Download or read book The Road to Unfreedom written by Timothy Snyder and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of On Tyranny comes a stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America. “A brilliant analysis of our time.”—Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New Yorker With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Vladimir Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States. Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. To understand the challenge is to see, and perhaps renew, the fundamental political virtues offered by tradition and demanded by the future. By revealing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty.
Download or read book The Limits of Partnership written by Angela E. Stent and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-29 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of U.S.-Russian relations since the end of the Soviet Union The Limits of Partnership is a riveting narrative about U.S.-Russian relations from the Soviet collapse through the Ukraine crisis and the difficult challenges ahead. It reflects the unique perspective of an insider who is also recognized as a leading expert on this troubled relationship. American presidents have repeatedly attempted to forge a strong and productive partnership only to be held hostage to the deep mistrust born of the Cold War. For the United States, Russia remains a priority because of its nuclear weapons arsenal, its strategic location bordering Europe and Asia, and its ability to support—or thwart—American interests. Why has it been so difficult to move the relationship forward? What are the prospects for doing so in the future? Is the effort doomed to fail again and again? What are the risks of a new Cold War? Angela Stent served as an adviser on Russia under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and maintains dialogues with key policymakers in both countries. Here, she argues that the same contentious issues—terrorism, missile defense, Iran, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan, the former Soviet space, the greater Middle East—have been in every president's inbox, Democrat and Republican alike, since the collapse of the USSR. Stent vividly describes how Clinton and Bush sought inroads with Russia and staked much on their personal ties to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin—only to leave office with relations at a low point—and how Barack Obama managed to restore ties only to see them undermined by a Putin regime resentful of American dominance and determined to restore Russia's great power status. The Limits of Partnership calls for a fundamental reassessment of the principles and practices that drive U.S.-Russian relations, and offers a path forward to meet the urgent challenges facing both countries. This edition includes a new chapter in which Stent provides her insights about dramatic recent developments in U.S.-Russian relations, particularly the annexation of Crimea, war in Ukraine, and the end of the Obama Reset.
Download or read book First Person written by Vladimir Putin and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2000-05-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is this Vladimir Putin? Who is this man who suddenly--overnight and without warning--was handed the reigns of power to one of the most complex, formidable, and volatile countries in the world? How can we trust him if we don't know him? First Person is an intimate, candid portrait of the man who holds the future of Russia in his grip. An extraordinary compilation of over 24 hours of in-depth interviews and remarkable photographs, it delves deep into Putin's KGB past and explores his meteoric rise to power. No Russian leader has ever subjected himself to this kind of public examination of his life and views. Both as a spy and as a virtual political unknown until selected by Boris Yeltsin to be Prime Minister, Putin has been regarded as man of mystery. Now, the curtain lifts to reveal a remarkable life of struggles and successes. Putin's life story is of major importance to the world.
Download or read book The Limits of Partnership written by Angela E. Stent and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-05 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of U.S.-Russian relations since the end of the Soviet Union The Limits of Partnership offers a riveting narrative on U.S.-Russian relations since the Soviet collapse and on the challenges ahead. It reflects the unique perspective of an insider who is also recognized as a leading expert on this troubled relationship. American presidents have repeatedly attempted to forge a strong and productive partnership only to be held hostage to the deep mistrust born of the Cold War. For the United States, Russia remains a priority because of its nuclear weapons arsenal, its strategic location bordering Europe and Asia, and its ability to support—or thwart—American interests. Why has it been so difficult to move the relationship forward? What are the prospects for doing so in the future? Is the effort doomed to fail again and again? Angela Stent served as an adviser on Russia under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and maintains close ties with key policymakers in both countries. Here, she argues that the same contentious issues—terrorism, missile defense, Iran, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan, the former Soviet space, the greater Middle East—have been in every president's inbox, Democrat and Republican alike, since the collapse of the USSR. Stent vividly describes how Clinton and Bush sought inroads with Russia and staked much on their personal ties to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin—only to leave office with relations at a low point—and how Barack Obama managed to restore ties only to see them undermined by a Putin regime resentful of American dominance and determined to restore Russia's great power status. The Limits of Partnership calls for a fundamental reassessment of the principles and practices that drive U.S.-Russian relations, and offers a path forward to meet the urgent challenges facing both countries.
