Fans pick 100 books like My Life in Stalinist Russia

By Mary M. Leder,

Here are 100 books that My Life in Stalinist Russia fans have personally recommended if you like My Life in Stalinist Russia. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad

Steven H. Jaffe Author Of New York at War: Four Centuries of Combat, Fear, and Intrigue in Gotham

From my list on cities at war.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian, curator, and writer born and raised in New York City, a place whose history intrigued me from an early age. With a mother who moved from small-town New Jersey to Greenwich Village in the 1950s, and a father who had childhood memories of World War I in the Bronx, I think my interest was sort of preordained. I remain fascinated by cities as engines of change, as flashpoints for conflict, and as places that are simultaneously powerful and vulnerable. 

Steven's book list on cities at war

Steven H. Jaffe Why did Steven love this book?

Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) endured one of history’s great sieges when Hitler’s armies surrounded it in 1941. By the time the Red Army liberated it in 1944, the city’s thriving population of 2.5 million had been reduced by evacuations, bloodshed, and starvation. Salisbury brings to life the harrowing experiences of ordinary men and women who managed to survive with their dignity and devotion to civilization intact. The book casts an ironic shadow forward to the ordeal of Ukraine’s city dwellers today. And if you want to understand Vladimir Putinwhose childhood was shaped by family traumas in wartime Leningradthis is a good place to start.

By Harrison Salisbury,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The 900 Days as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Nazi siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944 was one of the most gruesome episodes of World War II. Nearly three million people endured it just under half of them died. For twenty-five years the distinguished journalist and historian Harrison Salisbury pieced together this remarkable narrative of villainy and survival, in which the city had much to fear-from both Hitler and Stalin.


Book cover of Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II

Wendy Z. Goldman Author Of Fortress Dark and Stern: The Soviet Home Front During World War II

From my list on the Soviet Union in World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of Russian history at Carnegie Mellon University. I have visited Russia many times and spent years working in Russian archives. I am keenly aware of the impact World War II and the Nazis had on the country: a loss of 26-7 million people, wide-scale suffering, mass murder of civilians, and destruction of cities, towns, and villages. The majority of German divisions were concentrated on the eastern front, and it was here the Red Army broke the back of the Wehrmacht. Yet because of divisions created by the Cold War, Americans are taught little about the central role the Soviet Union played in this victory. As a historian, I am strongly committed to bringing the full story of the war to light.

Wendy's book list on the Soviet Union in World War II

Wendy Z. Goldman Why did Wendy love this book?

Why are soldiers willing to fight and die, often despite horrific odds, for a cause?  And why do whole armies fall apart under less difficult conditions? The Red Army, which lost millions of men and suffered massive encirclements by the Wehrmacht provides the perfect case study of these questions. After months of retreat, the Red Army turned the tide at Stalingrad and drove the Nazis back to Berlin. 

Reese’s careful research and balanced conclusions note that morale and motivation fluctuated depending on soldiers’ nationality, social group, and personal circumstances. Many were deeply motivated by Soviet patriotism, which was sometimes, but not always coincident, with socialist ideals and support for Stalin. The army quickly proved that despite catastrophic losses of people and equipment, it could regroup and deliver victory. Its successes were tied in no small measure to the efforts the Soviet state poured into creating strong morale and motivation. Credit,…

By Roger R. Reese,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Inept leadership, inefficient campaigning, and enormous losses would seem to spell military disaster. Yet despite these factors, the Soviet Union won its war against Nazi Germany thanks to what Roger Reese calls its "military effectiveness": its ability to put troops in the field even after previous forces had been decimated. Reese probes the human dimension of the Red Army in World War II through a close analysis of soldiers' experiences and attitudes concerning mobilization, motivation, and morale. In doing so, he illuminates the Soviets' remarkable ability to recruit and retain soldiers, revealing why so many were willing to fight in…


Book cover of To the Tashkent Station: Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union at War

Alexis Peri Author Of The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad

From my list on brutal reality of life in war-torn Soviet Union.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been fascinated by the human ability to overcome and persevere. How can individuals who seem so ordinary, so small surmount incredible odds? From where do they derive the physical strength and mental fortitude? I think that is what drew me to become a historian of the Soviet Union. I have devoted myself to studying the letters, diaries, and other writings by ordinary individuals who lived through extraordinary times and recorded that ordeal in intimate detail. One of my missions is to share these writings, never intended for publication, with the public. 

