This important book draws on vital new archival material to unravel the mystery of Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941 and Stalin's enigmatic behavior on the eve of the attack. Gabriel Gorodetsky challenges the currently popular view that Stalin was about to invade Germany when Hitler made a preemptive strike. He argues instead that Stalin was actually negotiating for European peace, asserting that Stalin followed an unscrupulous Realpolitik that served well-defined geopolitical interests by seeking to redress the European balance of power. Gorodetsky substantiates his argument through the...

This book offers a lively revisionist account of a crucial phase in the life of Stafford Cripps: his meteoric rise from the radical fringe of Parliament on the eve of the war to membership of the War Cabinet in 1942. Cripps' ambassadorship to Moscow was of prime importance in view of the dramatic events during this period - the German conquest of Europe, Britain's struggle for survival and Russia's transformation from neutral to belligerent. Dr Gorodetsky assesses how Britain adapted to react to the changing circumstances and examines the recurrent controversy between Cripps and Churchill...

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the lifting of the Iron Curtain and the withering away of Communist ideology had evoked tremendous hopes for a unified Europe, a region which now also encompasses the East, including a democratic and economically reformed Russia.

Gabriel Gorodetsky unravels President Putin's efforts to re-establish Russia's position as a major power, attempting to reconcile Russia's traditional national interests with the newly emerging social and political entity taking shape at home.

A country gentleman, Sir Stafford Cripps - ascetic, vegetarian, and a devout Christian with a lucrative career at the bar - cut an incongruous figure in British politics of the 1930s. By the time war broke out, his position among Labour's most radical backbenchers had made him an outcast. It was his fortuitous appointment as ambassador to Moscow in 1940 which secured for him a prominent position in the War Cabinet and later on a key role in Attlee's Labour government. His diary, which he meticulously kept while in Moscow, describes the metamorphosis in his political fortune. As significant is...

Lenin's death at the beginning of 1924 coincided with an exhaustive search by the USSR for a modus vivendi with the capitalist world. In laying the foundations of peaceful co-existence, priority was given to the cultivation of relations with Britain. This study examines the British government's various responses to the Soviet overtures. The scope of the work ranges from Labour's de jure recognition of the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1924 to the Conservatives' severance of relations in May 1927. The bulk of the study is set against the background of rapidly deteriorating relations and...

A country gentleman, Sir Stafford Cripps - ascetic, vegetarian, and a devout Christian with a lucrative career at the bar - cut an incongruous figure in British politics of the 1930s. By the time war broke out, his position among Labour's most radical backbenchers had made him an outcast. It was his fortuitous appointment as ambassador to Moscow in 1940 which secured for him a prominent position in the War Cabinet and later on a key role in Attlee's Labour government. His diary, which he meticulously kept while in Moscow, describes the metamorphosis in his political fortune. As significant is...

Stan bardzo dobry - książka była czytana, ale jeszcze długo posłuży innym czytelnikom. Ma ślady używania - otwierania i kartkowania, rysy, zabrudzenia. Wygląda jak książka, którą wypożyczasz w bibliotece.
Highlights of the extraordinary wartime diaries of Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador to London

The terror and purges of Stalin's Russia in the 1930s discouraged Soviet officials from leaving documentary records let alone keeping personal diaries. A remarkable exception is the unique diary assiduously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between...