‘The Happy Traitor’ by Simon Kuper review
The Happy Traitor: Spies, Lies and Exile in Russia. The Extraordinary Story of George Blake unpicks the motives and damage inflicted by the double agent.
Soviet Union
Stakhanovite Shopping
Even the retail sector became part of the second Five Year Plan imposed on the Soviet Union by Stalin.
Could the Soviet Union Have Survived?
We ask four historians of the Cold War whether the demise of the USSR was as inevitable as it now seems.
Soviet Super Sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko
Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the ‘Guerrilla Queen’ of Soviet Russia, became a role model for women in combat during the Second World War.
Kazakhstan’s Bloody December
Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika triggered an outpouring of resentment across the USSR. In 1986, young Kazakhs made their voices heard, but the Soviet regime was not ready to listen.
Lenin: The Machiavellian Marxist
Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, was an armed prophet who adopted the characteristics of Machiavelli’s lion and fox.
Day of Dissent in the DDR
The East German Uprising of 1953 was the first major revolt to take place in the Soviet Bloc.
Goodbye Lenin? A Centenary Perspective
The Russian Revolution should not be confined to 1917. The legacy of its leader and chief ideologue lives on in all its terrible contradictions.
The Russian Revolution: People of the Future
The October Revolution of 1917 inspired a generation of young Russians to embrace new ideals of socialist living.
Kerensky in Hindsight
Alexander Kerensky, the last Russian premier before the Bolsheviks took power, decided to continue the war with Germany. He and his nascent democracy would pay the price.