Russia Audiobooks | History

Born Under a Lucky Star: A Red Army Soldier's Recollections of the Eastern Front of World War II

As a Russian recruit in World War II, Ivan Makarov witnessed General Chuikov pull out his pistol and shoot their regimental commander as a traitor. That was on his first day at the front. Thrown into an open field to face German tanks and artillery fire, with only rifles and machine guns to defend themselves with, almost 2,000 men of his regiment were wiped out in only six days at the Eastern Front. At this rate, Ivan struggled to comprehend how he would survive the hundreds of battles that lay before him, with death seeming to be the only certainty. In his raw and trenchant memoir, Ivan recounts the terror and despair faced by a Red Army soldier on the Eastern Front. He has no sympathy for Stalin and his incompetent commanders, who sought awards and recognition at the expense of their soldiers' lives. He simply wanted to serve his country. It is rare to find first-hand accounts of the Great Patriotic War from Red Army soldiers, as many did not survive to tell the tale. For the first time, Ivan reveals his gripping recollections of battles, times, places, and people encountered throughout World War II, from when he was drafted in 1941 until their victory in 1945. These recollections he dared not put on paper until 1992.

Ivan Philippovich Makarov (Author), Daniel Henning (Narrator)

Audiobook

Russia: What Everyone Needs to Know

Today's Russia, also known as the Russian Federation, is often viewed as less powerful than the Soviet Union of the past. When stacked against other major nations in the present, however, the new Russia is a formidable if flawed player. Russia: What Everyone Needs to Know provides fundamental information about the origins, evolution, and current affairs of the Russian state and society. The story begins with Russia's geographic endowment, proceeds through its experiences as a kingdom and empire, and continues through the USSR's three-quarters of a century, and finally the shocking breakup of that regime a generation ago. Chapters on the failed attempt to reform Communism under Mikhail Gorbachev, the halting steps toward democratization under Boris Yeltsin, and the entrenchment of central controls under Vladimir Putin bring the listener into the contemporary scene and to headline-grabbing events such as Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and its military intervention in Syria. Drawing on trends within Russia and on ratings and rankings compiled by international organizations, Colton discusses the challenges facing the country-ranging from economic recession to demographic stress, political stagnation, and overextension in foreign policy-and to the realistic options for coping with them.

Timothy J. Colton (Author), Timothy Howard Jackson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Trip to Russia

'What journey within our immediate world today would be remotely as interesting, enchanting, instructive and exciting as that to Russia? While our Europe, and especially the capitals, are subject to the inexorably contemporary process of mutual assimilation and resemblance, Russia remains utterly unparalleled.' Stephen Zweig, 1928. After Stefan Zweig's bourgeois world collapsed with the First World War, he went searching for alternative forms of society, which culminated in a journey through the at that time still young Soviet Union. His perceptions and impressions during the trip remained ambivalent and moved between the generally prevailing glorification of the USSR by parts of the Western European intelligentsia and the harsh reality of life among the population. Stefan Zweig's non-political trip to the USSR is probably one of the most extraordinary travelogues of the 1920s and appears today almost 90 years later as a kaleidoscope into a past that is once again up-to-date.

Stefan Zweig (Author), Tyler Boss (Narrator)

Audiobook

Ruthenia: The History of Ukraine and Belarus after the Dissolution of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwe

The history of Ukraine is a fascinating story of how cultures, political systems, religions, and power have met, intersected, morphed, and expanded. The region was relatively sparsely populated for much of ancient history, a wilderness of rivers, forests, and steppes, but that does not detract from the rich historical development of the region. A huge area, Ukraine is wedged between the continents of Asia and Europe, and its position as a crossroads ensured there was fierce competition for influence there. Historians have called the formation of Ukraine the “establishment of a unity among three zones…the ports of Crimea and the coast, the rich steppe heartland, and the forests,” based around the themes of “geography, ecology and culture.” Today’s Ukraine is a huge country, incorporating an area over 600,000 square kilometers and home to 42 million people. It stretches from the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea in the south to Belarus in the north, Russia to the east, and Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west. The Dnieper River is the region’s key waterway, running into the Black Sea, while the Danube Delta also forms its border with modern-day Romania to the southwest. A steppe exists in the middle of the country while the Carpathian Mountains feature in the west. This geographical formation has influenced some of the country’s key historical developments, as well as the location of its major settlements. Kiev (known today as Kyiv) is, of course, the longstanding capital of the country, located on the Dnieper River in the central northern part of modern Ukraine. Lviv is another large city, located in the northwest near the border with Poland. Odessa is a seaside city on the Black Sea in Ukraine’s southwest, while Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk are major cities in the country’s east, close to the Russian border.

