Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> World - Russian & Former Soviet Union

A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year

It was the height of the Cold War, and a dangerous time to be stationed in the Soviet Union. One evening, while the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was filling his gas tank, a stranger approached and dropped a note into the car. The chief, suspicious of a KGB trap, ignored the overture. But the man had made up his mind. His attempts to establish contact with the CIA would be rebuffed four times before he thrust upon them an envelope whose contents would stun U.S. intelligence. In the years that followed, that man, Adolf...

When, on 21 November 2013, former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych decided to postpone an EU Association Agreement, few would have predicted that this would lead to a prolonged inter-communal conflict in Europe's borderland. What started as a peaceful demonstration of support for Ukraine's pro-European course by thousands of people in Maidan Square in Kiev soon developed into a vicious confrontation dividing families, communities and the Ukrainian nation.

Since the beginning of the confrontation, a lot has been written about its root causes, the motivations of the main actors,...

The American position on Russia during the First World War was defined by the same idealism that guided our relations with other countries. Woodrow Wilson and American leaders had hailed the Revolution of March 1917 as an expression of the true spirit of Russia, a harbinger of democracy. The Bolshevik revolt and the civil war that followed were, in their eyes, only temporary disturbances. Still, the growth of the new democracy would only prosper if the Russians could restore order to their beleaguered land.

In this book Linda Killen examines a hitherto neglected instrument of...