Roger Reese has studied, researched, and or taught Soviet history since 1984. He has been on the faculty of Texas A&M University since 1990. He has published five books and numerous articles and book chapters on the military history of Russia and the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr. book prize for his most recent book, The Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856-1917.
This is a great book because it is probably the only truly even-handed treatment of one of the most reviled people in Soviet history, Nikolai Yezhov, head of the NKVD during the great terror. The authors by no means treat him as a sympathetic character, but they convincingly dismiss the many myths about him that have gotten in the way of understanding his relations with Stalin and his true motivations and behavior during the purge. They show that he played a truly significant role in convincing Stalin to let him purge the party and then the whole Soviet population because he believed there was a vast conspiracy to undermine Stalin’s version of Soviet power. Rather than a psychophant who groveled at Stalin’s feet, it is clear that he exercised agency to accomplish a task he believed in. You almost get to know Yezhov as a real human being, which is…
The definitive study of Nikolai Yezhov's rise to become the chief of Stalin's secret police-and the dictator's "iron fist"-during the Great Terror
Head of the secret police from 1937 to 1938, N. I. Yezhov was a foremost Soviet leader during these years, second in power only to Stalin himself. Under Yezhov's orders, millions of arrests, imprisonments, deportations, and executions were carried out. This book, based upon unprecedented access to Communist Party archives and Yezhov's personal archives, looks into the life and career of the enigmatic man who administered Stalin's Great Terror.
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.
A brilliant evocation of the paranoia of the Stalin regime and the extraordinary extent of its surveillance of members of the Communist elite. We follow the story of a young girl as her family is destroyed and she is sent to the GULAG. Although it delves deep into the horrors of Stalinist persecution, this book is also an uplifting tale of love, courage, and survival.
In the dangerous time of Russia’s Great Terror, a knock on the door late at night could mean only one thing!
Moscow, 1937. As mortal fear engulfs the capital city, a singular man cements his lethal grip of absolute power over an entire nation. Accusations, mass arrests, executions, and deportations become de rigueur. Stalin’s cult of personality is so fearsome, that even a simple question could get you killed—or worse. Stalin’s dreaded secret police, the NKVD, would pit neighbor against neighbor in the insatiable hunt for the spies and saboteurs which threaten the supreme leader’s tyranny. The crisis will irrecoverably…
I am an aficionado of the fresh start. I make it a point to celebrate all the New Years—that way, I can re-up my resolutions every few weeks! Paradoxically, I’m not great at sudden change. I like stability and working systematically. I reconcile these two sides of myself by observing other people’s transformations and caterpillar-to-butterfly stories on a regular basis. Whether it’s Beyonce going country or a Nigerian god turning to crime, I’m on the ride, picking up pointers. If you are looking to make a change, I hope this list is a fun place to start gathering ideas!
I had to include Alan Furst, the absolute master of historical fiction of the pre-WWII era. The first book of Furst’s Night Soldiers Series, this book introduced me to a new sort of spy thriller: instead of secret agents, these are ordinary people swept up in history.
I do love a makeover, but this is a life-and-death self-reinvention. When Khristo is targeted by the local fascist gang in 1934 Bulgaria, it’s time to run. When his first reinvention becomes dangerous, he reinvents himself again. And again. And finds love on the way. I was inspired at every turn by Khristo’s transformations without ever losing his core decency. The historical detail is so vivid I felt like I was right there with Khristo, whether he was in Moscow, Spain, or Paris.
Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates the European world of 1934-45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944. Night Soldiers is a scrupulously researched panoramic novel, a…
While a graduate student and then an army interpreter in Germany, I listened to reminiscences from both Third Reich military veterans and former French resistance fighters. Their tales picked up where my father's stories of pre-war European life always ended, and my fascination with this history knew no bounds. On occasion I would conceal my American identity and mentally play the spy as I traversed Europe solo.A dozen years later upon the death of my father, I learned from my mother his great secret: he had concealed his wartime life as an American spy inside the Reich. His private journals telling of bravery and intrigue inspire each of my novels.
As the first in his series of novels on the 1930sin Europe, Alan Furst's Night Soldiertends to earn the most critical praise, but Dark Starremains my personal favorite. Furst masters the noir ambiance and moral ambiguity of Europe as war approaches, where everyday people are drawn into the world of espionage and intrigue. His settings often lie outside the main urban centers of Paris and Berlin in the remote reaches of Eastern Europe. Furst's novels are impeccably researched for accurate detail-one of my must-haves in historical fiction-and each book will draw you to read the next in his series.
Andre Szara, survivor of the Polish pogroms and the Russian civil wars, is a journalist working for Pravda in 1937. War in Europe is already underway and Szara is co-opted to join the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence agency. He does his best to survive the tango of pre-war politics by calmly obeying orders and keeping his nose clean. But when he is sent to retrieve a battered briefcase the plot thickens and is drawn into even more complex intrigues.
Szara becomes a full-time spymaster and as deputy director of a Paris network, he finds his own star rising when…
I have been a lover of history all my life, seeing its course change in decisive conflicts, the clash of empires that defined the winners and losers. One thing that always fascinated me was seemingly insignificant events that ended up assuring either victory or defeat. I have always said that “the devil, and the story, is in the details.” The books on this list provide those details exhaustively. These histories are the grist for the mill of my writing mind, and I think my readers can clearly see that my books are “labors of love” in homage to the history I have studied so diligently throughout my life.
For WWII, the definitive Dean of East Front Operations is David Glantz, who has written over 30 books on that theater. His work on a critical turning point in a trilogy recounting the Battle of Stalingrad was outstanding, and I recommend this book—volume two.
To say it is comprehensive is an understatement. With detailed maps defining areas of operations, orders of battle for opposing forces, and a keen look at the mindset, moods, and strategies of the commanders involved, this book has it all—from the front-line bunkers to the map tables at OKW. You won’t find better reference books on Stalingrad than those written by Glantz.
I relied on this for several volumes of my series, most particularly my book Thor’s Anvil, Volume # 26.
The German offensive on Stalingrad was originally intended to secure the Wehrmacht's flanks, but it stalled dramatically in the face of Stalin's order: ""Not a Step Back!"" The Soviets' resulting tenacious defense of the city led to urban warfare for which the Germans were totally unprepared, depriving them of their accustomed maneuverability, overwhelming artillery fire, and air support-and setting the stage for debacle.
Armageddon in Stalingrad continues David Glantz and Jonathan House's bold new look at this most iconic military campaign of the Eastern Front and Hitler's first great strategic defeat. While the first volume in their trilogy described battles…
