The Russia category has 102 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 328 ratings. The most-rated is Chernobyl 01:23:40.
The Russian Revolution
Summary
Groundbreaking in its inclusiveness, enthralling in its narrative of a movement whose purpose, in the words of Leon Trotsky, was "to overthrow the world", The Russian Revolution draws conclusions that aroused great controversy in this country. Richard Pipes argues convincingly that the Russian Revolution was an intellectual, rather than a class, uprising; that it was steeped in terror from its very outset; and that it was not a revolution at all but a coup d'etat - "the capture of governmental power by a small minority."
©1990 Richard Pipes (P)2019 Tantor
The Cossacks
Summary
"Had I just 10,000 Cossacks, I would have conquered the whole world." (Napoleon Bonaparte) "Save us Lord, from Cossacks." (Sir Wilson, reporting the prayers of conquered Germans, 1813) The modern myth of the Cossack presents striking images of a stern warrior mounted on horseback, with a long woolen coat, papakha (distinctive tall fur cap ) and fur-lined cloak, with bandoliers holding large-caliber bullets crisscrossing his chest. The warrior is armed with a mixture of rifle, lance, daggers and pistols, but he always has his signature weapons: the shashka (a single-edged, guard-less, slightly curved saber originally designed by the Circassian foes) and the nagyka (short, thick whip of braided leather with a heavy weight worked into the end originally designed for fighting off wolves but more commonly used in later years against enemies of the state in the streets of Moscow or Odessa). As enemies conjured up the Cossack as semi-tamed steppe barbarian, a dog of the state, and the fist of the Czar, it's no surprise they were terrified. Even as the origins of these ferocious fighters remain murky and obscure, the Cossacks have continued their growing international appearance with the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in 2014. The conflict over the Crimea and the southeastern Donbass region has had thoroughly Cossack overtones; on the one hand, the Ukrainian Nationalists view themselves as the descendants of the freedom minded Cossack Republics and on the other hand, Russia has leaned heavily upon Cossack "volunteers" to staff its informal militias in the Donbass and to seize and police Crimea.
©2012 Charles River Editors (P)2016 Charles River Editors
Ivan the Terrible: A Life From Beginning to End
Summary
Just what was so terrible about Ivan the Terrible? Most of us are familiar with this infamous nickname, but most fall short of being able to describe how he received such an ominous moniker. Maybe you’ve heard the stories of how Ivan killed his own son, poisoned his wives, and waged war on his neighbors, but these anecdotes are just minor details in the scheme of this man’s complicated life. Inside you will read about... Ivan, the Neglected Orphan Ivan’s Liberation of Slaves War in the Baltic Intrigue and Diplomacy Ivan’s Final Redemption Ivan’s Last Days And much more! Ivan IV, otherwise known as Ivan the Terrible, was born with a heavy burden on his shoulders. He was thrust into the seat of what the Russians considered the Third Rome, granting him all the rights and privileges of the official steward of Orthodox Christian civilization in the east. In order to hold on to that right, he did indeed do some pretty terrible things.
©2017 Hourly History (P)2017 Hourly History
Germany Ascendant: The Eastern Front 1915
Summary
The massive offensives on the Eastern Front during 1915 are too often overshadowed by the events in Western Europe, but the scale and ferocity of the clashes between Imperial Germany, Hapsburg Austria-Hungary, and Tsarist Russia were greater than anything seen on the Western Front and ultimately as important to the final outcome of the war. Now, with the work of internationally renowned Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar, this fascinating story of the unknown side of the First World War is finally being told. In Germany Ascendant, Buttar examines the critical events of 1915, as the German Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive triggered the collapse of Russian forces, coming tantalizingly close to knocking Russia out of the war altogether. Throughout the year, German dominance on the Eastern Front grew - but stubborn Russian resistance forced the continuation of a two-front war that would drain Germany's reserves of men and equipment. From the bitter fighting in the Carpathian Mountains, where the cragged peaks witnessed thousands of deaths and success was measured in feet and inches, to the sweeping advances through Serbia where the capital Belgrade was seized, to the almost medieval battle for the fortress of Przemysl, this is a staggeringly ambitious history of some the most important moments of the First World War.
©2015 Prit Buttar (P)2018 Tantor
The Whisperers
Summary
Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers re-creates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.
