russia

Explains how the Russias became the Russian empire and later the vast Soviet Union.

"When Russian president Maxim Krupin discovers that he has inoperable brain cancer, he's determined to cling to power. His first task is to kill or imprison any of his countrymen who can threaten him. Soon, though, his illness becomes serious enough to require a more dramatic diversion: war with the West. Upon learning of Krupin's condition, CIA director Irene Kennedy understands that the United States is facing an opponent who has nothing to lose. The only way to avoid a confrontation that could leave millions dead is to send Mitch Rapp to Russia under impossibly dangerous orders"--.

In 1968, acclaimed historian of twentieth-century Russia, Sheila Fitzpatrick, was "outed" as a spy in Russia. The British government had recruited her while she was a student at Oxford. During the course of her research in Russian archives, she spent time in Moscow reviewing the files of the Soviet Commission after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Despite the attention of the KGB, and the impossibility of finding a winter coat, Sheila loved Moscow and had firm friendships there.

An introduction to Russia, providing information about the country's cities, history, and occupations among other aspects. Includes glossary.

Grigory Rasputin, holy man and intimate of the Russian royal family, was murdered in the basement of a St. Petersburg palace in 1916. To his many enemies he was the incarnation of evil genius; he died because they held him to be the real power behind a throne that his malign influence was destroying.

When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. There was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflict, much less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would reshape the course of human events. In fact, World War I might have been avoided entirely had it not been for a small group of statesmen who, in the month after the assassination, plotted to use the murder as the trigger for a long-awaited showdown in Europe. The primary culprits, moreover, have long escaped blame.