The Road to Russia

The Road to Russia PDF

Author: Bernard Edwards

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2002-01-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0850528984

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Bernard Edwards, the formidable naval historian, has researched the fate of Convoys PQ13 and PQ17 bound from Iceland to Northern Russia as well as the westbound Convoy QP13. Attacked relentlessly by aircraft and U-boats, the former lost a total of thirty ships while QP13 ran into a British minefield off Iceland, losing seven vessels. The Road to Russia is an important addition to the bibliography of this bitterly fought campaign.

The Road to Unfreedom

The Road to Unfreedom PDF

Author: Timothy Snyder

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2019-04-09

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0525574476

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of On Tyranny comes a stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America. “A brilliant analysis of our time.”—Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New Yorker With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Vladimir Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States. Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. To understand the challenge is to see, and perhaps renew, the fundamental political virtues offered by tradition and demanded by the future. By revealing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty.

The Road of Bones

The Road of Bones PDF

Author: Jeremy Poolman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-02-03

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0857206095

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The Road of Bonesis the story of Russia's greatest road. For over 200 years, the route of the Vladimirka Road has been at the centre of the nation's history, having witnessed everything from the first human footsteps to the rise of Putin and his oil-rich oligarchy. Tsars, wars, famine and wealth: all have crossed and travelled this road, but no-one has ever told its story. In pursuit of the sights, sounds and voices both past and present, Jeremy Poolman travels the Vladimirka. Both epic and intimate, The Road of Bones is a record of his travels - but much more. It looks into the hearts and reveals the histories of those whose lives have been changed by what is known by many as simply The Greatest of Roads. This is a book about life and about death and about the strength of will it takes to celebrate the former while living in the shadow of the latter. Anecdotal and epic, The Road of Bones follows the author's journey along this road, into the past and back again. The book takes as its compass both the voices of history and those of today and draws a map of the cities and steppes of the Russian people's battered but ultimately indefatigable spirit.

Roads to the Temple

Roads to the Temple PDF

Author: Leon Aron

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2012-06-13

Total Pages: 746

ISBN-13: 0300183240

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Leon Aron considers the “mystery of the Soviet collapse” and finds answers in the intellectual and moral self-scrutiny of glasnost that brought about a profound shift in values. Reviewing the entire output of the key glasnost outlets in 1987-1991, he elucidates and documents key themes in this national soul-searching and the “ultimate” questions that sparked moral awakening of a great nation: “Who are we? How do we live honorably? What is a dignified relationship between man and state? How do we atone for the moral breakdown of Stalinism?” Contributing both to the theory of revolutions and history of ideas, Aron presents a thorough and original narrative about new ideas’ dissemination through the various media of the former Soviet Union. Aron shows how, reaching every corner of the nation, these ideas destroyed the moral foundation of the Soviet state, de-legitimized it and made its collapse inevitable.

Russia's Crony Capitalism

Russia's Crony Capitalism PDF

Author: Anders Aslund

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-05-23

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 030024486X

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A penetrating look into the extreme plutocracy Vladimir Putin has created and its implications for Russia’s future This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism. Much of this wealth has been hidden in offshore havens in the United States and the United Kingdom, where companies with anonymous owners and black money transfers are allowed to thrive. Though beneficial to a select few, this system has left Russia’s economy in untenable stagnation, which Putin has tried to mask through military might.

Agrarian Reform in Russia

Agrarian Reform in Russia PDF

Author: Carol S. Leonard

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-12-06

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 1139491385

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This book examines the history of reforms and major state interventions affecting Russian agriculture: the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the Stolypin reforms, the NEP, the Collectivization, Khrushchev reforms, and finally farm enterprise privatization in the early 1990s. It shows a pattern emerging from a political imperative in imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet regimes, and it describes how these reforms were justified in the name of the national interest during severe crises - rapid inflation, military defeat, mass strikes, rural unrest, and/or political turmoil. It looks at the consequences of adversity in the economic environment for rural behavior after reform and at long-run trends. It has chapters on property rights, rural organization, and technological change. It provides a new database for measuring agricultural productivity from 1861 to 1913 and updates these estimates to the present. This book is a study of the policies aimed at reorganizing rural production and their effectiveness in transforming institutions.

Yalta

Yalta PDF

Author: S. M. Plokhy

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-02-04

Total Pages: 587

ISBN-13: 1101189924

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A major new history of the eight days in February 1945 when FDR, Churchill, and Stalin decided the fate of the world Imagine you could eavesdrop on a dinner party with three of the most fascinating historical figures of all time. In this landmark book, a gifted Harvard historian puts you in the room with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as they meet at a climactic turning point in the war to hash out the terms of the peace. The ink wasn't dry when the recriminations began. The conservatives who hated Roosevelt's New Deal accused him of selling out. Was he too sick? Did he give too much in exchange for Stalin's promise to join the war against Japan? Could he have done better in Eastern Europe? Both Left and Right would blame Yalta for beginning the Cold War. Plokhy's conclusions, based on unprecedented archival research, are surprising. He goes against conventional wisdom-cemented during the Cold War- and argues that an ailing Roosevelt did better than we think. Much has been made of FDR's handling of the Depression; here we see him as wartime chief. Yalta is authoritative, original, vividly- written narrative history, and is sure to appeal to fans of Margaret MacMillan's bestseller Paris 1919.

Journey to Russia

Journey to Russia PDF

Author: Miroslav Krleža

Publisher:

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9789533510293

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When Miroslav Krleza traveled through Russia for six months between the end of 1924 and the beginning of 1925, the celebrated Croatian writer was there to figure out what it all meant. The sprawling country was still coming to terms with the events of the 1917 revolution and reeling from Lenin's death in January 1924. During this period of profound political and social transition, Krleza opened his senses to train stations, cities, and villages and collected wildly different Russian perspectives on their collective moment in history. Krleza's impressionistic reportage of mass demonstrations and jubilant Orthodox Easter celebrations is informed by his preoccupation with the political, social, and psychological complexities of his environment. The result is a masterfully crafted modernist travelogue that resonates today as much as it did when first published in 1926.