Alexis' book list on brutal reality of life in war-torn Soviet Union

Alexis Peri Why did Alexis love this book?

I could not put down this account of the world’s first major refugee crisis, as millions of families were ripped apart during WWII. Focusing on the Soviet Union, this book traces the itineraries of children separated from their mothers, prisoners and refugees torn asunder from their homes. Moreover, it also follows them as they forge new lives, often in the most transient and inhospitable conditions.

I felt I never truly understood what happens to the family during wartime until I read this book. 

By Rebecca Manley,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked To the Tashkent Station as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In summer and fall 1941, as German armies advanced with shocking speed across the Soviet Union, the Soviet leadership embarked on a desperate attempt to safeguard the country's industrial and human resources. Their success helped determine the outcome of the war in Europe. To the Tashkent Station brilliantly reconstructs the evacuation of over sixteen million Soviet civilians in one of the most dramatic episodes of World War II. Rebecca Manley paints a vivid picture of this epic wartime saga: the chaos that erupted in towns large and small as German troops approached, the overcrowded trains that trundled eastward, and the…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest By Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry

Wendy Z. Goldman Author Of Fortress Dark and Stern: The Soviet Home Front During World War II

From my list on the Soviet Union in World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of Russian history at Carnegie Mellon University. I have visited Russia many times and spent years working in Russian archives. I am keenly aware of the impact World War II and the Nazis had on the country: a loss of 26-7 million people, wide-scale suffering, mass murder of civilians, and destruction of cities, towns, and villages. The majority of German divisions were concentrated on the eastern front, and it was here the Red Army broke the back of the Wehrmacht. Yet because of divisions created by the Cold War, Americans are taught little about the central role the Soviet Union played in this victory. As a historian, I am strongly committed to bringing the full story of the war to light.

Wendy's book list on the Soviet Union in World War II

Wendy Z. Goldman Why did Wendy love this book?

Most Western readers are familiar with the holocaust carried out by the Nazis in Europe, but know little about the almost two million Jews murdered by the Nazis in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. Here, the Germans embarked on a “holocaust by bullets,” rounding up the Jewish inhabitants, imprisoning them in camps and ghettos, and then shooting them at the edge of vast pits and ravines. 

Grossman and Ehrenburg, renowned Soviet war journalists and members of the Jewish Anti Fascist Committee, began collecting eyewitness testimonies and other documents during the war. Yet the Soviet state, following the policy, “we do not divide the dead,” refused to permit publication of the book they assembled because it was too focused on the particularity of Jewish suffering. The Complete Black Book, a powerful compilation of firsthand reports, is essential to understanding the full scope of the German campaign for Jewish…

By Ilya Ehrenburg, Vasily Grossman, David Patterson (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewryis a collection of eyewitness testimonies, letters, diaries, affidavits, and other documents on the activities of the Nazis against Jews in the camps, ghettoes, and towns of Eastern Europe. Arguably, the only apt comparism is to The Gulag Archipelago of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This definitive edition of The Black Book, including for the first time materials omitted from previous editions, is a major addition to the literature on the Holocaust. It will be of particular interest to students, teachers, and scholars of the Holocaust and those interested in the history of Europe.

By the end…


Book cover of American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream

Samantha Lomb Author Of Stalin's Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution

From my list on Soviet social history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Language Teaching Methodologies at Vyatka State University in Kirov, Russia. My book Stalin’s Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution was published in November 2017.  Most recently I have published an article-length study entitled Peasant Communal Traditions in the Expulsion of Collective Farm Members in the Vyatka–Kirov Region 1932–1939 in Europe Asia Studies in July 2012. I am currently conducting research for a future book manuscript on daily life on the collective farms and the day-to-day relationships between collective farmers and local officials.

Samantha's book list on Soviet social history

Samantha Lomb Why did Samantha love this book?

Julia Mickenberg’s American Girls in Red Russia touches on a wide array of topics: American women’s participation in pre-1917 revolutionary movements, famine relief in during the Civil War period, the creation of an American colony in Siberia, the establishment of an American-run English language newspaper in Moscow, modern dance, African-American theater and film performances, and the creation of pro-Russian World War II propaganda. But she masterfully weaves these topics together using a central theme: American women, from various cultural spheres, seeking the equality and freedom they thought redefined gender roles in the Soviet Union would give them.