Charles River Editors (Author), Colin Fluxman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Richard Sorge: The Life and Legacy of the German Journalist Who Became the Soviet Union’s Most Effec

Spies are a feature of countless works of fiction in which they often discover secrets on which the fate of nations hang in the balance. Reality is generally rather more mundane, as spies often gather low-level intelligence that only makes sense when it is examined by analysts and compared to information from other sources. Espionage provides clues to what the enemy is planning, but on its own, it rarely changes the course of a war. Moreover, real spies are generally anonymous, not the bold, swashbuckling action heroes depicted in fiction. Spies must hide in plain sight, and that is best achieved by being as innocuous as possible. However, there are exceptions. Occasionally, a spy will be so successful that they are able to place themselves in a position where they have access to information at the highest levels, secrets that really can change the course of world events. Sometimes, these spies may even be as handsome, charming, charismatic, and bold as their fictional counterparts. One such spy was a man named Richard Sorge. Experiencing the horrors of World War I at first-hand turned Sorge into an ardent communist, after which he worked as a spy for the USSR in Germany, China, and Japan before and during World War II. He obtained vital military and political secrets and maintained his cover for over nine years despite frantic searches for the spy who was leaking information to Russia. His effortless charm meant that he didn’t need to steal secrets: people told him willingly, including the many women that he seduced.

Charles River Editors (Author), Ryan Durham (Narrator)

Audiobook

March 1917: The Red Wheel: Node III, Book 1

The Red Wheel is Solzhenitsyn's magnum opus about the Russian Revolution. Solzhenitsyn tells this story in the form of a meticulously researched historical novel, supplemented by newspaper headlines of the day, fragments of street action, cinematic screenplay, and historical overview. The first two nodes-August 1914 and November 1916-focus on Russia's crises and recovery, on revolutionary terrorism and its suppression, on the missed opportunity of Pyotr Stolypin's reforms, and how the surge of patriotism in August 1914 soured as Russia bled in World War I. March 1917-the third node-tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob, but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition, horrified by the violence, scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power, while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it. In much the same way as Homer's Iliad became the representative account of the Greek world and therefore the basis for Greek civilization, these historical epics perform a parallel role for our modern world.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (Author), Daniel Henning (Narrator)

Audiobook

Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling

The Soviet Union killed over six hundred thousand whales in the twentieth century, many of them illegally and secretly. That catch helped bring many whale species to near extinction by the 1970s, and the impacts of this loss of life still ripple through today's oceans. In this new account, based on formerly secret Soviet archives and interviews with ex-whalers, environmental historian Ryan Tucker Jones offers a complete history of the role the Soviet Union played in the whales' destruction. As other countries-especially the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Norway-expanded their pursuit of whales to all corners of the globe, Stalin determined that the Soviet Union needed to join the hunt. Cold War intrigue encouraged this destruction, but, as Jones shows, there is a more complex history behind this tragic Soviet experiment. Jones compellingly describes the ultimate scientific irony: today's cetacean studies benefited from Soviet whaling, as Russian scientists on whaling vessels made key breakthroughs in understanding whale natural history and behavior. Red Leviathan reveals how the Soviet public began turning against their country's whaling industry, working in parallel with Western environmental organizations like Greenpeace to help end industrial whaling-not long before the world's whales might have disappeared altogether.

Ryan Tucker Jones (Author), Ryan Tucker Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

On Our Way Home from the Revolution: Reflections on Ukraine

In 2014 Sonya Bilocerkowycz is a tourist at a deadly revolution. At first she is enamored with the Ukrainians' idealism, which reminds her of her own patriotic family. But when the romantic revolution melts into a war with Russia, she becomes disillusioned, prompting a return home to the US and the diaspora community that raised her. As the daughter of a man who studies Ukrainian dissidents for a living, the granddaughter of war refugees, and the great-granddaughter of a gulag victim, Bilocerkowycz has inherited a legacy of political oppression. But what does it mean when she discovers a missing page from her family's survival story-one that raises questions about her own guilt? In these linked essays, Bilocerkowycz invites listeners to meet a swirling cast of post-Soviet characters, including a Russian intelligence officer who finds Osama bin Laden a few weeks after 9/11; a Ukrainian poet whose nose gets broken by Russian separatists; and a long-lost relative who drives a bus into the heart of Chernobyl. On Our Way Home from the Revolution muddles our easy distinctions between innocence and culpability, agency and fate.

