The best books on the Great Purge

Between the summer of 1937 and November 1938, the Stalinist regime arrested over 1.5 million people for "counterrevolutionary" and "anti-Soviet" activity and either summarily executed or exiled them to the Gulag. While we now know a great deal about the experience of victims of the Great Terror, we know almost nothing about the lower- and middle-level Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD), or secret police, cadres who carried out Stalin's murderous policies. Unlike the postwar, public trials of Nazi war criminals, NKVD operatives were tried secretly. And what exactly happened in those courtrooms was unknown until now.

Between the summer of 1937 and November 1938, the Stalinist regime arrested over 1.5 million people for "counterrevolutionary" and "anti-Soviet" activity and either summarily executed or exiled them to the Gulag. While we now know a great deal about the experience of victims of the Great Terror, we know almost nothing about the lower- and middle-level Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD), or secret police, cadres who carried out Stalin's murderous policies. Unlike the postwar, public trials of Nazi war criminals, NKVD operatives were tried secretly. And what exactly happened in those courtrooms was unknown until now.

“A collection of poems that highlight the most evil things and happenings, the author writes in an almost wistful way, capturing some of Edgar Allan Poe’s essence, in that the poems are grisly while getting under your skin in a subtle way. There seems to be a running theme of horrible things happening to ordinary people, from The Secret Amulet to Deepak, the Full Moon, and more. The Creep is a presence that pervades people’s lives, takes over and exerts an extreme evil influence. This is an interesting take on putting together a collection of poetry, highly unique and innovative.” - Valery

Between the summer of 1937 and November 1938, the Stalinist regime arrested over 1.5 million people for "counterrevolutionary" and "anti-Soviet" activity and either summarily executed or exiled them to the Gulag. While we now know a great deal about the experience of victims of the Great Terror, we know almost nothing about the lower- and middle-level Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD), or secret police, cadres who carried out Stalin's murderous policies. Unlike the postwar, public trials of Nazi war criminals, NKVD operatives were tried secretly. And what exactly happened in those courtrooms was unknown until now.

Fragile, gritty, and vital to an extraordinary degree, St. Petersburg is one of the world's most alluring cities--a place in which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial. Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city's pre-1917 and Second World War history than with its recent past. In this beautifully illustrated and highly original book, Catriona Kelly shows how creative engagement with the past has always been fundamental to St. Petersburg's residents. Weaving together oral history, personal observation, literary and artistic texts, journalism, and archival materials, she traces the at times paradoxical feelings of anxiety and pride that were inspired by living in the city, both when it was socialist Leningrad, and now. Ranging from rubbish dumps to promenades, from the city's glamorous center to its grimy outskirts, this ambitious book offers a compelling and always unexpected panorama of an extraordinary and elusive place.

The story of an idealistic Soviet athlete who falls foul of the authorities. Ruslan Shanidza makes little secret of his disdain for the ruling Communists, and when he gets into a fight with the son of a leading a Party member, he comes to the attention of the KGB. Ruslan struggles to pursue his dreams without sacrificing his integrity, but when the KGB arrest his lover for anti-Soviet agitation, they take him in too, aiming to force him to testify against her.

This gripping political thriller is set in the last decade of the Cold War. We follow Ruslan as the Soviet Union begins to crumble and he finds himself caught up in ethnic conflict that reignites with catastrophic results.

Russian Roulette stands as the definitive account of Russia’s attack on the 2016 U.S. presidential election – a sweeping story that has its roots in Soviet Cold War “active measures,” supercharged for the Internet age with an aggressive mix of cyberwarfare, hacks, and social media manipulation. Russia’s assault on American democracy is told against the backdrop of the country’s seduction of one of the two U.S. presidential candidates, Donald Trump, whose decades-long efforts to do business in Russia turned him into a willing recipient of Moscow’s assistance.

And yet, Barack Obama’s  White House – fearful of putting its thumb on the scale in an election it assumed Hillary Clinton was going to win—failed to aggressively respond, even ordering senior U.S. government cyber experts to “stand down” from developing options to punch back at Moscow’s machinations. The book merges investigative journalism with modern history, and became an instant number-one New York Times best-seller upon its release.

In this sweeping history, Steven Marks tells the fascinating story of how Russian figures, ideas, and movements changed our world in dramatic but often unattributed ways.

On Europe’s periphery, Russia was an early modernizing nation whose troubles stimulated intellectuals to develop radical and utopian alternatives to Western models of modernity. These provocative ideas gave rise to cultural and political innovations that were exported and adopted worldwide. Wherever there was discontent with modern existence or traditional societies were undergoing transformation, anti-Western sentiments arose. Many people perceived the Russian soul as the antithesis of the capitalist, imperialist West and turned to Russian ideas for inspiration and even salvation.

Reese’s comprehensive social history takes readers beyond the battlefield to examine living conditions, military education, and officer-soldier relations in the late Imperial Russian Army. He argues that the officer corps’ incompetence, abusive behavior, and reactionary attitudes eventually drove the soldiery to revolt. Thorough, critical, and well written, it challenges numerous myths and presents a provocative new explanation for Russia’s collapse in 1917. He uses letters and memoirs to get the soldiers’ and officers’ view of their experience in the army, which humanizes the reader’s understanding of what the men went through.