Russian Biographies

A legal analyst for NPR, NBC, and CNN, delves into the facts surrounding what has been called the “worst intelligence disaster in US history”: the case of Robert Hanssen—a Russian spy who was embedded in the FBI for two decades.

In this meticulously researched and gripping, novelistic narrative, Gordon Corera uncovers the story of how Cold War spying has evolved and indeed, is still very much with us. Russians Among Us describes for the first time the story of deep cover spies in America and the FBI agents who tracked them. In intimate and riveting detail, it reveals new information about todays spiesas well as those trying to catch them and those trying to kill them.

Alone among world leaders, Vladimir Putin has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm and has threatened to do so. He invades his neighbours, most recently Ukraine, meddles in Western elections and orders assassinations inside and outside Russia. The regime he heads is autocratic and corrupt. Yet many Russians continue to support him. Despite Western sanctions, the majority have been living better than at any time in the past. By fair means or foul, under Putin's leadership, Russia has once again become a force to be reckoned with.

Vitaly Stepanov worked for the Russian anti-doping squad, committed to his job; Yuliya Rusanova was one of the country's most promising 800m athletes. When they met, he fell in love with her; she revealed she was taking performance-enhancing drugs. It could have been the end of their relationship, but instead they decided they would reveal the scale and the scope of the corruption in Russian athletics - the bribes, the drugs, the abuse.

When he stepped down in January 2017 as the fourth US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper had been President Obama's senior intelligence advisor for six and a half years, longer than his three predecessors combined. He led the US Intelligence Community through a period that included the raid on Osama bin Laden, the Benghazi attack, the leaks of Edward Snowden, and Russia's influence operation on the 2016 US election.

At a huge cost, the Red Army and the civilian population of Leningrad ultimately endured a bitter 900-day siege, struggling against constant bombing, shelling, and starvation. Throughout the siege, Soviet forces tried to break the German lines and restore contact with the garrison. To Besiege a City charts the first of these offensives which began in January 1942 and was followed by repeated assaults.

Seven Million Dollar Spy reveals, for the first time, the inside story of the dramatic US counterintelligence operation that resulted in the capture of the most dangerous mole working for Russia inside US intelligence. Now, the former senior KGB spy, to whom the US paid seven million dollars for Moscow's file on the mole, is identified by both his real and code names.

In April 1917, as Tsar Nicholas II's abdication sent shockwaves across war-torn Europe, the future leader of the Bolshevik revolution, Vladimir Lenin, was far away, exiled in Zurich. To lead the revolt, Lenin needed to return to Petrograd immediately. But to get there, he would have to cross Germany, which meant accepting help from the deadliest of Russia's adversaries and betraying his homeland.

Bestselling author Douglas Century reveals the untold story of the epic rise and fall of Boris Nayfeld, also known as Biba, one of the most notorious Russian mob bosses of our era. Boris Nayfeld, a.k.a. “Biba,” is the last living boss of the old-school Russian mob in America, and he’s survived to tell it all. Filled with sex, drugs, and murder, Biba’s story is a mind-boggling journey that took him from petty street crime in the USSR to billion-dollar embezzlement in America.

Their wings were weak, their talons broken…yet they flew the Soviets into winning the war against the Nazis. They were ignored, laughed at, and forced to do chores beneath their ranks. Why? They were the "weaker" gender. Despite being capable, they were initially denied entry into combat. And when they did enlist, their treatment only worsened: They were assigned worn-out uniforms and left to the mercy of rusted equipment on the battlefield. These adversities didn’t stop the Soviet female fighters from going ahead and showing unprecedented excellence in warfare.

Anticipating a new dawn of freedom after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russians could hardly have foreseen the reality of their future a decade later: a country impoverished and controlled at every level by organized crime. This riveting book views the 1990s reform period through the experiences of individual citizens, revealing the changes that have swept Russia and their effect on Russia's age-old ways of thinking.

In 2008, almost two decades after the Cold War was officially consigned to the history books, an average American guy helped to bring down a top Russian spy based at the United Nations. He had no formal espionage training. Everything he knew about spying he'd learned from books, films, video games and TV. And yet, he ended up at the centre of a highly successful counterintelligence operation that targeted Russian espionage in America.

Alexandra Kollontai was a key leader of the Russian Socialist movement, the only woman in the early Soviet government, and one of the most famous women in Russian history. She worked tirelessly all her life as a speaker, writer, and organizer for women's emancipation. This compelling biography recounts her life for an emerging generation of fighters for women's liberation.

Avtobiograficheskiy roman angliyskogo pisatelya Somerseta Uil'yama Moehma "Podvodya itogi" (1938) predstavlyaet soboy ne stol'ko izlozhenie fakticheskoy kanvy ego zhizni, skol'ko popytku proanalizirovat' svoy put' - pisatelya i cheloveka. Predel'no iskrennie i glubokie razmyshleniya avtora o svoem literaturnom tvorchestve i vnutrennem razvitii ne mogut ne zainteresovat' sovremennogo chitatelya.

When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the writer Jana Bakunina, who has lived in the UK for 20 years, felt furious, ashamed, but most of all helpless. A year later she travelled to her home city of Yekaterinburg to see how ordinary Russians viewed the conflict—and whether the soul of her nation had truly been crushed.

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.

К Марине Королёвой обращаются за консультацией, когда хотят знать, «как правильно». Автор бестселлеров о русском языке: «Говорим по-русски с Мариной Королёвой», «Говорим по-русски правильно» (Книга года – 2007), «Чисто по-русски» (два издания). В эту книгу М. Королёвой «Чисто по-русски» вошли как избранные и переработанные статьи из предыдущих изданий, так и новые материалы.

Viv Groskop has discovered the meaning of life in Russian literature. As she knows from personal experience, everything that has ever happened in life has already happened in these novels: from not being sure what to do with your life ( Anna Karenina) to being socially anxious about your appearance (all of Chekhov's work). This is a literary self-help memoir, with examples from the author's own life.

In Spymaster's Prism, the legendary former spymaster Jack Devine details the unending struggle with Russia and its intelligence agencies as it works against our national security. Devine tells this story through the unique perspective of a seasoned CIA professional who served more than three decades, some at the highest levels of the agency.

Это история русского мальчика Алёши, которого в детстве все звали просто Лёнькой. Он своими глазами видел, как фашисты расправлялись с его односельчанами, едва не потерял мать и пытался бороться, уйдя в стихийно созданный партизанский отряд. Но в то ужасное лето 1941 года было сложно противостоять страшной «коричневой чуме» — вместе с матерью Лёньку насильственно отправили в германский трудовой лагерь, где на долю малолетнего паренька выпали не только невыносимые условия содержания и работы, но и самые настоящие пытки.