I’m a professional explainer of Russia. For over 20 years I’ve been studying the country and trying to understand what makes it (and its leaders and people) so intent on attacking those around it and perceived adversaries further afield. That’s never been more important to understand than today when Ukraine and its soldiers are the only thing preventing Russia from once again rampaging across Europe. These books are ones that have helped me understand one part or several parts of the Russia problem, and I think they’ll be helpful for anybody else who wants to, too.
I wrote
Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West
I found the first 100 pages of this book, covering Russia’s early history, to be the clearest explanation anywhere of how the country has developed – or failed to – the way it has.
It was published in 1974, so the frame of reference is the Soviet Union – but the way Tibor Szamuely drew on Russia’s early history to explain the present day is just as valid for post-Communist Russia. That proves the point: that Russia is condemned by its own history, and no social or political upheaval to date has enabled it to break free from that trap and move forward to be a country that can co-exist with others.
This analysis of Russian history traces the essential features of Revolutionary Russia back to medieval times when authoritarian rule first became a prerequisite of survival and is intended as a contribution to our understanding of the Soviet Union.
So much of what Russia and its leaders say about their own country and its place in history makes no sense to the rest of the world. And as a result, I routinely get asked whether the fantasies that Russia creates for itself are genuine beliefs or just convenient fictions to excuse the Kremlin’s attacks against other countries or its own people.
Charles Clover, a former Financial Times correspondent in Moscow, charted how a particular strand of deranged nationalism took hold of Russia’s rulers – laying the groundwork for the war on Ukraine. This book helps understand not only the dangerous ideas promoted by Russia’s nationalist gurus but also how they now drive the Russian state to war.
It’s a sobering read and essential for understanding what it would take to divert Russia from being intent on regaining its empire.
A fascinating study of the 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 of lies and delusions that is Eurasia."-Ben Judah, Standpoint
A powerful strain of Russian nationalism now lies at the heart of the Kremlin's political thinking:…
Another question I permanently get asked as a professional Russia-watcher is what Russia’s own population really thinks about its war on Ukraine and the atrocities committed there.
Surely, people think, if only ordinary Russians knew the truth about what their troops are doing in this unprovoked war of aggression – and how many of them are dying alongside innocent Ukrainian civilians and children – they would turn against the war. That’s why Jade McGlynn’s Russia’s War is such an important book.
Jade spent years researching Russian propaganda, its twisting of history, and the effect on what Russians think – and found, disturbingly, that yes, ordinary Russians really do support the horrors inflicted on Ukraine. It’s a disturbing read but another vital one for understanding what it will take to stop Russia.
In the early hours of 24 February 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine. The brutality of the Russian assault has horrified the world. But Russians themselves appear to be watching an entirely different war - one in which they are the courageous underdogs and kind-hearted heroes successfully battling a malign Ukrainian foe.
Russia analyst Jade McGlynn takes us on a journey into this parallel military and political universe to reveal the sometimes monstrous, sometimes misconstrued attitudes behind Russian majority backing for the invasion. Drawing on media analysis and interviews with ordinary citizens, officials and foreign-policy elites in Russia and Ukraine, McGlynn…
Russia in the 1990s was a strange place in a strange time, and Andrew Miller does a great job of capturing some of that strangeness in some of its more revolting extremes.
It’s fiction – supposedly - but the parallel world it describes will be instantly recognisable to anyone who was there or even brushed its edges. And if you weren’t, I think this is a better explanation of what happened than plenty of serious history books. And that, in turn, is essential for understanding where Russia is today – thirty years later, but with the echo of the mad years still shaping the country now.
Snowdrops. That's what the Russians call them - the bodies that float up into the light in the thaw. Drunks, most of them, and homeless people who just give up and lie down into the whiteness, and murder victims hidden in the drifts by their killers.
Nick has a confession. When he worked as a high-flying British lawyer in Moscow, he was seduced by Masha, an enigmatic woman who led him through her city: the electric nightclubs and intimate dachas, the human kindnesses and state-wide corruption. Yet as Nick fell for Masha, he…
I found it hard to choose between several of Edward Crankshaw’s books explaining Russia. Each, in its own way, uncovers a particular aspect of history or society that makes the country what it is. In the end, I settled on this, his first: published in 1947, not long after Crankshaw had been posted to Moscow during WWII, and while he was still reeling from the vast gulf between what he experienced there and the image of the USSR that was being sold abroad.
Crankshaw was sometimes accused of being too sympathetic to Russia, but while he does his best to explain why the country behaves as it does, he doesn’t seek to excuse it. For that reason I find this one of the most clear-headed appraisals of Russia. And given the continuities that run through all of Russian history, his rationalising of how Russia works and what it does is just as valid today as it was almost 80 years ago.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank…
This book was written for anybody who cannot understand why Russia behaves the way it does. It traces persistent patterns through decades and centuries of history, looking for the roots of how Russian politics and society are structured today, and how Russia formed the views of the world and their own place in it that lead to inevitable conflict with Europe and the West.
The book was published in 2019, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Still, the problems it deals with are timeless and lie behind everything Russia has done both to Ukraine and to enemies further afield. In fact, the book looked at the trend of Russian history and predicted it would shortly lead to open warfare in Europe. Sadly, it was correct.
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
