Russian & Soviet

The definitive history of Russia’s most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and a revelatory examination of how that hidden history shaped both Russia and the West.

The shocking inside story of how the Wagner Group made private military companies inextricable from Russia’s anti-Western foreign strategy.

Acclaimed journalist Simon Shuster gives us the first inside account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the perspective of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team, who granted him unprecedented access....

In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of 73....

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of the CIA's most valuable spy in the Soviet Union and an evocative portrait of the agency's Moscow station....

This is the intimate story of 20 tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition....

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....

When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre", describing her work as "a history of emotions - a history of the soul"....

Philip Short’s comprehensive, fully up-to-date biography of Vladimir Putin, woven into the tumultuous saga of Russia over the last sixty years, gives us the whole tale, up to the present day.

Celebrated historian Orlando Figes presents a brilliantly colored account of the myths that have shaped and reshaped Russia’s identity and politics from its founding....

A bestselling national security expert delivers a chilling analysis of how Western indecision and apathy made possible the return of brutal Russian expansionism—with catastrophic consequences.

Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential audiobook is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today’s world....

The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to its own people and to the world....

Who were the three men the American and Soviet superpowers exchanged at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie in the first prisoner exchange of the nuclear age? Bridge of Spies vividly traces their paths to that electrifying moment on February 10, 1962....

This is a story about the dirty secrets of the most powerful people in the world—including Donald Trump. From Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat was used in operations far more sinister than the public could ever imagine....

A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the US confronted the USSR during the Cold War....

Journalist Owen Matthews dives deep into the war in Ukraine—from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol....

Once Upon a Time in Russia is the untold true story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches....

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines....

Young Stalin tells the story of an exceptional, charismatic, darkly turbulent young man born into obscurity, fancying himself a poet and a priest....

Politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle have accused Russia of interfering with our elections and our intelligence agencies. But the war Russia is waging against America is very different from anything you have heard in the press....

Philip Snow provides a full account of the relationship between two global giants in this compelling, expansive history of the relationship between China and Russia, from the seventeenth century to the present....

In June 2023, the Wagner Group assembled an armed convoy that included tanks and rocket launchers and set out on what seemed like a journey to take control of Moscow. The last person to attempt such a venture was Adolf Hitler.

The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution....

A memoir of service by the American ambassador who was on the diplomatic front lines when Putin invaded Ukraine, Midnight in Moscow is the first behind-the-scenes account of how U.S.-Russia relations hit their nadir—and a playbook for our unfolding confrontation.