San Antonio College Library

This is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to her own people and to the world. Handpicked by the "family" surrounding an ailing and increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin seemed like a perfect choice for the oligarchy to shape according to its own designs. Suddenly...

The Russian revolution, collapse of the Soviet Union, and Russia's ensuing transformation belong to the greatest dramas of our time. Revolutions are usually messy and emotional affairs, challenging much of the conventional wisdom, and Russia's experience is no exception. This book focuses on the transformation from Soviet Russia to Russia as a market economy, and explores why the country has failed to transform into a democracy. It examines the period...

"For 300 years the history of Russia was inextricably linked to that of one family: the Romanovs. Tracing their line back to Tsar Michael and claiming a divine right to reign, they shaped the history of Russia, for better or for worse, over three centuries. Their influence defined the politics, society, art and philosophy of the time and led to the establishment of Russia as one of the great world powers." "When they gathered to celebrate their tercentenary...

"Russia first encountered Alaska in 1741 as part of the most ambitious and expensive expedition of the entire eighteenth century. For centuries since, cartographers have struggled to define and develop the enormous region comprising northeastern Asia, the North Pacific, and Alaska. The forces of nature and the follies of human error conspired to make the area incredibly difficult to map. Exploring and Mapping Alaska focuses on this foundational period...

The Urals are best known as the boundary between Europe and Asia. A History of the Urals demonstrates the region's importance in its own right, as a crucible of Russia's defence industry in particular. In the first English-language book to explore the subject fully, Paul Dukes examines the region's contribution to the power of the state in Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet times, offering a refreshing antidote to Moscow-centric interpretations of Russian...

The former Soviet empire spanned eleven time zones and contained half the world's forests; vast deposits of oil, gas, and coal; various ores; major rivers such as the Volga, Don, and Angara; and extensive biodiversity. These resources and animals, as well as the people who lived in the former Soviet Union - Slavs, Armenians, Georgians, Azeris, Kazakhs and Tajiks, indigenous Nenets and Chukchi - were threatened by environmental degradation and extensive...

"The Great Game, 1856-1907 presents a new view of the British-Russian competition for dominance in Central Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Evgeny Sergeev offers a complex and novel point of view by synthesizing official collections of documents, parliamentary papers, political pamphlets, memoirs, contemporary journalism, and guidebooks from unpublished and less studied primary sources in Russian, British, Indian, Georgian, Uzbek,...

Overview: Russia is famous for its vodka, and its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history and politics. In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that debilitating societal alcoholism is not hard-wired into Russians' genetic code, but rather their autocratic political system, which has long wielded vodka as a tool of statecraft. Through a...

"After Stalin's death, the Soviet Union dismantled its enormous system of terror and torture. Sixty years later, Russia remains the land of the unburied. Memorials to the victems of the gulag are inadequate, and their families have received no significant compensation. In contrast to the Nazis, who created a clear boundary between victims and perpetrators, the Soviet regime terrorized people arbitrarily. Its agents and targets were blurred, and perpetrators...

This book traces the origins of the idea of an autonomous Jewish nation in Europe, two strains of Jewish political thought, Yiddishism and Diaspora Nationalism, and leading figures in each movement. The author also discusses the groups during their struggles against Nazism and the Holocaust.