Sonya Bilocerkowycz (Author), Sonya Bilocerkowycz (Narrator)

Audiobook

Zelensky: The Unlikely Ukrainian Hero Who Defied Putin and United the World

The first major profile of Ukraine’s courageous President Volodymyr Zelensky Ukraine’s most popular comedic actor was an unlikely president of his country. And now, even more improbably, Volodymyr Zelensky has become the world’s most celebrated statesman. Who is he? How did he become the international hero of our time? Zelensky: The Unlikely Ukrainian Hero Who Defied Putin and United the World is a compelling account of this fascinating, enigmatic leader. Covering Zelensky’s childhood, family history, and astonishing transformation from TV celebrity to first Jewish president of Ukraine, this audiobook tells you what you need to know about the newest star of the world stage. No one has been more surprised by Zelensky’s power to inspire and mobilize his countrymen and the world than Vladimir Putin, who expected Russia’s conquest of its beleaguered neighbor to be the work of an afternoon. Outfoxed and isolated, Putin is not the first person to have underestimated the former comedian with a spine of steel.

Andrew L. Urban, Chris Mcleod (Author), Keith Szarabajka (Narrator)

Audiobook

Killer in the Kremlin

Brought to you by Penguin. A gripping and explosive account of Vladimir Putin's tyranny, charting his rise from spy to tsar, exposing the events that led to his invasion of Ukraine and his assault on Europe. In Killer in the Kremlin, award-winning journalist John Sweeney takes readers from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine. In a disturbing exposé of Putin's sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting - from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17 - to understand the true extent of Putin's long war. Drawing on eyewitness accounts and compelling testimony from those who have suffered at Putin's hand, we see the heroism of the Russian opposition, the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance, and the brutality with which the Kremlin responds to such acts of defiance, assassinating or locking away its critics, and stopping at nothing to achieve its imperialist aims. In the midst of one of the darkest acts of aggression in modern history - Russia's invasion of Ukraine - this book shines a light on Putin's rule and poses urgent questions about how the world must respond. © John Sweeney 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

John Sweeney (Author), John Sweeney (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Shortest History of the Soviet Union

In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries came to power in the war-torn Russian Empire in a way that defied all predictions. Scarcely a lifespan later, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed as accidentally as it arose. The decades between witnessed drama on an epic scale-the chaos and hope of revolution, famines and purges, hard-won victory in history's most destructive war, and worldwide geopolitical conflict, all entwined around the dream of building a better society. This book is a lively and authoritative distillation of this complex history, told with vivid details, a grand sweep, and wry wit. Acclaimed historian Sheila Fitzpatrick chronicles the Soviet Age-its rise, reign, and unexpected fall, as well as its afterlife in today's Russia. She underscores the many ironies of the Soviet experience: An ideology that claimed to offer humanity the reins of history wrangled with contingency. An avowedly internationalist and anti-imperialist state birthed an array of nationalisms. And a vision of transcending economic and social inequality and injustice gave rise to a country that was, in its way, surprisingly normal. Moving seamlessly from Lenin to Stalin to Gorbachev to Putin, The Shortest History of the Soviet Union provides an indispensable guide to one of the twentieth century's great powers and the enduring fascination it still exerts.

Sheila Fitzpatrick (Author), Robin Siegerman (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Persian Corridor in World War II: The History of the Allies’ Most Important Supply Route

Operation Barbarossa was the most fateful decision of World War II, and when it gave the Soviets common cause with the British (and subsequently the Americans), the purpose of the Lend-Lease Act changed in nature as well. The bulk of Germany’s formidable armed forces were committed to the offensive in the east, which relieved the pressure on the British and meant that a German attack on Britain or elsewhere in Western Europe was not going to happen, so keeping the Soviets in the war became the most essential goal of the supply program. Getting supplies to the Soviets to help them resist the German armies became a strategic imperative, and Iran’s geography of bordering the Persian Gulf to the south and Soviet territory to the north brought Iran to the front and center in the strategic supply effort. The German invasion devastated much of European Russia, but also devastated Ukraine and Belarus, other member “republics” in the Soviet Union, and the portions of the Soviet Union that bordered on Iran were Armenia, Azerbaijan and east of the Caspian, Turkmenistan. The Persian Corridor involved British and Dominion forces, as well as Soviet armed forces and personnel, but the operation and management of the Persian Corridor became largely an American show. Most of the immense amount of aid sent was for transshipment across Iran to the Soviets, but it also involved supplying British and Commonwealth forces in Iran, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Some was used to feed and supply Iran’s people, and some was used to modernize and maintain Iran’s infrastructure. There was also the need to supply the American troops working in the Persian Corridor. While 80% or so of the aid came from the U.S., there was also a significant amount of aid sent from Canada, Australia, South Africa and especially India.

Charles River Editors (Author), Jim D. Johnston (Narrator)

Audiobook

Russia Audiobooks in History