Download or read book A New Cold War written by Nicholas Ross Smith and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-29 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the contention that current US-Russia relations have descended into a ‘New Cold War’. It examines four key dimensions of the original Cold War, the structural, the ideological, the psychological, and the technological, and argues that the current US-Russia relationship bears little resemblance to the Cold War. Presently, the international system is transitioning towards multipolarity, with Russia a declining power, while current ideological differences and threat perceptions are neither as rigid nor as bleak as they once were. Ultimately, when the four dimensions of analysis are weighed in unison, this work argues that the claim of a New Cold War is a hyperbolic assessment of US-Russia relations.
Download or read book Not One Inch written by M. E. Sarotte and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, this book reveals how tensions between America, NATO, and Russia transformed geopolitics in the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall “The most engaging and carefully documented account of this period in East-West diplomacy currently available.”—Andrew Moravscik, Foreign Affairs Not one inch. With these words, Secretary of State James Baker proposed a hypothetical bargain to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall: if you let your part of Germany go, we will move NATO not one inch eastward. Controversy erupted almost immediately over this 1990 exchange—but more important was the decade to come, when the words took on new meaning. Gorbachev let his Germany go, but Washington rethought the bargain, not least after the Soviet Union’s own collapse in December 1991. Washington realized it could not just win big but win bigger. Not one inch of territory needed to be off limits to NATO. On the thirtieth anniversary of the Soviet collapse, this book uses new evidence and interviews to show how, in the decade that culminated in Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, the United States and Russia undermined a potentially lasting partnership. Prize-winning historian M. E. Sarotte shows what went wrong.
Download or read book Distant Friends written by Norman E. Saul and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing upon more than two decades of research in secondary and documentary publications as well as archival materials from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain, Saul reveals a wealth of new detail about contacts between the two countries between the American Revolutionary War and the purchase of Alaska in 1867.
Download or read book Putin s Playbook written by Rebekah Koffler and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's time for Americans to recognize, and accept, that Russia is waging war with America. In fact, President Vladimir Putin has already authorized an action plan for victory. Intelligence expert Rebekah Koffler--an expert on Russian doctrine and intelligence strategy who was born in the former Societ Union--shows us that Russia's subversive activity in America is increasing. Social media manipulation is a very small piece of a much larger puzzle that, when put together, reveals a highly-coordinated strategy to defeat the United States without firing a shot or sending missiles to awaken a sleeping populace.
Download or read book Rigged written by David Shimer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of the covert struggle between Russia and America to influence elections, why the threat to American democracy is greater than ever, and what we can do about it. This is "the first book to put the story of Russian interference into a broader context.... Extraordinary and gripping" (The New York Times Book Review). Russia's interference in the 2016 elections marked only the latest chapter of a hidden and revelatory history. In Rigged, David Shimer tells the sweeping story of covert electoral interference past and present. He exposes decades of secret operations—by the KGB, the CIA, and Vladimir Putin's Russia—to shape electoral outcomes, melding deep historical research with groundbreaking interviews with more than 130 key players, from leading officials in both the Trump and Obama administrations to CIA and NSA directors to a former KGB general. Throughout history and in 2016, both Russian and American operations achieved their greatest success by influencing the way voters think, rather than tampering with actual vote tallies. Understanding 2016 as one battle in a much longer war is essential to comprehending the critical threat currently posed to America's electoral sovereignty and how to defend against it. Illuminating how the lessons of the past can be used to protect our democracy in the future, Rigged is an essential book for readers of every political persuasion.
Download or read book Russia under Western Eyes written by Martin E Malia and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling work of intellectual history by a world-renowned scholar, spanning the years from Peter the Great to the fall of the Soviet Union, this book gives us a clear and sweeping view of Russia not as an eternal barbarian menace but as an outermost, if laggard, member in the continuum of European nations.
