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A fascinating study of the root motivations behind the political activities and philosophies of Putin's government in Russia "Part intellectual history, part portrait gallery . . . Black Wind, White Snow traces the background to Putin's ideas with verve and clarity."-Geoffrey Hosking, Financial Times "Required reading. This is a vivid, panoramic history of bad ideas, chasing the metastasis of the doctrine known as Eurasianism. . . . Reading Charles Clover will help you understand the world o...

This book is a study on the Soviet foreign policy when the task of renovating the country was placed on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's (CPSU) political agenda. It discusses Gorbachev's new approach to foreign policy and the political change that reshaped Soviet and European history.

Pan-Turkism has had varied fortunes in the 20th century. It has played a continuing role, at times of great significance, in the internal politics of Turkey itself, and it has fuelled the national struggle of the Turkic groups beyond Turkey. An earlier version of this work was published by Hurst in 1981 as "Pan-Turkism in Turkey: A Study of Irredentism". The disintegration of the Soviet Union, the consequent establishment, in 1991, of six independent Turkic republics in the Caucasus and Central...

This book offers a historical analysis of the geopolitical and geoeconomic competition between the USA and Russia, which has recently heated up again due to the eastward expansion of NATO. The analysis departs from an exploration of the USA’s foreign policy and geopolitical ambitions by illustrating the influence of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex on the country’s political decision-making.  The historical review covers a wide timespan, from the Second World War and the birth of...

It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the outside world, and dominates Western media coverage. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention for detractors and supporters alike. But as Tony Wood argues, in order to understand Russia today, the West needs to shake off its obsession with Putin and look at what lies beyond the Kremlin, to see Russia without Putin....

The author, a former Soviet sociologist, describes the ties between the political regime and the intellectuals of that state. Beginning with the end of Stalin's rule, he explores what he sees as the mutual co-operation and antagonism that has existed between political leaders and intellectuals. The book examines such topics as the role of literature and film in political opposition, and the attempts by the KGB to sow the seeds of mental disturbance among the opponents of the state. The book ends...

This study demonstrates the ability of one superpower to influence or shape the behaviour and policy of another; in this case the use by the USA of economic and trade pressure against the then Soviet Union. The book assesses both the economic and political effect of washington's application of economic measures on Soviet policy in four key areas: human rights; dissent; Jewish emigration; and the Third World. The conclusion reached is that US trade pressure largely failed to have the desired effe...

Anna Politkovskaya turns her steely gaze on President Putin and his early regime in this explosive book.From Putin's tyrannical grip on ordinary citizens to rampant corruption in highest ranks of the government, as well as Mafia dealings, scandals in the provinces and the decline of the intelligentsia, Politkovskaya offers a scathing condemnation of the President and his rule, revealing a shocking state of affairs: soldiers dying from malnutrition, parents requiring to bribes to recover their de...

The ascension of Vladimir Putin--a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB--to thepresidency of Russia in 1999 should have been a signal that the country was headedaway from democracy. Yet in the intervening years--as America and the world's otherleading powers have continued to appease him--Putin has grown not only into a dictatorbut a global threat. With his vast resources and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the centre ofa worldwide assault on political liberty.For Garry Kasparov, none of this is ne...

'This well-structured book is just what is needed now to understand the background of Japanese-Russian relations at the beginning of a very confusing period.' (Professor Reinhard Drifts, East Asia Centre, Univ. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne). Tension and mutual suspicion have marked the relationship between Russia and Japan since official contacts were established in the mid-19th century. Similar perceptions predominate today inspite of the overthrow of communism in Russia and the end of the Cold War;...

This is an account of the life of Aldrich Ames, the double agent whose treachery almost destoyed the CIA. It begins in 1985 when Ames, recruited by his wife, betrayed Western intelligence's greatest asset - KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky. Gordievsky barely escaped with his life and Ames was launched on his own career as an unlikely double agent, during which he delivered a stream of information to Russia. The book tracks the CIA's hardening suspicions about Ames, and climaxes with the massive...

Chaisty looks at the legislative actors and institutions that have shaped economic law making in Russia since 1990. Assessing the influence of partisan, bureaucratic, regional and corporate interests in Russia's post-communist parliaments, the book considers Russia's political stability and economic development.

An intriguing "intellectual portrait" of a generation of Soviet reformers, this book is also a fascinating case study of how ideas can change the course of history. In most analyses of the Cold War's end the ideological aspects of Gorbachev's "new thinking" are treated largely as incidental to the broader considerations of power -- as gloss on what was essentially a retreat forced by crisis and decline. Robert English makes a major contribution by demonstrating that Gorbachev's foreign policy wa...

This book is a comparative study of the role that domestic factors play in shaping the form and content of Western policy toward the Soviet Union. It demonstrates that these factors are at the heart of many of the Allied conflicts in security policy over the past few years and are likely to remian so as the West seeks to coordinate its approach to Gorbachev's Soviet Union. The opening chapter explores the general relationship between domestic politics and the evolution of postwar Western attitud...

Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization offers a new interpretation of Bolshevik ideology, examines its relationship with Soviet politics between 1917 and 1939, and sheds new light on the origins of the political violence of the late 1930s. While it challenges older views that the Stalinist system and the Terror were the product of a coherent Marxist-Leninist blueprint, imposed by a group of committed ideologues, it argues that ideas mattered in Bolshevik politics and that there are strong c...