Mickenberg’s book captures the real depth of interest, hope, and fascination that the Soviet Union held for many well-educated, left-leaning American women, and how these feelings were colored by the gap between Soviet ideals and realities. She provides a fascinating account of these women’s willingness to uproot their lives in search of careers,…

By Julia L. Mickenberg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked American Girls in Red Russia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or '30s where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. As Julia Mickenberg uncovers in American Girls in Red Russia, there is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and…


Book cover of 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II

James A. W. Heffernan Author Of Politics and Literature at the Dawn of World War II

From my list on the origin of World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born on April 22, 1939, just over four months before the start of World War II, and the very first words I can remember reading were a big black headline in August 1945: The War is Over. Ever since, I’ve been fascinated with that war, and about 75 years after it ended, I felt moved to write a book about how it began. Since I hold a PhD in English from Princeton, taught English at Dartmouth for nearly forty years, and I’ve been studying, teaching, and writing about literature for sixty years, I decided to make it a book about literature: the fiction, poetry, and drama inspired by World War II.

James' book list on the origin of World War II

James A. W. Heffernan Why did James love this book?

Irresistibly clear and readable, this book explains the biggest mistake that France and Britain made before war broke out. Gripped by “ideological anti-Communism,” they simply could not bring themselves to forge an alliance with the Soviet Union against Hitler’s Germany. As a result, Hitler beat them to the punch. After he struck his own deal with Stalin and thus neutralized any Soviet threat to his belligerence, Germany and the Soviets carved up Poland between them. And even though Britain and France had pledged to defend Poland, the only thing they did for that poor, brave nation after Hitler invaded it was to declare war on Germany—and then do nothing for the next seven months of what came to be known as the “joke war.”

By Michael Jabara Carley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked 1939 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At a crucial point in the twentieth century, as Nazi Germany prepared for war, negotiations between Britain, France, and the Soviet Union became the last chance to halt Hitler's aggression. Incredibly, the French and British governments dallied, talks failed, and in August 1939 the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany. Michael Carley's gripping account of these negotiations is not a pretty story. It is about the failures of appeasement and collective security in Europe. It is about moral depravity and blindness, about villains and cowards, and about heroes who stood against the intellectual and popular tides of their…


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Book cover of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

Who Is a Worthy Mother? By Rebecca Wellington,

I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…

Book cover of Life and Fate

Paul Clark Author Of The Price of Dreams

From my list on life in the Soviet Union.

Why am I passionate about this?

At the age of 16, I briefly joined the International Socialists, a small British Trotskyist party. Though I soon became disillusioned, it was a formative experience that left me with a lifelong fascination with communism and the Soviet Union. Over the following decades, I read everything I could about the subject, both fiction and non-fiction. In the years after the fall of communism, the ideas that eventually culminated in the writing of this book began to form in my head.

Paul's book list on life in the Soviet Union

Paul Clark Why did Paul love this book?

Grossman consciously attempted to write the War and Peace of the Second World War, and in this panoramic masterpiece, he pulled it off. Like War and Peace, the book focuses both on the travails of a single family and the broader sweep of history, as we witness events from the perspective of persecuted Jewish scientists, soldiers (both Soviet and German), partisans, peasants, and generals.

This is an intensely personal work – Grossman covered the battle of Stalingrad for the Soviet press and knew his subject matter firsthand. Writing it was also an extremely courageous act. The KGB confiscated the manuscript and Grossman never lived to see the book published.

By Vasily Grossman,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Life and Fate as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Based around the pivotal WWII battle of Stalingrad (1942-3), where the German advance into Russia was eventually halted by the Red Army, and around an extended family, the Shaposhnikovs, and their many friends and acquaintances, Life and Fate recounts the experience of characters caught up in an immense struggle between opposing armies and ideologies. Nazism and Communism are appallingly similar, 'two poles of one magnet', as a German camp commander tells a shocked old Bolshevik prisoner. At the height of the battle Russian soldiers and citizens alike are at last able to speak out as they choose, and without reprisal…


Book cover of Forever Nineteen

Alexandra Popoff Author Of Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century

From my list on about World War 2 with a touch of philosophy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm the author of four literary biographies and of one in progress. My current project is a concise interpretive biography of Ayn Rand, commissioned by Yale University Press, Jewish Lives. Among the best known and most divisive twentieth-century writers, the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged remains the subject of fascination. I began my career as a journalist in Moscow. Before turning to literary biography I lectured in Russian literature and history in Canada. My essays and reviews have appeared in The Wall Street JournalHuffington PostLiterary HubTablet MagazineNational Post, and other newspapers and outlets.

