Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

This gripping history is the definitive account of the battle that shifted the tide of World War II. Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle. In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold... (more)

The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov

This title is translated by Michael Glenny. The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil's onslaught.

The Secret Speech

by Tom Rob Smith

Tom Rob Smith-the author whose debut, Child 44, has been called "brilliant" (Chicago Tribune), "remarkable" (Newsweek) and "sensational" (Entertainment Weekly)-returns with an intense, suspenseful new novel: a story where the sins of the past threaten to destroy the present, where families must overcome unimaginable obstacles to save their loved ones, and where hope for a better tomorrow is found in the most... (more)

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia

by Orlando Figes

From the award-winning author of A People’s Tragedy and Natasha’s Dance , a landmark account of what private life was like for Russians in the worst years of Soviet repression There have been many accounts of the public aspects of Stalin’s dictatorship: the arrests and trials, the enslavement and killing in the gulags. No previous book, however, has explored the regime’s effect on people’s personal lives,... (more)

Young Stalin

by Sebag Montefiore

A revelatory account that finally unveils the shadowy journey from obscurity to power of the Georgian cobbler’s son who became the Red Tsar—the man who, along with Hitler, remains the modern personification of evil. What makes a Stalin? What formed this merciless psychopath who was, as well, a consummate politician, the dynamic world statesman who helped create and industrialize the USSR, outplayed Churchill and... (more)

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world... (more)

Gulag

A History

by Anne Applebaum

The Gulag--a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners--was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its... (more)

Dr. Zhivago

by Boris Pasternak

n celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, here is the only paperback edition now available of the classic story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution.

Child 44

by Tom Rob Smith

A propulsive, relentless page-turner. A terrifying evocation of a paranoid world where no one can be trusted. A surprising, unexpected story of love and family, of hope and resilience. CHILD 44 is a thriller unlike any you have ever read. "There is no crime." Stalin's Soviet Union strives to be a paradise for its workers, providing for all of their needs. One of its fundamental pillars is that its... (more)

The Madonnas of Leningrad: A Novel

by Debra Dean

Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye. Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall... (more)

Bronze Horseman, The

by Paullina Simons

From the author of the international bestseller Tully comes an epic tale of passion, betrayal, and survival in World War II Russia. Leningrad, 1941: The European war seems far away in this city of fallen grandeur, where splendid palaces and stately boulevards speak of a different age, when the city was known as St. Petersburg. Now two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha Metanov, live in a cramped apartment, sharing one... (more)

Darkness at noon;

by Arthur Koestler

Darkness At Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he re-lives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an... (more)

When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Modern War Studies)

When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Modern War Studies)

by David M. Glantz

By the time Pearl Harbor had ripped apart America's peacetime pretensions, the German blitzkrieg had already blasted the Red Army back to the gates of Moscow. Yet, less than four years later, the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flew above the ruins of Berlin, stark symbol of a miraculous comeback that destroyed the German army and shattered Hitler's imperial designs. Told in swift stirring prose, When Titans Clashed... (more)

Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

by Catherine Merridale

A powerful, groundbreaking narrative of the ordinary Russian soldier’s experience of the worst war in history, based on newly revealed sources Of the thirty million who fought, eight million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe’s most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had... (more)

The Heart of a Dog

by Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov, Mirra Ginsburg

This hilarious, brilliantly inventive novel by the author of The Master and Margarita tells the story of a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Thanks to the skills of a renowned Soviet scientist and the transplanted pituitary gland and testes of a petty criminal, Sharik is transformed into a lecherous , vulgar man who spouts Engels and inevitably finds his niche in the bureaucracy as the government official in... (more)

The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

by S. A. Smith

This concise, accessible introduction provides an analytical narrative of the main events and developments in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1936. It examines the impact of the revolution on society as a whole--on different classes, ethnic groups, the army, men and women, youth. Its central concern is to understand how one structure of domination was replaced by another. The book registers the primacy of politics,... (more)

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

by Svetlana Aleksievich

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of the tragedy. Journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown---from innocent citizens to firefighters to... (more)

History of Communism (Universal History)

History of Communism (Universal History)

by Richard Pipes

Beginning with Plato and the first expressions of a utopian vision of a property-less society, Pipes describes communism's historical antecedents, through to Marx, Engels and the birth of communism' as a theory of class relations and a call to arms. He traces its spread to Russia and its adoption by young radical intellectuals led by Lenin, and explores why Russia, against all Marx's predictions, was such a... (more)

The Russian Revolution (Events & Outcomes)

The Russian Revolution (Events & Outcomes)

by Stewart Ross

An investigation of the Russian Revolution. A detailed narrative provides an analysis of the immediate significance of the events, and their place in the bigger picture, going on to examine the consequences of these events and their impact both on contemporaries and on following generations.

A History of Twentieth-Century Russia

by Robert Service

This is a comprehensive overview of twentieth-century Russian history that treats the years from 1917 to 2000 as a single period and analyses the peculiar mixture of political, economic and social ingredients that made up the Soviet compound. It takes the reader from the age of communist rule to the changes that occurred in 1991 and the more uncertain world of Yeltsin and Putin.

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Tags: soviet union

The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

by Antony Beevor

by Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov

by Tom Rob Smith

by Orlando Figes

by Sebag Montefiore

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A History

by Anne Applebaum

by Boris Pasternak

by Tom Rob Smith

by Debra Dean

by Paullina Simons

by Arthur Koestler

by David M. Glantz

by Catherine Merridale

by Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov, Mirra Ginsburg

by S. A. Smith

by Svetlana Aleksievich

by Richard Pipes

by Stewart Ross

by Robert Service