Soviet Union Archives

July 10, 2023 wezg

Review: Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia To Confront The West – by Keir Giles

I am a new member of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London. On a recent visit, I made use of the vast resources of a very well-stocked library at Chatham House and this book is the

June 24, 2023 wezg

Sluggish Schizophrenia

I got (mis)diagnosed with Schizophrenia on 02.04.1997 and I’ve had 26 years of hell in the mental health system here in South Wales ever since. Initially the psychiatrist said it was ‘mild schizophrenia’ whatever that is. I have had over

June 18, 2023 wezg

Guerrilla Heroico

The Cuban Revolution was an earth-shattering event with huge consequences internationally, not just in Latin America, but further afield. I felt the impact myself whilst travelling across Scandinavia in 2005. I’d run out of clean underwear and, while scanning the

March 23, 2023 wezg

Review: Red Horizons – The True Story of Nicolae & Elena Ceausescus’ Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption – by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa

I was just chatting away to Ionutz a security nurse in the local mental hospital and he’s Romanian. I passed through Bucharest a few years ago en route to Istanbul on a train journey traversing Eastern Europe. Romania seemed quite

March 19, 2023 wezg

Review: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Under the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev there was a post-Stalin easing of oppression emerging from the Kremlin and a Cold War ‘Victorian’ Ice Age thaw for writers allowed this remarkable, unique, little tale to unbelievably evade the censor and make

March 19, 2023 wezg

Review: The Master and Margarita – by Mikhail Bulgakov

I read a lot of Russian literature and am becoming a bit of an aficionado. This book was first recommended to me by an ex-girlfriend from Serbia and it’s taken me a while to actually get around to completing it

February 4, 2023 wezg

Review: Our Man in Havana – by Graham Greene

Graham Greene delivers here a classic espionage novel, fiction, set in Cuba around the time of the revolution, Greene writes in his knowledgeable subject area of expertise a comedy account of a chance vacuum salesman being recruited by Mi6 as

February 4, 2023 wezg

Review: War and Peace – by Leo Tolstoy

‘War and Peace’ needs no introduction. It holds its place in the minds of contemporary society as a literary classic. One cannot pick up a newspaper article on great books without a passing mention of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece. Like other

January 16, 2023 wezg

Review: Kim – by Rudyard Kipling

‘Kim’ is recognised as the greatest work of famous author Rudyard Kipling. This is a cult novel especially in espionage circles. It is fiction but documents the widely popular Great Game between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia, a clandestine

January 14, 2023 wezg

Review: The Dragons and the Snakes – How The Rest Learned to Fight The West – by David Kilcullen

This is one of the very best books I have ever read. It is up to date material and full of cutting edge military theory and ideas and I believe is critical essential reading for any politician or military personnel,

January 14, 2023 wezg

Review: The Dragons and the Snakes – How The Rest Learned to Fight The West – by David Kilcullen

December 8, 2022 wezg

Review: Red Notice – How I Became Putin’s No.1 Enemy – by Bill Browder

There is irony in this tale as Bill Browder was following in his grandfather’s footsteps in some ways but was also radically poles apart. Browder’s grandfather had stood for Presidential election in the USA on a Communist ticket. Bill Browder

November 19, 2022 wezg

Review: Russians Among Us – Sleeper Cells & The Hunt for Putin’s Agents – by Gordon Correra

I’ve read Gordon Correra’s previous work in espionage literature and for this reason I was drawn to seek out this new offering. In the current climate of the Russian invasion of Ukraine under ex KGB spy, Vladimir Putin, I felt

November 19, 2022 wezg

Review: Memoirs – by Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential and critical figures of the twentieth century. When I was growing up in the 1980s he was part os a set of international world leaders that seemingly had much more influence over

November 10, 2022 wezg

Review: Putin’s People – How the KGB took back Russia and then took on The West – by Catherine Belton

The author of this, the best study of Vladimir Putin that I have read to date, is Catherine Belton, a Financial Times journalist that was based in Moscow. It is a comprehensive study of the rise of Putin and how

October 17, 2022 wezg

Review: World Order – Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History – by Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger is a very famous international American statesman. This is the first book of his that I have read. I was drawn to exploring his views as I have always noticed him throughout my life as being a key

October 14, 2022 wezg

Review: Behind The Enigma – The Authorised History of GCHQ – Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency – by John Ferris

