"Why is a book about SMERSH relevant today? As Mr. Birstein takes pains to point out, 'the present Russian government seems intent on whitewashing Stalin's atrocities and the history of the Soviet security services.'"—The Washington Times SMERSH is primarily known to readers in English as James Bond's sinister opponent. Yet SMERSH was a real organization and was just as diabolical as its fictional counterpart. Based on Russian documents and memoirs, a critical missing piece of the history of World War II and the Soviet secret services is finally exposed to the light of day. Vadim J. Birstein, PhD, is a historian, activist, and molecular geneticist. He lives in New York.
The Master and Margarita (Russian: Мастер и Маргарита) is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, woven about the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider the book to be one of the greatest Russian novels of the 20th century, as well as one of the foremost Soviet satires, directed against a suffocatingly bureaucratic social order.
Soviet War Machine: An Encyclopedia of Russian Military Equipment and Strategy
In order to understand Soviet military policy, it is necessary to examine its arms and equipment, human resources, military reforms and military strategy and that's what this book is about. It is full of pics, charts and illustrations of the Red Army's arsenal and tactics.
From June 1941, the Soviets were forced to undertake large-scale defensive operations in the face of the overwhelming German blitzkrieg assault, operations which ran counter to their preference for highly mobile, offensive warfare. Lessons were quickly learned across a wide variety of terrain and climates, including the open steppes, dense forests, wooded swamps, cities, and in snow and ice, where the availability of construction materials differed greatly.
Mastering The Art Of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir Of Food And Longing
A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations With startling beauty and sardonic wit, Anya von Bremzen tells an intimate yet epic story of life in that vanished empire known as the USSR--a place where every edible morsel was packed with emotional and political meaning.