©2018 Orlando Figes (P)2018 Audible, Ltd
The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis
Summary
The Cuban missile crisis was the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War and the most perilous moment in American history. In this dramatic narrative written especially for students and general listeners, Sheldon M. Stern, longtime historian at the John F. Kennedy Library, enables the listener to follow the often harrowing twists and turns of the crisis. Based on the author's authoritative transcriptions of the secretly recorded ExComm meetings, the book conveys the emotional ambiance of the meetings by capturing striking moments of tension and anger as well as occasional humorous intervals. Unlike today's readers, the participants did not have the luxury of knowing how this potentially catastrophic showdown would turn out, and their uncertainty often gives their discussions the nerve-racking quality of a fictional thriller. As President Kennedy told his advisers, "What we are doing is throwing down a card on the table in a game which we don't know the ending of." Stern documents that JFK and his administration bore a substantial share of the responsibility for the crisis. Covert operations in Cuba, including efforts to kill Fidel Castro, had convinced Nikita Khrushchev that only the deployment of nuclear weapons could protect Cuba from imminent attack. However, President Kennedy, a seasoned Cold Warrior in public, was deeply suspicious of military solutions to political problems and appalled by the prospect of nuclear war. He consistently steered policy makers away from an apocalyptic nuclear conflict, measuring each move and countermove with an eye to averting what he called, with stark eloquence, "the final failure." The book is published by Stanford University Press.
©2005 the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (P)2012 Redwood Audiobooks
The Russian Revolution: History in an Hour
Summary
History for busy people. Listen to a concise history of the Siege of Leningrad in just one hour. In 1917 the world changed forever. One of the most influential and contentious events in recent history, the Russian Revolution unleashed the greatest political experiment ever conducted, one which continues to influence both Eastern and Western politics today. The Russian Revolution: History in an Hour neatly covers all the major facts and events giving you a clear and straightforward overview: from the circumstances behind the rise of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, to the consequences of their struggle for a new socialist utopia. The Russian Revolution: History in an Hour is engagingly written and accessible for all history lovers. Love your history? Find out about the world with History in an Hour….
©2012 Rupert Colley (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Deathride
Summary
John Mosier presents a revisionist retelling of the war on the Eastern Front. Although the Eastern Front was the biggest and most important theater in World War II, it is not well known in the United States, as no American troops participated in the fighting. Yet historians agree that this is where the decisive battles of the war were fought. The conventional wisdom about the Eastern Front is that Hitler was mad to think he could defeat the USSR, because of its vast size and population, and that the Battle of Stalingrad marked the turning point of the war. Neither statement is accurate, says Mosier; Hitler came very close to winning outright. Mosier's history of the Eastern Front will generate considerable controversy, both because of his unconventional arguments and because he criticizes historians who have accepted Soviet facts and interpretations. Mosier argues that Soviet accounts are utterly untrustworthy and that accounts relying on them are fantasies. Deathride argues that the war in the East was Hitler's to lose, that Stalin was in grave jeopardy from the outset of the war, and that it was the Allied victories in North Africa and consequent threat to Italy that forced Hitler to change his plans and saved Stalin from near-certain defeat. Stalin's only real triumph was in creating a legend of victory.
©2010 John Mosier (P)2010 Tantor
War on the Eastern Front
Summary
Dawn on Sunday, June 22, 1941 saw the opening onslaughts of Operation Barbarossa as German forces stormed forward into the Soviet Union. Few of them were to survive the five long years of bitter struggle. A posting to the Eastern Front during the Second World War was rightly regarded with dread by the German soldiers. They were faced by the unremitting hostility of the climate, the people and even, at times, their own leadership. They saw epic battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk, and yet it was a daily war of attrition which ultimately proved fatal for Hitler's ambition and the German military machine. In this classic account leading military historian James Lucas examines different aspects of the fighting, from war in the trenches to a bicycle-mounted antitank unit fighting against the oncoming Russian hordes. Told through the experiences of the German soldiers who endured these nightmarish years of warfare, War on the Eastern Front is a unique record of this cataclysmic campaign.