This is a weighty tome (800 plus pages) and the authoritative history of perhaps the least glamorous of the U.K.’s principal security services. However, the facts illustrated in this book clearly demonstrates the critical role GCHQ plays in national security

October 14, 2022 wezg

Review: A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict and Convergence – by Dickie Davis, David Kilcullen, Greg Mills and David Spencer

David Kilcullen has had a few books included on my shelf recently. As a military expert on Guerrilla Warfare, I was thrilled to find this new book on the Colombian Civil War which he coauthors with a group of specialists

October 14, 2022 wezg

Review: Behind The Enigma – The Authorised History of GCHQ – Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency – by John Ferris

October 6, 2022 wezg

Review: Stasiland – Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall – by Anna Funder

The Stasi were the brutal secret police in the GDR (German Democratic Republic) or East Germany. After the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, East and West Germany once again became reunited.

September 1, 2022 wezg

Review: The Third Man and The Fallen Idol – by Graham Greene

Graham Greene is a classic early twentieth century English novelist. I remember studying Brighton Rock for my school GCSEs.The Third Man is set in the murky underworld of post World War 2 Vienna. The Austrian capital has been quartered into

September 1, 2022 wezg

Review: Black Russian – by Vladimir Alexandrov

This is an exciting tale from the turn of the twentieth century of an eccentric man of the world who encountered directly some of the most important global events of that era. It is a biography of Frederick Bruce Thomas

December 27, 2018 wezg

Review: The Billion Dollar Spy – by David E. Hoffman

This espionage thriller tells the true life story of one of the Cold War’s most valuable assets, a Russian spy working for the CIA in the heart of the Soviet military aerospace sector. Adolf Tolkachev made the first tentative moves

January 19, 2018 wezg

Review: MI6 – Fifty Years of Special Operations – by Stephen Dorril

This detailed 800 page book covers fifty years of MI6, the UK’s foreign espionage service. From relatively humble beginnings during the second world war, MI6 grew to become a leading foe of Soviet Russia and its notorious KGB. The book

January 12, 2018 wezg

Review: Memoirs of a Revolutionary – by Victor Serge

This is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read, a first witness account of some of the most important world events of the first half of the twentieth century, a rich period for revolutionary events and the

January 4, 2018 wezg

Review: Fragile Empire – How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin – by Ben Judah

This is a very well researched study of Russia under Vladimir Putin. Always concerned with the political angle of this modern day Tsar, Judah studies the rise of Putin from a relatively unflattering career in the FSB through to him

January 4, 2018 wezg

Review: Fragile Empire – How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin – by Ben Judah

February 16, 2017 wezg

Review: The Last Empire – The Final Days of the Soviet Union – by Serhii Plokhy

When the Soviet Union ended and thus the Cold War ended on Christmas Day 1991, it was probably one of the biggest political events of my lifetime. This well-researched, detailed book, by Ukrainian author Serhii Plokhy, details the last 18

January 6, 2017 wezg

Psychiatry in the Former Soviet Union (Guest Post)

[Here is a post by our first international guest poster. Leoned is from the former Soviet Union and has sent us this about his mental health experiences. End Of Terror is a worldwide struggle and campaign for better rights for

December 5, 2016 wezg

Account For The Nationalist Victory In The Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War lasted for three years from 1936 to 1939 and was ultimately won by the Nationalists. This victory was far from certain at various points of the conflict and this essay shall explore the many factors that

July 22, 2016 wezg

Review: A Spy Among Friends – Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal – by Ben Macintyre

Telling the remarkable story of Kim Philby, who was probably the most effective spy in history, this book reads fast and furiously, a real page-turner. The book focuses on the dramatic relationship between two friends, both rising stars in the

July 6, 2016 wezg

Review: Winter Is Coming – Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped – by Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion, is clearly an intelligent man. Having retired from the game he has entered the world of politics and is a key human rights activist. The book explores his frustrations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

July 6, 2016 wezg

Review: The Art Of Betrayal – Life and Death in the British Secret Service – by Gordon Corera

They say that truth is often stranger than fiction and this book that I have given a 5 star rating reads very fluently and tells the real story of British secret service agents as they engage in the art of

January 12, 2015 wezg

Guerrilla Heroico

Discuss how textual and visual representations of the Rebel Army during and after the Cuban Revolution contributed to the myth of the heroic guerrilla in Latin America. The original iconic 1968 stylized ‘Guerrilla Heroico’ Che Guevara imagecreated by Jim Fitzpatrick,

January 12, 2015 wezg

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