Эта книга - итог 10-летней работы по переосмыслению советского прошлого, решительная ревизия военных мифов, унаследованных от сталинского агитпропа, бескомпромиссная полемика с историческим официозом. Это - горькая правда о кровавом 1945-м, который был не только годом Победы, но и БЕДЫ - недаром многие события последних месяцев войны до сих пор обходят молчанием, архивы так и не рассекречены до конца, а самые горькие, "неудобные" и болезненные вопросы по сей день остаются без ответов. Когда на самом деле закончилась Великая Отечественная война? Почему Берлин не был взят в феврале 1945 года и пришлось штурмовать его в апреле? Кто в действительности брал Рейхстаг и поднял Знамя Победы? Оправданны ли огромные потери советских танков, брошенных в кровавый хаос уличных боев, и правда ли, что в Берлине сгорела не одна танковая армия? Кого и как освобождали советские войска в Европе? Какова подлинная цена Победы? И кто на самом деле победил во Второй Мировой войне? Эта книга завершает 5-томную историю Великой Отечественной войны от Владимира Бешанова.

Сборник материалов конференции, состоявшейся осенью 2008 г. в Институте славяноведения РАН, посвящен сорокалетию чехословацких событий 1968 г. и отражает современное состояние изучения "Пражской весны" - переломного рубежа в развитии социализма в Европе. На основе ранее не известных или не доступных исследователям документов анализируется ряд слабо изученных проблем системного кризиса и движения за реформирование социализма. Основное внимание уделено влиянию чехословацких событий на общество и сознание европейцев. Для историков и всех интересующихся политической историей XX столетия.

The "new soviet person" the Bolsheviks were committed to creating was to be a creature willing and eager to subordinate his or her own interests to those of society. Both men and women would play a full role in the construction of socialism, but the model of the "new women" had an additional feature--she also had to reproduce the population. This book explores the ways in which the "new woman," in her various incarnations, was presented to female citizens of the 1920s to the end of the Stalin era in the pages of popular women's magazines, Rabotnitsa (The Woman Worker) and Krest'yanka (The Peasant Woman).

Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet government carried out a massive number of deportations, incarcerations, and executions. Paradoxically, at the very moment that Soviet authorities were killing thousands of individuals, they were also engaged in an enormous pronatalist campaign to boost the population. Even as the number of repressions grew exponentially, Communist Party leaders enacted sweeping social welfare and public health measures to safeguard people's well-being. Extensive state surveillance of the population went hand in hand with literacy campaigns, political education, and efforts to instill in people an appreciation of high culture. In Cultivating the Masses, David L. Hoffmann examines the Party leadership's pursuit of these seemingly contradictory policies in order to grasp fully the character of the Stalinist regime, a regime intent on transforming the socioeconomic order and the very nature of its citizens. To analyze Soviet social policies, Hoffmann places them in an international comparative context. He explains Soviet technologies of social intervention as one particular constellation of modern state practices. These practices developed in conjunction with the ambitions of nineteenth-century European reformers to refashion society, and they subsequently prompted welfare programs, public health initiatives, and reproductive regulations in countries around the world. The mobilizational demands of World War I impelled political leaders to expand even further their efforts at population management, via economic controls, surveillance, propaganda, and state violence. Born at this moment of total war, the Soviet system institutionalized these wartime methods as permanent features of governance. Party leaders, whose dictatorship included no checks on state power, in turn attached interventionist practices to their ideological goal of building socialism.

Details what ordinary life was like during the extraordinary years of the reign of Soviet Union. Thirty-six illustrations, thematic chapters, a glossary, timeline, annotated multimedia bibliography, and detailed index make it a sound starting point for looking at this powerful nation's immediate past. What was ordinary life like in the Soviet police state? The phrase daily life implies an orderly routine in a stable environment. However, many millions of Soviet citizens experienced repeated upheavals in their everyday lives. Soviet citizens were forced to endure revolution, civil war, two World Wars, forced collectivization, famine, massive deportations, mass terror campaigns perpetrated against them by their own leaders, and chronic material deprivations. Even the perpetrators often became victims. Many millions, of all ages, nationalities, and walks of life, did not survive these experiences. At the same time, millions managed to live tranquilly, work in factories, farm the fields, serve in the military, and even find joy in their existence. Structured topically, this volume begins with an historical introduction to the Soviet period (1917-1991) and a timeline. Chapters that follow are devoted to such core topics as: government and law, the economy, the military, rural life, education, health care, housing, ethnic groups, religion, the media, leisure, popular culture, and the arts. The volume also has two maps, including a map of ethnic groups and languages, and over thirty photographs of people going about their lives in good times and bad. A glossary, a list of student-friendly books and multimedia sources for classroom and/or individual use, and an index round out the work, making it a valuable resource for high school as well as undergraduate courses on modern Russian and Soviet history. Copious chapter endnotes provide numerous starting points for students and teachers who want to delve more deeply.

The Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, also known as GRU, is the section of the KGB responsible for the international arena. Suvorov, a Soviet defector, was a member, and here he reveals the organization's inner workings. Readers will find here a thorough analysis of the structure of GRU, its recruiting, training and methods of planting agents in governmental, military and technological centers of the enemy.

Махно - один із найяскравіших лідерів українського народу, якого радянська пропаганда називала бандитом, а справу його замовчувала. Зараз Нестора Махна порівнюють з Робін Гудом, Спартаком, товаришем Че. Виходець з найбіднішого селянства, він у 29 років зумів зібрати під прапором анархії 100-тисячну армію і почав створювати на південному сході України анархістське суспільство - трудову федерацію, яка проіснувала 100 днів під постійними ударами білих і червоних. Через 70 років після смерті цей степовий вовк став культовою фігурою серед сучасної молоді Європи, а ідеї анархізму, які сповідував Махно, у наш час перекочували з робітничих бараків до арт-богемних тусовок. Ким же був Махно у реальному житті? На це питання і дає відповідь нова книга Віктора Савченка, що присвячена одному з найвідоміших українців ХХ ст.

Хто ми — Україна чи Малоросія? Європа чи Росія? Чи українська релігійність — це те саме, що візантійське православ'я? Звідки взялись тамплієри на берегах Дніпра? Яку таємницю берегли «таємні товариства» малоросійських дворян XIX ст.? Звідки в «Лісовій пісні» зашифрована легенда про Грааль? Чи й справді українці — це «селянська нація»? В чому різниця між демократією і хамократією? В чому полягав модерний «український проект» і чи вдалося нам його реалізувати?.. Нова книжка провідної української письменниці, підсумковий плід її багаторічних роздумів — це вражаюча інтелектуальна подорож крізь віки, культури й конфесії в пошуках «України, яку ми втратили». Ключем до неї стає розкритий О. Забужко «код Лесі Українки». Аристократка і єретичка, спадкоємиця древнього лицарського роду і продовжувачка гностичної традиції, ця найвидатніша з українок залишилася незрозумілою в радянській Україні і майже незнаною широкій публіці — в Україні незалежній. Чому? Відповіддю на це питання стає велика історична драма «прихованої війни», яку Оксана Забужко з притаманною їй відвагою виносить із забуття і, на багатющому літературному й історичному матеріалі, відновлює на повен зріст. Це не лише фундаментальна історико-культурна студія чи вишукана філологічна екзегетика. Це ще й книга про наше сьогодення — про те, як жорстоко ми розплачуємося за втрату і забуття багатовікової лицарської культури.

When the Soviet Union pulled its forces out of Afghanistan, the American media had a simple explanation: Soviet troops had been hounded out of the mountains by U.S.-armed guerrillas--the skies cleared of Soviet aircraft by Stinger missiles--until the Kremlin was forced to cry uncle. But Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison shatter this image. Out of Afghanistan shows that the Red Army was securely entrenched when the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw: American weaponry and Afghan bravery raised the costs for Moscow, but it was six years of skillful diplomacy that gave the Russians a way out. Cordovez and Harrison provide the definitive account of the Soviet blunders that led up to the invasion and the bitter struggles over the withdrawal that raged in the Soviet and Afghan Communist parties and the Reagan Administration. The authors are particularly well-suited to their task: Cordovez was the United Nations mediator who negotiated the Soviet pullout, and Harrison is a leading South Asia expert with four decades of experience in covering Afghanistan. Their story of the U.N. negotiations is interwoven with a gripping chronicle of the war years, complete with palace shootouts in Kabul, turf warfare between rival Soviet intelligence agencies, and the CIA role in building up Islamic fundamentalist guerrilla leaders at the expense of Afghan moderates. Cordovez opens up his diaries to take us behind the scenes in his negotiations, and Harrison draws on interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, former Secretary of State George Shultz, and other key actors. The result is a book full of surprises. For example, the authors demonstrate that the Soviets intervened not out of a desire to drive to the Indian Ocean, but out of a fear of a U.S.-supported Afghan Tito. Rebuffs by hardline "bleeders" in the Reagan Administration undermined efforts by Yuri Andropov to secure a settlement before his death in 1983. Even more startling, Gorbachev resumed the search for a negotiated withdrawal more than a year before the first American-supplied Stinger missiles were deployed in the war. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was one of the pivotal events of recent history. Out of Afghanistan destroys many of the myths surrounding the Afghan war and will have a profound impact on the emerging debate over how and why the Cold War ended.

