no more, the Sovjet Union. And be chilled to the bones by the unimaginable amounts of suffering inflicted by the sovjet leaders on their own people. And be astonished that in the midst of the most utter despair, poverty, and enslavement, Kapuscinski can find optimism, humor, and love of life.

Through the Maelstrom: A Red Army Soldier's War on the Eastern Front, 1942-1945 (Modern War Studies)

Boris Gorbachevsky

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Editorial Review:

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 Rzhev, the bloody struggle to retake Belorussia, and the bitter final fighting in East Prussia. As he traces his experiences from his initial training, through the maelstrom, to final victory, he provides one of the richest and most detailed memoirs of life and warfare on the Eastern Front.Gorbachevsky's panoramic account takes us from infantry specialist school to the front lines to rear services areas and his whirlwind romances in wartime Moscow. He recalls the shriek of Katiusha rockets flying overhead toward the enemy and the unforgettable howl of Stukas divebombing Soviet tanks. And he conveys horrors of brutal fighting not recorded previously in English, including his own participation in a human wave assault that decimated his regiment at Rzhev, with piles of corpses growing the closer they got to the German trenches.Gorbachevsky also records the sufferings of the starving citizens of Leningrad, the savage execution of a Russian scout who turned in false information, the killing of an innocent German trying to welcome the Soviet troops, and a chilling campfire discussion by four Russian soldiers as they compared notes about the women they'd raped. His memoir brims with rich descriptions of daily army life, the challenges of maintaining morale, and relationships between soldiers. It also includes candid exposes of the many problems the Red Army faced: the influence of political officers, the stubbornness of senior commanders, the attrition through desertions, and the initial months of occupation in postwar Germany."Through the Maelstrom" features the swiftly moving narrative and rich dialogue associated with the grand style of great Russian literature. Ultimately, it provides a fitting and final testament to soldiers who fought and died in anonymity.

The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

Christopher Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin

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Total reviews: 63 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Sword and the Shield is based on one of the most extraordinary intelligence coups of recent times: a secret archive of top-level KGB documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union which the FBI has described, after close examination, as the "most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source." Its presence in the West represents a catastrophic hemorrhage of the KGB’s secrets and reveals for the first time the full extent of its worldwide network.Vasili Mitrokhin, a secret dissident who worked in the KGB archive, smuggled out copies of its most highly classified files every day for twelve years. In 1992, a U.S. ally succeeded in exfiltrating the KGB officer and his entire archive out of Moscow. The archive covers the entire period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the 1980s and includes revelations concerning almost every country in the world. But the KGB's main target, of course, was the United States.Though there is top-secret material on almost every country in the world, the United States is at the top of the list. As well as containing many fascinating revelations, this is a major contribution to the secret history of the twentieth century.Among the topics and revelations explored are: The KGB’s covert operations in the United States and throughout the West, some of which remain dangerous today. KGB files on Oswald and the JFK assassination that Boris Yeltsin almost certainly has no intention of showing President Clinton. The KGB’s attempts to discredit civil rights leader in the 1960s, including its infiltration of the inner circle of a key leader. The KGB’s use of radio intercept posts in New York and Washington, D.C., in the 1970s to intercept high-level U.S. government communications. The KGB’s attempts to steal technological secrets from major U.S. aerospace and technology corporations. KGB covert operations against former President Ronald Reagan, which began five years before he became president. KGB spies who successfully posed as U.S. citizens under a series of ingenious disguises, including several who attained access to the upper echelons of New York society.

The Russian Civil War 1918-22 (Essential Histories)

David Bullock

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Editorial Review:

The Russian Civil War was the most important event of its kind in the 20th century. It changed the lives of over half a billion people and dramatically shaped the political, human and economic geography of Europe, the Far East and Central Asia. Over a tempestuous four-year period the Communist Red Army and the loosely formed, anti-Bolshevist White Army battled in a war that would totally transform the vast Eurasian heartland and lead to Communist revolutions worldwide as well as the Cold War. David Bullock offers a fresh perspective on this conflict, examining the forces of both sides, the intervention of non-Russian forces, including American, Canadian, British, and Japanese troops, and the involvement of female soldiers and partisans.

The military story of massed infantry and cavalry actions, mechanized warfare with tanks, armored cars and trains, and air combat, all along rapidly shifting fronts, is told against the incredible backdrop of political and social revolution. It is an account that is interwoven with tragedy - 30 million people died during the Civil War - and the author skillfully places the battles in the context of human suffering as he explores the cruel sacrifice of a huge population on the altar of political power.

The absorbing text includes dramatic first-hand accounts, and is vividly illustrated with carefully selected previously unpublished photographs. This new insight into history's most significant civil war, which began 90 years ago, will be welcomed by all students of history seeking a compact account of the conflict that brought into being a new superpower - the USSR - and its threatening ideology.

The Wild Blue : The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany

Stephen E. Ambrose

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Total reviews: 162 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The very young men who flew the B24s over Germany in World War II against terrible odds were an exemplary band of brothers. In The Wild Blue, Stephen Ambrose recounts their extraordinary brand of heroism, skill, daring, and comradeship.

Stephen Ambrose describes how the Army Air Forces recruited, trained, and chose those few who would undertake the most demanding and dangerous jobs in the war. These are the boys -- turned pilots, bombardiers, navigators, and gunners of the B24s -- who suffered over 50 percent casualties.

Ambrose carries us along in the crowded, uncomfortable, and dangerous B24s as their crews fought to the death through thick, black, deadly flak to reach their targets and destroy the German war machine or else went down in flames. Twenty-two-year-old George McGovern who was to become a United States senator and a presidential candidate, flew thirty-five combat missions (all the Army would allow) and won the Distinguished Flying Cross. We meet him and his mates, his co-pilot killed in action, and crews of other planes -- many of whom did not come back.

As Band of Brothers and Citizen Soldiers portrayed the bravery and ultimate victory of the American soldier from Normandy on to Germany, The Wild Blue makes clear the contribution these young men of the Army Air Forces stationed in Italy made to the Allied victory.