Download or read book My Life in the Red Army Annotated written by Fred Virski and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-24 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My Life in the Red Army chronicles 19-year old Fred Virski's experiences as a soldier in the Russian military in the early years of World War 2. With a wry tone rarely seen in a combat memoir, Virski describes the hardships, the near-starvation rations, the inadequate clothing for the frozen wastelands, and his tense interactions with officers of the NKVD (secret police). He is wounded twice; earns a Medal of Valor; witnesses atrocities committed by both the Germans and the Soviets; is branded a deserter; and somehow finds time to fall in love more than once on his journey. A testament to the will of the human spirit, My Life in the Red Army is a must read for fans of World War 2 adventure. *Includes annotations and illustrations.
Download or read book My Life in the Red Army written by Fred Virski and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2019-02-18 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My Life in the Red Army chronicles 19-year old Fred Virski's experiences as a soldier in the Russian military in the early years of World War 2. With a wry tone rarely seen in a combat memoir, Virski describes the hardships, the near-starvation rations, the inadequate clothing for the frozen wastelands, and his tense interactions with officers of the NKVD (secret police). He is wounded twice; earns a Medal of Valor; witnesses atrocities committed by both the Germans and the Soviets; is branded a deserter; and somehow finds time to fall in love more than once on his journey. A testament to the will of the human spirit, My Life in the Red Army is a must read for fans of World War 2 adventure.
Download or read book Life And Fate Vintage Classic Russians Series written by Vasily Grossman and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great Russian 20th-century novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stalingrad. Life and Fate is an epic tale of a country told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs. As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman's characters must work out their destinies in a world torn by ideological tyranny and war. Completed in 1960 and then confiscated by the KGB, this sweeping panorama of Soviet Society remained unpublished until it was smuggled into the West in 1980, where it was hailed as a masterpiece. 'A literary genius. His Life and Fate is rated by many as the finest Russian novel of the 20th Century' Mail on Sunday VINTAGE CLASSICS RUSSIAN SERIES - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.
Download or read book The Stuff of Soldiers written by Brandon M. Schechter and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Stuff of Soldiers uses everyday objects to tell the story of the Great Patriotic War as never before. Brandon M. Schechter attends to a diverse array of things—from spoons to tanks—to show how a wide array of citizens became soldiers, and how the provisioning of material goods separated soldiers from civilians. Through a fascinating examination of leaflets, proclamations, newspapers, manuals, letters to and from the front, diaries, and interviews, The Stuff of Soldiers reveals how the use of everyday items made it possible to wage war. The dazzling range of documents showcases ethnic diversity, women's particular problems at the front, and vivid descriptions of violence and looting. Each chapter features a series of related objects: weapons, uniforms, rations, and even the knick-knacks in a soldier's rucksack. These objects narrate the experience of people at war, illuminating the changes taking place in Soviet society over the course of the most destructive conflict in recorded history. Schechter argues that spoons, shovels, belts, and watches held as much meaning to the waging of war as guns and tanks. In The Stuff of Soldiers, he describes the transformative potential of material things to create a modern culture, citizen, and soldier during World War II.
Download or read book The Soviet Partisan Movement 1941 1944 written by Edgar M. Howell and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this text is to provide the Army with a factual account of the organization and operations of the Soviet resistance movement behind the German forces on the Eastern Front during World War II. This movement offers a particularly valuable case study, for it can be viewed both in relation to the German occupation in the Soviet Union and to the offensive and defensive operations of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. The scope of the study includes an over-all picture of a quasi-military organization in relation to a larger conflict between two regular armies. It is not a study in partisan tactics, nor is it intended to be. German measures taken to combat the partisan movement are sketched in, but the story in large part remains that of an organization and how it operated. The German planning for the invasion of Russia is treated at some length because many of the circumstances which favored the rise and development of the movement had their bases in errors the Germans made in their initial planning. The operations of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army are likewise described in considerable detail as the backdrop against which the operations of the partisan units are projected. Because of the lack of reliable Soviet sources, the story has been told much as the Germans recorded it. German documents written during the course of World War II constitute the principal sources, but many survivors who had experience in Russia have made important contributions based upon their personal experience.
Download or read book Secondhand Time written by Svetlana Alexievich and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-05-24 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • The Wall Street Journal • NPR • Financial Times • Kirkus Reviews When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions—a history of the soul.” Alexievich’s distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres—but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. “Through the voices of those who confided in her,” The Nation writes, “Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil—in a word, about ourselves.” Praise for Svetlana Alexievich and Secondhand Time “The nonfiction volume that has done the most to deepen the emotional understanding of Russia during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union of late is Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history Secondhand Time.”—David Remnick, The New Yorker
Download or read book The Unwomanly Face of War written by Светлана Алексиевич and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Originally published in Russian as U voiny--ne zhenskoe lietiso by Mastatskaya Litaratura, Minsk, in 1985. Originally published in English as War's unwomanly face by Progress Publishers, Moscow, in 1988"--Title page verso.