©1979 Cooper and Lucas Ltd (P)2020 Tantor
The Soviet Invasion of Hungary in 1956
Summary
For 30 years, much of the West looked on with disdain as the Bolsheviks took power in Russia and created and consolidated the Soviet Union. As bad as Vladimir Lenin seemed in the early 20th century, Joseph Stalin was so much worse that Churchill later remarked of Lenin, “Their worst misfortune was his birth...their next worst his death”. Before World War II, Stalin consolidated his position by frequently purging party leaders (most famously Leon Trotsky) and Red Army leaders, executing hundreds of thousands of people at the least. And in one of history’s greatest textbook examples of the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Stalin’s Soviet Union allied with Britain and the United States to defeat Hitler in Europe during World War II. As it turned out, however, the Soviets would not cede any of the territory the Red Army took while pushing the Wehrmacht back to Berlin in the latter stages of World War II, ensuring that the Iron Curtain would envelop much of Central and Eastern Europe. In almost no time at all, most of these countries were transformed into authoritarian, communist, one-party states, and opponents were exiled or jailed. In 1955, Moscow had brought together all the satellites as part of the Warsaw Pact, a collective security organization to challenge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which had been founded in 1949 by the United States and Western European allies. Nonetheless, the mid-1950's were tumultuous for the Soviet Bloc. Several countries saw Stalin’s death and the apparent change of direction, even the softening of policy under Khrushchev, as an opportunity to pursue a reformist path. In East Germany, Poland, and Hungary, demonstrations against the communist regimes induced uncertainty, and Hungarian leaders attempted to incorporate the protestors and orientate themselves towards the West, leading to a notorious Soviet invasion. Only occasionally did the peoples of the so-called Eastern Bloc attempt to break free from the status quo, or at least register their dissatisfaction. These mass demonstrations and uprisings act as markers of the Cold War, including 1953 in East Berlin, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, 1980-81 in Poland, and, of course, 1989 in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. The fall of the Berlin Wall is likely the most famous, but the uprising with the greatest impact on the bulk of the Cold War took place in Hungary in 1956, when protestors took to the streets to demand freedom from tyranny and a greater say in their own destiny. When the Hungarians rose up against the status quo in October 1956, they were met with a brutal response from Moscow. The history of Hungary is one of a country that experienced almost constant expansion and contraction, along with waves of autonomy and domination. It is this sense of history that played such a dominant role in 1956 and why the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution has such a searing place in the national consciousness. Above all, 1956 brought about a sense of helplessness that Hungary had little chance to tread a path of national self-determination, as the threat of Soviet military intervention hung over the country. Of course, that was the Soviets’ intention all along. By crushing the Hungarian Uprising, the Soviets dampened the hopes of the people of Central and Eastern Europe that they might be able to pursue a more independent-minded path. The one exception to this rule would be Tito’s Yugoslavia. The Soviet Invasion of Hungary in 1956: The History and Legacy of the Hungarian Uprising and the Military Operations That Put It Down looks at the events that brought about the most famous rebellion against Soviet authority during the Cold War; you will learn about the Soviet invasion of Hungary like never before.
Public Domain (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Gulags
Summary
One of the most idiosyncratic horrors of Soviet Russia was the Gulag system, an extensive network of forced labor and concentration camps. Part of the rationale behind this system was that it could serve as slave labor in the drive for industrialization while also serving as a form of punishment. The name Gulag is in fact an acronym, approximating to “Main Administration of Camps” (in Russian: Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei) and operated by the Soviet Union’s Ministry of the Interior. The Gulag consisted of internment camps, forced labor camps, psychiatric hospital facilities, and special laboratories, and its prisoners were known as zeks. Such was the closed and secretive nature of the Soviet state that to this day, knowledge of the Gulag system comes mainly from Western studies, firsthand accounts by prisoners such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and some local studies after the fall of communism. The most recognizable version of the Gulag, a term that was never pluralized in Russia itself, existed from the 1930s to 1950s, a period in which a huge network of camps and prisons was established across the vast Soviet federation. Prisoners were often used as forced labor, made to do physically arduous and soul-destroying tasks. Some workers helped to build large infrastructure projects, and indeed, the system was partly rationalized in terms of economics. By the early 1960s, Gulags were synonymous with various forms of punishments, including house arrest, imprisonment in isolated places, or confinement to a mental hospital where a prisoner would be declared insane or diagnosed with a “political” form of psychosis. In its later years, the Gulags held a particular place in the public’s imagination, both within the USSR and in the outside world. They could mean exile, brutal punishment, or simply being banished to Siberia. Though it’s often forgotten today, in many respects, the Gulags represented a continuation (albeit a more far-reaching version) of the kind of punishment meted out during the Russian Empire under the Romanov dynasty, which was overthrown in 1917. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the system in the context of the broader history of Russia and its empire, even as the system of repression, imprisonment, and punishment persisted for decades in the Soviet Union and has been primarily aligned with the rule of one leader: Josef Stalin. The USSR collapsed in December 1991, and it can be argued that the labor camps were not only integral to the very existence of the Soviet Union, but also a damning indictment of the Soviets’ failed experiment in communist totalitarianism. The Gulags: The History and Legacy of the Notorious Soviet Labor Camps examines the rise of the labor camps, how they were institutionalized by Soviet leaders, and what life was like for the prisoners.
