Historical Biographies Russia

Mansur Abdulin fought in the front ranks of the Soviet infantry against the German invaders at Stalingrad, Kursk, and on the banks of the Dnieper. This is his extraordinary story. His vivid firsthand account of a ruthless war on the Eastern Front gives rare insight into the reality of the fighting and into the tactics and mentality of the Red Army's soldiers.

A century after his death, Grigory Rasputin remains fascinating: the Russian peasant with hypnotic eyes who befriended Tsar Nicholas II and helped destroy the Russian Empire, but the truth about his strange life has never fully been told. Written by the world's leading authority on Rasputin, this new biography draws on previously closed Soviet archives to offer new information on Rasputin's relationship with Empress Alexandra, sensational revelations about his sexual conquests, a re-examination of his murder, and more.

“Michael Farquhar doesn’t write about history the way, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin does. He writes about history the way Doris Kearns Goodwin’s smart-ass, reprobate kid brother might. I, for one, prefer it.”—Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnist ...

In the late nineteenth century, close diplomatic relations existed between the United States and Russia. All that changed when George Kennan went to Siberia in 1885 to investigate the exile system and his eyes were opened to the brutality Russia was wielding to suppress dissent. Over ten months Kennan traveled eight thousand miles, mostly in horse-drawn carriages, sleighs, or on horseback. He endured suffocating sandstorms in the summer and blizzards in the winter. His interviews with convicts and political exiles revealed how Russia ran on the fuel of inflicted pain and fear.

Stalin’s Scribe is the first biography of a man who was once one of the Soviet Union’s most prominent political figures. Thanks to the opening of Russia’s archives, Brian Boeck discovers that Sholokhov’s official Soviet biography is actually a tangled web of legends, half-truths, and contradictions. Boeck examines the complex connection between an author and a dictator, revealing how a Stalinist courtier became an ideological acrobat and consummate politician in order to stay in favor and remain relevant after the dictator’s death.

In this examination of Solzhenitsyn and his work, Lee Congdon explores the consequences of the atheistic socialism that drove the Russian revolutionary movement.

In the history of the modern world, there have been few characters more sadistic, sinister, and deeply demented as Baron Ungern-Sternberg. An anti-Semitic fanatic with a penchant for Eastern mysticism and a hatred of communists, Baron Ungern-Sternberg took over Mongolia in 1920 with a ragtag force of White Russians, Siberians, Japanese, and native Mongolians.

Described as the 'most beautiful princess in Europe', and a woman 'capable of arousing profane passion', this is the story of a woman whose life combined privilege and tragedy, love and riches, conviction and courage, humanity and inhumanity.

Dopo il successo di Putin e Ucraina, Nicolai Lilin ci racconta l'enigma Rasputin, una delle figure più affascinanti, controverse e misteriose della storia russa. Rasputin è stato tante cose: un mistico rozzo ma con grande seguito, un guaritore, un seduttore, un visionario dai tratti profetici, un manipolatore di anime morte, per dirla con Gogol, un abile e furbo stratega. Un "impostore" dalla vita piena di contraddizioni, un arrampicatore sociale, un genio che sapeva parlare al cuore delle persone semplici e non solo. Aveva ai suoi piedi la dinastia dei Romanov.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was perhaps the most dramatic single event of the Cold War and a major turning point in history. Though it ended unsuccessfully, the spontaneous uprising of Hungarians against their country's Communist party and the Soviet occupation forces in the wake of Stalin's death demonstrated to the world at large the failure of Communism.

Elizabeth Petrovna was the Empress of Russia from 1741 until her death. She led the country during the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48) and the Seven Years' War (1756-63), left her mark on the service of nobility, the establishment of the Univeresidy of Moscow and the Imperial Academy of Arts; she remains one of the most popular Russian monarchs due to her strong opposition to Prussian policies and her decision not to execute a single person during her reign.

В "Записках" имеются ценные сведения о времени царствования Петра III, о воцарении Екатерины II и роли Дашковой в перевороте, о полной интриг придворной жизни, подробности десятилетнего скитания княгини по Европе, зарисовки московского быта середины XVIII в., характеристики известных русских и европейских деятелей, с которыми автора мемуаров сталкивала судьба.

История Петра I — незавершенный исторический труд гениального российского поэта, "солнца русской поэзии", драматурга и прозаика А. С. Пушкина (1799–1837). В нем представлена хронология событий времени правления Петра Великого. Пушкин планировал на ее основании написать Историю Петра I максимум через год. Параллельно он трудился над "Историей Пугачева" и "Капитанской дочкой". Работу прервала дуэль… Николай I запретил печатать рукопись. Причина — автор с большой для того времени смелостью позволил себе рассказать не только о положительных, но и отрицательных качествах императора.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky burst onto the world stage in November 1917 as coleader of a Marxist Revolution seizing power in Russia. It made him one of the most recognized personalities of the 20th century, a global icon of radical change. Yet just months earlier, this same Lev Trotsky was a nobody, a refugee expelled from Europe, writing obscure pamphlets and speeches, barely noticed outside a small circle of fellow travelers. Where had he come from to topple Russia and change the world? Where else? New York.

Страшная сказка и горькая быль о пугачевском восстании, любви и злодействе, коварстве и великодушии, предательстве и отваге, рассказанная семнадцатилетним офицером Петром Андреевичем Гриневым, ставшим невольным участником описываемых событий.

At last a book about the so-called "Mad Monk" of Imperial Russia that lays to rest the myths and reveals the truth about one of the most controversial characters in human history while exploring the impact his murder had on a dynasty, a people, and a country.

From the court of Imperial Russia to Foxley Manor in Herefordshire, the story begins with the First World War. Part One takes the listener through the Russian Revolution to the formation of the Second Polish Republic and the Polish-Bolshevik war. Part Two begins at the outset to World War Two with the German invasion on September 1st, 1939, and the subsequent invasion by the Soviet Union on the 17th of the same month. The listener is taken through the early months of soviet occupation and then on to the first wave of Polish deportations to Siberia.

Joseph Stalin ruled Russia with an iron first. As a dictator, he was personally responsible for the deaths of roughly 10 million people. While most write Stalin off as an evil tyrant, there is more to the man than most know - a US Ambassador once said, "I must confess that for me Stalin remains the most inscrutable and contradictory character I have known."

The world has never had its shortage of legends surrounding the lives of supposed mystics, visionaries, and prophets. But few have ever grabbed a hold on pop culture quite like Grigori Rasputin, one of the most shadowy and mysterious figures in Russian history.

Alexander III was Emperor of Russia from 1881 until his death in 1894. He was highly conservative and reversed some of the liberal reforms of his father, Alexander II. He was a pacifist, focused on the protection of his people; mostly seen as lacking refinement and elegance, he rather relished the idea of being of the same rough texture as some of his subjects. Discover the life and struggles of this influential ruler through this precise, clear and thorough presentation.