Sincerest thanks are due to Teresa Glazer, Irena Haniewicz, Jan K. Siedlecki, Walery Choroszewski, Adam Lasocki, Wadzia Ta÷ski, Louise McCall, Christopher Muszkowski and Mr Naharnowicz – all of whom found time to talk to me about their experiences of the September Campaign. Dr Andrzej Suchcitz, at the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, Chris Summerville, my editor, Pamela Covey, my proofreader, as well as the staff at the National Archives and in the Reading Room of the Imperial War Museum, were unfailingly helpful whenever I approached them. The author would also like to thank Ewa Haren, Taisa Kiczkajo and Jerzy Chodyrew for help with sources and Polish spellings, and the following for granting him permission to use copyright material: Teresa Glazer, Irena Haniewicz, Jan K. Siedlecki, Walery Choroszewski and Louise McCall, all of whom lent him copies of unpublished manuscripts. He would also like to thank the owners of the following papers in the Imperial War Museum, London: B.M. Poloniecki, R. Zolski, Wiktor Jackiewicz, Peter Fleming (P.Z. Tarczynski), B.J. Solak, F. Kornicki, M.A. Rymaszewski, R. Smorczewski, S. Kurylak, W. Krey, A. Golebiowski and S. Goldberg. Special thanks are also due to the Taylor Library for the use of images. Finally, the author would like to acknowledge his debt to S.J. Zaloga’s and V. Madej’s book, The Polish Campaign 1939, which greatly assisted in technical matters associated with the September Campaign. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and the author and the Imperial War Museum would be grateful for any information which might help to trace those whose identities or addresses are not currently known.

A compendium of folkloric, literary, and critical texts that show how the Russian fairy tale acquired political and historical meanings during the Soviet era We were born to make fairy tales come true. As one of Stalinism's more memorable slogans, this one suggests that the fairy tale figured in Soviet culture as far more than a category of children's literature. How much more-and how cannily Russian fairy tales reflect and interpret Soviet culture, especially in its utopian ambitions-becomes clear for the first time in Politicizing Magic, a compendium of folkloric, literary, and critical texts that demonstrate the degree to which ancient fairy-tale fantasies acquired political and historical meanings during the catastrophic twentieth century. Introducing Western readers to the most representative texts of Russian folkloric and literary tales, this book documents a rich exploration of this colorful genre through all periods of Soviet literary production (1920-1985) by authors with varied political and aesthetic allegiances. Here are traditional Russian folkloric tales and transformations of these tales that, adopting the didacticism of Soviet ideology, proved significant for the official discourse of Socialist Realism. Here, too, are narratives produced during the same era that use the fairy-tale paradigm as a deconstructive device aimed at the very underpinnings of the Soviet system. The editors' introductory essays acquaint readers with the fairy-tale paradigm and the permutations it underwent within the utopian dream of Soviet culture, deftly placing each-from traditional folklore to fairy tales of Socialist Realism, to real-life events recast as fairy tales for ironiceffect-in its literary, historical, and political context.

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. The first to cover this topic in the English language and containing detailed information about the trenches, bunkers, observation posts, and weapon positions, this book examines field fortifications built from local materials by infantrymen, as well as their use of mines, field camouflage techniques, and construction tools. It provides a first fascinating insight into Russian defensive attempts against the overwhelming might of the German Army.