©2018 Charles River Editors (P)2019 Charles River Editors
Tsar Nicholas II: A Life From Beginning to End
Summary
Reigning from 1894 to 1917, Nicholas II was the last emperor of Russia. His rule served as the bookends between what were essentially two Russian empires; the one that his forefathers carved out through imperial ambition and the one dictated by the zealous communists of the Soviet Union bent on socialist expansion. Nicholas was by most accounts a conflicted ruler; a man viewed as kind and generous in his mannerisms, yet alleged to be greatly disconnected and apathetic toward the subjects he was supposed to rule over. From this audiobook you will learn about: Nicholas and the Funeral Bride The Coronation Tragedy Bloody Sunday Nicholas’ Reluctant Reforms Three Hundred Years of Romanov Rule The Tsar and World War I The Last Russian Tsar And much more Find out how this last Russian tsar rose to power and oversaw the end of a 300-year family dynasty as it teetered, tottered, and finally fell over the edge of oblivion. This is the story of Tsar Nicholas II.
©2017 Hourly History (P)2018 Hourly History
The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths Versus Reality
Summary
This audiobook exposes the misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies that have shaped the still dominant but largely mythical version of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks of secret Cuban missile crisis deliberations. A half-century after the event it is surely time to demonstrate, once and for all, that RFK's Thirteen Days and the personal memoirs of other ExComm members cannot be taken seriously as historically accurate accounts of the ExComm meetings.
©2012 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (P)2013 Redwood Audiobooks
All Hands Down
Summary
Forty years ago, in May 1968, the submarine USS Scorpion sank in mysterious circumstances with a loss of 99 lives. The tragedy occurred during the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, drawing on hours of exclusive interviews as well as recently declassified United States and Soviet intelligence files, Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Preisler explain what really happened to Scorpion. When a Soviet sub mysteriously sank near Hawaii, hundreds of miles from its normal station, Soviet naval leaders mistakenly believed that a U.S. submarine was to blame. Using a cryptographic unit acquired from the North Koreans to decipher classified Navy communications, they set a trap for revenge. All Hands Down explains how the plan was executed and why the truth of the attack has been officially denied for 40 years.
©2008 Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Priesler (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Travels in Siberia
Summary
A Dazzling Russian travelogue from the best-selling author of Great Plains. In Travels in Siberia, Ian Frazier trains his eye for unforgettable detail on Siberia, that vast expanse of Asiatic Russia. He explores many aspects of this storied, often grim region, which takes up one-seventh of the land on earth. He writes about the geography, the resources, the native peoples, the history, the 40-below midwinter afternoons, the bugs. The book brims with Mongols, half-crazed Orthodox archpriests, fur seekers, ambassadors of the czar bound for Peking, tea caravans, German scientists, American prospectors, intrepid English nurses, and prisoners and exiles of every kind - from Natalie Lopukhin, banished by the czarina for copying her dresses; to the noble Decembrist revolutionaries of the 1820s; to the young men and women of the People’s Will movement whose fondest hope was to blow up the czar; to those who met still-ungraspable suffering and death in the Siberian camps during Soviet times. More than just a historical travelogue, Travels in Siberia is also an account of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union and a personal reflection on the all-around amazingness of Russia, a country that still somehow manages to be funny. Siberian travel books have been popular since the 13th century, when monks sent by the pope went east to find the Great Khan and wrote about their journeys. Travels in Siberia will take its place as the 21st century’s indispensable contribution to the genre.