Alexandra's book list on about World War 2 with a touch of philosophy

Alexandra Popoff Why did Alexandra love this book?

Grigory Baklanov (born Grigory Friedman) belonged to the generation of soldiers that faced the full brunt of the German attack on the Soviet Union and of whom only 3% survived. Forever Nineteen (trans. Antonina Bouis) is a tribute to the men who remained forever young; as the author elucidates in the introduction to the novel’s American edition, “I wanted them to come alive when I wrote this book, I wanted people living now to care about them as friends, as family, as brothers.” Baklanov had attained international renown with his 1959 novel The Foothold [An Inch of Land], which appeared in 36 countries. His portrayal of the war is more personal than Grossman’s and has a different angle: rather than depicting famous battles, he is concerned with ordinary soldiers’ lives, which can be cut short at any moment. (Disclosure: Grigory Baklanov is my father.)

By Grigory Baklanov, Antonina W. Bouis (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Forever Nineteen as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The story of a nineteen-year-old lieutenant in the Russian army tells of an "ordinary" man whose bravery and dedication helped save the Soviet Union from German rule in World War II, and describes the rugged and bitter battle he fought


Book cover of Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp

Eric Karpeles Author Of Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to in Search of Lost Time

From my list on Marcel Proust and expanding your grasp of him.

Why am I passionate about this?

I first read Swann’s Way when I was seventeen. Throughout the following five decades, In Search of Lost Time has always remained within reach, a parallel universe more enriching than words can express. As a painter, I’m drawn to Proust’s subtle use of paintings to reveal and mystify the relationship between what we see and what we know. I’ve spoken on Proust at Berkeley, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Houston, and was invited to give the annual Proust lecture at the Center for Fiction in New York as well as the Amon Carter Lecture on the Arts at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin.

Eric's book list on Marcel Proust and expanding your grasp of him

Eric Karpeles Why did Eric love this book?

It was because of Proust that I came to learn of the existence of the Polish painter and writer Józef Czapski. While a prisoner of war in the dark heart of Soviet Russia during the Second World War, this singular, cosmopolitan spirit devised a series of lectures on Proust and In Search of Lost Time as a vital counterpoint to the grim surroundings he and his fellow prisoners were forced to endure, offering them a context for addressing their lives and their bleak fates. Freezing, nearly starving, lice-ridden, Czapski mapped out Proust’s cosmology in several pages of his journal that served to fuel his talks. Scheherazade-like, night after night, he slowly revealed the already-legendary French novelist’s complex world of ideas and characters, giving voice to the life-enhancing magic great art bestows.

By Józef Czapski, Eric Karpeles (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lost Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first translation of painter and writer Józef Czapski's inspiring lectures on Proust, first delivered in a prison camp in the Soviet Union during World War II.

During the Second World War, as a prisoner of war in a Soviet camp, and with nothing but memory to go on, the Polish artist and soldier Józef Czapski brought Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time to life for an audience of prison inmates. In a series of lectures, Czapski described the arc and import of Proust’s masterpiece, sketched major and minor characters in striking detail, and movingly evoked the work’s originality,…


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Book cover of American Flygirl

American Flygirl By Susan Tate Ankeny,

The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.

This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States…

Book cover of Factory and Manager in the USSR

Mark Harrison Author Of Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism

From my list on working inside Soviet communism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I visited Moscow for the first time in 1964. The Cold War was in full swing. I was still at school, learning beginners' Russian. I returned a few years later as a graduate student. By this point I was hopelessly infected with an incurable and progressive disease: curiosity about the Soviet Union under communism. I was full of questions, many of which could not be answered for decades, until communist rule collapsed. Becoming a professional scholar, I spent the next half-century studying the history, economics, and politics of communist societies. The biggest obstacle was always secrecy, so it seems fitting that the system of secrecy is the topic of my most recent book.

Mark's book list on working inside Soviet communism

Mark Harrison Why did Mark love this book?

This is one of two books I kept by my bedside during my three years as head of an academic department.

It taught me how building a network of peers and a loyal team of subordinates are keys to survival under a suspicious boss. Berliner based his work on hundreds of interviews of managers who left the Soviet Union before, during, and after World War II. From a scholarly point of view, the book contains astonishing detail and insights from the inside of the Soviet system in its most secretive and repressive period. 

Book cover of The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
Book cover of Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II
Book cover of To the Tashkent Station: Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union at War

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Interested in the Soviet Union, Stalinism, and presidential biography?

The Soviet Union 380 books
Stalinism 24 books