Books for Winter Reading
End of the Cold War and More
The following are a handful of books that have recently come to our attention. Most have been recently published or updated and provide a wide range of interesting material.
Back to Books for Summer Reading
Culture
Cars of the Soviet Union
This extraordinarily detailed study charts the history of Soviet cars from the birth of the Soviet Union in 1917 until its demise in 1991, with a conclusion about the post-Soviet era. It is the story of an insular, state-run car industry in which the carefully thought-out ideas of ministerial planners, rather than fickle customers in a free market, determined what cars were made in a country where the open road was often a 300-mile track across a windswept steppe.
The Little Golden Calf
The Little Golden Calf is a gem of Russian literature. So many quotations from The Little Golden Calf have entered everyday Russian speech that it stands alongside the works of Griboyedov, Pushkin, and Gogol for its profound effect on Russian language and culture.
The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature
Russian literature arrived late on the European scene. Within several generations, its great novelists had shocked - and then conquered - the world. In this introduction to the rich and vibrant Russian tradition, Caryl Emerson weaves a narrative of recurring themes and fascinations across several centuries. Beginning with traditional Russian narratives (saints' lives, folk tales, epic and rogue narratives), the book moves through literary history chronologically and thematically, juxtaposing literary texts from each major period.
Politics and Ideology
Towers of Stone: The Battle of Wills in Chechnya
Towers of Stone revolves around two Chechnyan leaders: Shamil Basayev, a hero to some, a dangerous warlord to others; and Aslan Maskhadov, a calculating and sober politician who is viewed as a providential savior by some of his compatriots and a cowardly opportunist by the rest. Viewing the two men's personal story as a microcosm of the conflict threatening to devour a land and its peoples, Jagielski tells the bitter history of the region with forceful clarity.
The Social Construction of Russia's Resurgence
Once again, it appears that Russia is marching to the forefront of the international stage. Anne L. Clunan's analysis of Russia's resurgence convincingly argues that traditional security concerns, historical aspirations, and human agency are coalescing around a new national identity and reconfigured national interests in the post-Soviet nation. Her work moves beyond balance-of-power and realist politics to posit a new, interdisciplinary theory: aspirational constructivism.
Russian Feminism: Twenty Years Forward
This 35-minute DVD portrays how Russians and Americans collaborated in reviving women's activism in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia and in creating Russian women's studies on both sides of the ocean. The film is based on interviews with 18 experts who were engaged in this project, including activists and scholars. Participants assess the project's successes and failures since the days of glasnost and discuss the stiff challenges that Russian feminists face in the Putin-Medvedev era. An accompanying booklet with a short summary of Russian women's history contextualizes the film.
The Cold War and Its End
Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts
As World War II ended, few Americans in government or universities knew much about the Soviet Union. As David Engerman shows in this book, a network of scholars, soldiers, spies, and philanthropists created an enterprise known as Soviet Studies to fill in this dangerous gap in American knowledge. And this broad network, Engerman argues, forever changed the relationship between the government and academe, connecting the Pentagon with the ivory tower in ways that still matter today.
1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe
Based on documents, interviews, and television broadcasts from many different locations, including Moscow, Berlin, Bonn, Paris, London, and Washington, 1989 describes how Germany unified, NATO expansion began, and Russia got left on the periphery of the new Europe. 
1989 The Berlin Wall: My Part in Its Downfall
Capturing the zeitgeist of the Soviet era, journalist Peter Millar recounts his experiences reporting on the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Having lived in East Berlin and even Moscow, Millar took a wild journey into the heart of cold war Europe and chronicled the fall not only of the Soviet Union but of Communism as well.
Human Rights, Perestroika, and the End of the Cold War
A diplomatic memoir unlike any other, this volume takes the reader behind the scenes on both sides of the Cold War as two men form an unlikely partnership to help transform Soviet-American relations. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Schifter and Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Adamishin together helped free political prisoners, spur Jewish emigration, support perestroika against its domestic enemies, and contribute to the mutual trust that allowed the Cold War to end swiftly and peacefully. Each chapter consists of two parts, one by each author, that offer complementary perspectives on the same events.
Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment
In this lively and fast-paced study, two distinguished Princeton historians, Stephen Kotkin and Jan Gross, analyze the 1989 revolution in Eastern Europe as a product of the political bankruptcy of 'uncivil society,' meaning the communist elite. Using the case studies of Poland, Romania, and the German Democratic Republic, the authors combine deep historical analysis of the development and failures of East European communism with brilliant insights into the events of 1989 themselves.
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