©2010 Ian Frazier (P)2010 Macmillan Audio
Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations
Summary
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest man-made structure to orbit Earth and has been conducting research for close to a decade and a half. Yet it is only the latest in a long line of space stations and laboratories that have flown in orbit since the early 1970's. The histories of these earlier programs have been all but forgotten as the public focused on other, higher-profile adventures such as the Apollo moon landings. Outposts on the Frontier reveals how the Soviets and the Americans combined strengths to build space stations over the past 50 years. At the heart of these scientific advances are people of both greatness and modesty. Jay Chladek documents the historical tapestry of the people, the early attempts at space station programs, and how astronauts and engineers have contributed to and shaped the ISS in surprising ways. Outposts on the Frontier delves into the intriguing stories behind the USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory, the Almaz and Salyut programs, Skylab, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, Spacelab, Mir station, Spacehab, and the ISS and gives past-due attention to Vladimir Chelomei, the Russian designer whose influence in space station development is as significant as Sergei Korolev’s in rocketry. Outposts on the Frontier is an informative and dynamic history of humankind’s first outposts on the frontier of space. The book is published by University of Nebraska Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
©2017 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska (P)2020 Redwood Audiobooks
Russia and the Soviet Union
Summary
Recent events have made it clear that the Soviet Union is not a monolith; it's a collection of nationalities, many with serious objections to union. The demise of communism holds great promise and great danger not only for the Soviets, but for the world. This audiobook examines how the region's long history led to modern reality.
©1991 Knowledge Products, Inc. (P)1991 Knowledge Products, Inc.
Red Moon Rising
Summary
On October 4, 1957, a time of Cold War paranoia, the Soviet Union secretly launched the Earth's first artificial moon. No bigger than a basketball, the tiny satellite was powered by a car battery. Yet, for all its simplicity, Sputnik stunned the world. Based on extensive research in the US and newly opened archives in the former USSR, Red Moon Rising tells the story of five extraordinary months in the history of technology and the rivalry between two superpowers. It takes us inside the Kremlin and introduces the Soviet engineer Korolev, the charismatic, politically-minded visionary who motivated Khruschev to support what others dismissed as a ridiculous program. Korolev is virtually unknown to most Americans, yet it is because of him that NASA exists, that college loan programs were started in the U.S., and that Kennedy and Johnson became presidents. Character driven, suspenseful, and dramatic, Red Moon Rising unveils the politics, people, science, and mindset behind a critical and transformative world event.
©2007 Matthew Brzezinski (P)2007 HighBridge Company
Plutopia
Summary
In Plutopia, Kate Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington, and Ozersk, Russia - the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias - communities of nuclear families living in highly subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia - they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment. An untold and profoundly important piece of Cold War history, Plutopia invites listeners to consider the nuclear footprint left by the arms race and the enormous price of paying for it.
©2013 Kate Brown (P)2017 Tantor
The Cold War
Summary
If you want to discover the captivating history of the Cold War, then pay attention.... The seeds of the Cold War were sown toward the end of World War II. During the war, the United States and the Soviet Union were reluctant partners. The communist doctrine of the Soviets was decidedly at odds with the US notion of capitalism, free enterprise, and rugged individualism. But as is often the case in history, despite their differences, America and Soviet Russia had a common enemy that brought them together - Nazi Germany. But soon after Truman took over the presidency of the United States, American and Soviet relations began to rapidly go south. Before the war was even over, disagreements arose over how the postwar world should be administered. In The Cold War: A Captivating Guide to the Tense Conflict Between the United States of America and the Soviet Union Following World War II, you will discover topics such as: Berlin: The lines have been drawn Stemming the tide of communism in East Asia Fighting the soviets for supremacy in space How the Cold War calculus affected the Middle East Cuba, Vietnam, and increasing social unrest An East African cold war Cold War secrets and a place called Area 51 Soviets, Afghanistan, and a little bit of salt Ronald Reagan and the evil empire Poland, a Polish pope, and Cold War solidarity Star Wars: the biggest bluff in history The Cold War comes to a close And much, much more! So, if you want to learn more about the Cold War, scroll up and click the "Buy Now" button!
©2020 Captivating History (P)2020 Captivating History