Download or read book High Treason written by Vitaliĭ Rapoport and published by Durham : Duke University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Russia at War 1941 1945 written by Alexander Werth and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1941, Russian-born British journalist Alexander Werth observed the unfolding of the Soviet-German conflict with his own eyes. What followed was the widely acclaimed book, Russia at War, first printed in 1964. At once a history of facts, a collection of interviews, and a document of the human condition, Russia at War is a stunning, modern classic that chronicles the savagery and struggles on Russian soil during the most incredible military conflict in modern history. As a behind-the-scenes eyewitness to the pivotal, shattering events as they occurred, Werth chronicles with vivid detail the hardships of everyday citizens, massive military operations, and the political movements toward diplomacy as the world tried to reckon with what they had created. Despite its sheer historical scope, Werth tells the story of a country at war in startlingly human terms, drawing from his daily interviews and conversations with generals, soldiers, peasants, and other working class civilians. The result is a unique and expansive work with immeasurable breadth and depth, built on lucid and engaging prose, that captures every aspect of a terrible moment in human history. Now newly updated with a foreword by Soviet historian Nicolas Werth, the son of Alexander Werth, this new edition of Russia at War continues to be indispensable World War II journalism and the definitive historical authority on the Soviet-German war.
Download or read book Colossus Reborn written by David M. Glantz and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 872 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beyond the battles themselves, Glantz also presents an in-depth portrait of the Red Army as an evolving military institution. Assessing more clearly than ever before the army's size, strength, and force structure, he provides keen insights into its doctrine, strategy, tactics, weaponry, training, officer corps, and political leadership. In the process, be puts a human face on the Red Army's commanders and soldiers, including women and those who served in units - security (NKVD), engineer, railroad, auto-transport, construction, and penal forces - that have till now remained poorly understood."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Russian Way of War written by Lester W. Grau and published by Mentor Military. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Force Structure, Tactics, and Modernization of the Russian Ground Forces The mighty Soviet Army is no more. The feckless Russian Army that stumbled into Chechnya is no more. Today's Russian Army is modern, better manned, better equipped and designed for maneuver combat under nuclear-threatened conditions. This is your source for the tactics, equipment, force structure and theoretical underpinnings of a major Eurasian power. Here's what the experts are saying: "A superb baseline study for understanding how and why the modern Russian Army functions as it does. Essential for specialist and generalist alike." -Colonel (Ret) David M. Glantz, foremost Western author on the Soviet Union in World War II and Editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. "Congratulations to Les Grau and Chuck Bartles on filling a gap which has yawned steadily wider since the end of the USSR. Their book addresses evolving Russian views on war, including the blurring of its nature and levels, and the consequent Russian approaches to the Ground Forces' force structuring, manning, equipping, and tactics. Confidence is conferred on the validity of their arguments and conclusions by copious footnoting, mostly from an impressive array of primary sources. It is this firm grounding in Russian military writings, coupled with the authors' understanding of war and the Russian way of thinking about it, that imparts such an authoritative tone to this impressive work." -Charles Dick, former Director of the Combat Studies Research Centre, Senior Fellow at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, author of the 1991 British Army Field Manual, Volume 2, A Treatise on Soviet Operational Art and author of From Victory to Stalemate The Western Front, Summer 1944 and From Defeat to Victory, The Eastern Front, Summer 1944. "Dr. Lester Grau's and Chuck Bartles' professional research on the Russian Armed Forces is widely read throughout the world and especially in Russia. Russia's Armed Forces have changed much since the large-scale reforms of 2008, which brought the Russian Army to the level of the world's other leading armies. The speed of reform combined with limited information about their core mechanisms represented a difficult challenge to the authors. They have done a great job and created a book which could be called an encyclopedia of the modern armed forces of Russia. They used their wisdom and talents to explore vital elements of the Russian military machine: the system of recruitment and training, structure of units of different levels, methods and tactics in defense and offence and even such little-known fields as the Arctic forces and the latest Russian combat robotics." -Dr. Vadim Kozyulin, Professor of Military Science and Project Director, Project on Asian Security, Emerging Technologies and Global Security Project PIR Center, Moscow. "Probably the best book on the Russian Armed Forces published in North America during the past ten years. A must read for all analysts and professionals following Russian affairs. A reliable account of the strong and weak aspects of the Russian Army. Provides the first look on what the Russian Ministry of Defense learned from best Western practices and then applied them on Russian soil." -Ruslan Pukhov, Director of the Moscow-based Centre for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) and member of the Public Council of the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense. Author of Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine, Russia's New Army, and The Tanks of August.
