Russia

Fear No Evil by Natan Sharansky, PublicAffairs, 1998.

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine  by Anne Applebaum, Vintage Paperback, 2018.

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster  by Adam Higginbotham, Simon & Schuster, 2019.

Victims of Yalta: The Secret Betrayal of the Allies: 1944-1947  by Nikolai Tolstoy, Pegasus Books, 2012.  Forced Repatriation This book describes the forced repatriation by Great Britain of Soviet citizens to the Soviet Union after World War II. The British made a formal agreement with the Soviet Union to return their nationals at the Yalta meeting of Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. Many of these deportees  were Soviet soldiers held in German prisoner of war

Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust  by Miron Dolot, W. W. Norton & Company, 1987.  Holodomor This book is a memoir by a Ukrainian peasant who endured Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture in the Ukraine in the early 1930s, which lead to a man-made famine that Ukrainians call the Holodomor. The author’s father had been murdered by the Communists in 1919, because he was head of the village and a holdover from the pre-Communist system. The Communists returned to

The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine  by Robert Conquest, Oxford University Press, 1986.  Holodomor During 1929-1932, several million Ukrainians died in a man-made famine. Joseph Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture was the primary cause of the famine. Stalin's Motives A desire to move property from private ownership to government ownership, A belief that large collective farms would operate more efficiently than small, individual fa

Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times’s Man in Moscow  by S. J. Taylor, Oxford University Press, 1990.  Estonia After the end of World War I, the United States supported independence for the Baltic states, and sent Naval Commander John A. Gade to Estonia. The New York Times sent Duranty to Estonia to cover the Commander Gade. Walter Duranty interviewed a Russian sailor that the Bolsheviks had sent to Latvia with money and jewels to be given to American Commun

The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia  by Tim Tzouliadis. The Penguin Press (2008)

Gulag: A History  by Anne Applebaum, Anchor Books, 2004.  GULAG Acronym GULAG is an acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, which means Main Administration Camp. The book describes the origin of the gulag as the forced labor camps set up by the Bolsheviks to house their political enemies.  Lenin's Red Terror The gulag started in 1918-1919 during the Bolshevik Red Terror as concentration camps. The initial inhabitants were White Guards, counter-revolutionary priests, former C

The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements  by Lynne Viola, Oxford University Press, 2007.  Deporting Kulaks This book nicely complements Robert Conquest's book, Harvest of Sorrow. Conquest's book describes what happened in the Ukraine when the kulaks were removed. The kulaks were the more prosperous peasants. Most of them were poor, but not quite as poor as the other peasants. Viola's book describes what happened to the kulaks in their places of exile.

Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag  by Janusz Bardach and Kathleen Gleeson, University of California Press, 1998.  Deporation of the Poles Eastward Janusz Bardach was a Polish Jew who joined the forces of the Soviet Red Army in Belarus during World War II to fight the Nazi invasion, He lost the tank he commanded because he forgot to close the hatch before he crossed a river. He was arrested by the KGB for this mistake and courtmartialed. Instead of being executed, he was

Gulag: A History  by Anne Applebaum, Anchor Books, 2004.  Summary GULAG is an acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, which means Main Administration Camp. The book describes the origin of the gulag as the forced labor camps set up by the Bolsheviks to house their political enemies.  The gulag started in 1918-1919 during the Bolshevik Red Terror as concentration camps. The initial inhabitants were White Guards, counter-revolutionary priests, former Czarist officials, Menshevi

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy  by David E. Hoffman, Anchor Books, 2010.  Treaty The U.S.A. and Soviet Union signed a Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention treaty outlawing biological weapons, which the Americans abided by, but the Soviets did not.   Accidents There was an accidental pulmonary anthrax exposure to the local population of weaponized anthrax bacteria in April 1979 in Sverdlovsk, a city of one million people.

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Character Stalin believed in things for which there was no evidence. Stalin disbelieved in things for which there was evidence. When reality did not agree with his mind, Stalin became paranoid, believing that people were trying to trick him. Stalin had difficulty owning up to his own mistakes, and instead blamed others. Stalin blamed saboteurs and wreckers for the failings of the socialist sys

Young Stalin  by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Vintage, 2008.  Georgian Born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili in Georgia in the Caucasus, he went by several other names, including Stalin (means steel in Russian), and also Koba, diminutive of Jacob Yakob, a character in the novel “The Patricide” by Alexander Kazbegi; Jacob Yakob was a Caucassian bandit-hero who fought against the Russians. Bank Robberies Stalin’s gangs robbed banks, stole arms from arsenals, and conducted assassinat

Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him  by Donald Rayfield, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005. Felix...

A Concise History of the Russian Revolution  by Richard Pipes, Vintage, 2011. Ulyanov Nikolai Lenin was born Vladimir Ilich Ulianov in April 1870 in Simbirsk. His older brother Alexander was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate Tsar Nicholas II. Lenin attended the University of Kazan. He was not initially interested in politics, but the politically-minded students drew him in because his brother had been political. Lenin was expelled from the university for participat

History's Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks  by Sean McMeekin, Yale University Press, 2008. Bolshevik Looting When the Bolsheviks took control of Russia, they needed money, which they obtained by repudiating foreign debt, looting safe deposit boxes, nationalizing of the property of the Russian Orthodox Church, and stealing Tsarist gold and jewelry. Western Culpability The Bolsheviks sold much of their loot abroad. Western Europe made a half-hearted attem

The Great Terror: A Reassessment  (2008 edition) by Robert Conquest, Oxford University Press, 2008. Kronstadt Shipyard Strike In March 1921 the Communist Party used force to put down a revolt of the proletariat (sailors and workers) at the Kronstadt shipyard. After the rebellion was put down, lower Party committees were no longer elected but rather appointed. Lenin said that the Communist Part had the right to oppose the will of the majority of the proletariat, because the pr

Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus  by Oliver Bullough, Basic Books, 2012. Summary This is a book about the history of the Caucasus. The native people of the Caucasus have been victimized by both the expansion of the Russian empire during the 19th century, and Stalin’s paranoia during the 20th century. The reason whites are called Caucasians is that some eighteenth-century European intellectuals believed (mistakenly) that the white race