Download or read book Active Measures written by Thomas Rid and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2020-04-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of subterfuge. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm. Even before the 2016 election, he warned that Russian military intelligence was 'carefully planning and timing a high-stakes political campaign' to disrupt the democratic process. But as crafty as such so-called active measures have become, they are not new. In this astonishing journey through a century of secret psychological war, Rid reveals for the first time some of history's most significant operations - many of them nearly beyond belief. A White Russian ploy backfires and brings down a New York police commissioner; a KGB-engineered, anti-Semitic hate campaign creeps back across the Berlin Wall; the CIA backs a fake publishing empire, run by a former Wehrmacht U-boat commander that produces Germany's best jazz magazine.
Download or read book Everyday Life in Russia written by Choi Chatterjee and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-29 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A panoramic, interdisciplinary survey of Russian lives and “a must-read for any scholar engaging with Russian culture” (The Russian Review). In this interdisciplinary collection of essays, distinguished scholars survey the cultural practices, power relations, and behaviors that characterized Russian daily life from pre-revolutionary times through the post-Soviet present. Microanalyses and transnational perspectives shed new light on the formation and elaboration of gender, ethnicity, class, nationalism, and subjectivity. Changes in consumption and communication patterns, the restructuring of familial and social relations, systems of cultural meanings, and evolving practices in the home, at the workplace, and at sites of leisure are among the topics explored. “Offers readers a richly theoretical and empirical consideration of the ‘state of play’ of everyday life as it applies to the interdisciplinary study of Russia.” —Slavic Review “An engaging look at a vibrant area of research . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice “Volumes of such diversity frequently miss the mark, but this one represents a welcomed introduction to and a ‘must’ read for anyone seriously interested in the subject.” —Cahiers du Monde russe
Download or read book The Russia Trap written by George Beebe and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A must read for anyone who cares about our nation's security in these cyber-serious, hair-trigger times.” – Susan Eisenhower Every American president since the end of the Cold War has called for better relations with Russia. But each has seen relations get worse by the time he left office. Now the two countries are facing off in a virtual war being fought without clear goals or boundaries. Why? Many say it is because Washington has been slow to wake up to Russian efforts to destroy democracy in America and the world. But a former head of Russia analysis at the CIA says that this misunderstands the problem. George Beebe argues that new game-changing technologies, disappearing rules of the game, and distorted perceptions on both sides are combining to lock Washington and Moscow into an escalatory spiral that they do not recognize. All the pieces are in place for a World War I-type tragedy that could be triggered by a small, unpredictable event. The Russia Trap shows that anticipating this danger is the most important step in preventing it.
Download or read book The Future Is History written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
Download or read book The Long Hangover written by Shaun Walker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides a deeply reported, bottom-up explanation of Putin's aggressive foreign policy and his support among Russians.
Download or read book The Plot to Scapegoat Russia written by Dan Kovalik and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at the decades-long effort to escalate hostilities with Russia and what it portends for the future. Since 1945, the US has justified numerous wars, interventions, and military build-ups based on the pretext of the Russian Red Menace, even after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 and Russia stopped being Red. In fact, the two biggest post-war American conflicts, the Korean and Vietnam wars, were not, as has been frequently claimed, about stopping Soviet aggression or even influence, but about maintaining old colonial relationships. Similarly, many lesser interventions and conflicts, such as those in Latin America, were also based upon an alleged Soviet threat, which was greatly overblown or nonexistent. And now the specter of a Russian Menace has been raised again in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. The Plot to Scapegoat Russia examines the recent proliferation of stories, usually sourced from American state actors, blaming and manipulating the threat of Russia, and the long history of which this episode is but the latest chapter. It will show readers two key things: (1) the ways in which the United States has needlessly provoked Russia, especially after the collapse of the USSR, thereby squandering hopes for peace and cooperation; and (2) how Americans have lost out from this missed opportunity, and from decades of conflicts based upon false premises. These revelations, amongst other, make The Plot to Scapegoat Russia one of the timeliest reads of 2017.