Download or read book We Germans written by Alexander Starritt and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE A letter from a German soldier to his grandson recounts the terrors of war on the Eastern Front, and a postwar ordinary life in search of atonement, in this “raw, visceral, and propulsive” novel (New York Times Book Review). A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice In the throes of the Second World War, young Meissner, a college student with dreams of becoming a scientist, is drafted into the German army and sent to the Eastern Front. But soon his regiment collapses in the face of the onslaught of the Red Army, hell-bent on revenge in its race to Berlin. Many decades later, now an old man reckoning with his past, Meissner pens a letter to his grandson explaining his actions, his guilt as a Nazi participator, and the difficulty of life after war. Found among his effects after his death, the letter is at once a thrilling story of adventure and a questing rumination on the moral ambiguity of war. In his years spent fighting the Russians and attempting afterward to survive the Gulag, Meissner recounts a life lived in perseverance and atonement. Wracked with shame—both for himself and for Germany—the grandfather explains his dark rationale, exults in the courage of others, and blurs the boundaries of right and wrong. We Germans complicates our most steadfast beliefs and seeks to account for the complicity of an entire country in the perpetration of heinous acts. In this breathless and page-turning story, Alexander Starritt also presents us with a deft exploration of the moral contradictions inherent in saving one's own life at the cost of the lives of others and asks whether we can ever truly atone.
Download or read book The Patriotism of Despair written by Serguei Alex. Oushakine and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sudden dissolution of the Soviet Union altered the routines, norms, celebrations, and shared understandings that had shaped the lives of Russians for generations. It also meant an end to the state-sponsored, nonmonetary support that most residents had lived with all their lives. How did Russians make sense of these historic transformations? Serguei Alex. Oushakine offers a compelling look at postsocialist life in Russia. In Barnaul, a major industrial city in southwestern Siberia that has lost 25 percent of its population since 1991, many Russians are finding that what binds them together is loss and despair. The Patriotism of Despair examines the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, graphically described in spray paint by a graffiti artist in Barnaul: "We have no Motherland." Once socialism disappeared as a way of understanding the world, what replaced it in people's minds? Once socialism stopped orienting politics and economics, how did capitalism insinuate itself into routine practices? Oushakine offers a compelling look at postsocialist life in noncosmopolitan Russia. He introduces readers to the "neocoms": people who mourn the loss of the Soviet economy and the remonetization of transactions that had not involved the exchange of cash during the Soviet era. Moving from economics into military conflict and personal loss, Oushakine also describes the ways in which veterans of the Chechen war and mothers of soldiers who died there have connected their immediate experiences with the country's historical disruptions. The country, the nation, and traumatized individuals, Oushakine finds, are united by their vocabulary of shared pain.
Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 803 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.
Download or read book Mass Culture in Soviet Russia written by James Von Geldern and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995-12-22 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology offers a rich array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, comic routines, and folklore to offer a close look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. Both state-sponsored cultural forms and the unofficial culture that flourished beneath the surface are represented. The focus is on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses. The period covered encompasses the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the mixed economy and culture of the 1920s, the tightly controlled Stalinist 1930s, the looser atmosphere of the Great Patriotic War, and the postwar era ending with the death of Stalin. Much of the material appears here in English for the first time. A companion 45-minute audio tape (ISBN 0-253-32911-6) features contemporaneous performances of fifteen popular songs of the time, with such favorites as "Bublichki," "The Blue Kerchief," and "Katyusha." Russian texts of the songs are included in the book.
Download or read book Red Army and Society written by Ellen Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 1985, is the first full-length study of the Soviet Armed Forces as a social institution. Using military manpower as a substantive focus, it identifies those characteristics that the Soviet military shared with counterparts in non-communist systems and those that were unique to the society and political culture in which it was embedded. The discussion encompasses defence policy-making as a whole and focuses on conscription policy, the characteristics of the professional military, the role of the political officer, the mechanics of political socialization within the Red Army, and the experience of ethnic minorities in the armed forces. This analysis provides a window through which we can observe the broader military system at work; how that system affects, and in turn is affected by, the economic, social and political life of the Soviet Union. It contributes to our understanding of civil-military relations in communist systems and to our knowledge of Soviet political and social trends.
Download or read book Soviet Night Operations in World War II written by Claude R. Sasso and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1982 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
