Tennent Harrington Bagley, author and former C.I.A. officer, passed away on Feb. 20 in Brussels at the age of 88. While working for the C.I.A., Bagley assisted a Soviet spy, Yuri Nosenko, turn against Russia, only to believe this spy was a double-agent. Bagley spent many years trying to prove
Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin, written by Ben Judah, explores the life of Putin, his rise to political power, and the problems his regime is causing for Russia today. Putin brought about some positive changes for Russia including turning a bankrupt state
The names Auschwitz and Birkenau are often in the forefront of our minds when we talk about concentration and labor camps, but the Germans were not the only ones who used labor camps to round-up large sections of their population. It is estimated that, from 1930-1960, over 14 million people
No image of prerevolutionary Russian Jewish life is more iconic than the fiddler on the roof. But in the half century before 1917, Jewish musicians were actually descending from their shtetl roofs and streaming in dazzling numbers to Russia’s new classical conservatories. At a time of both rising anti-Semitism and
Andrew Nagorski, award-winning journalist and senior editor at Newsweek International, is a fan of Nina Khrushcheva’s Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics. When asked by the blog “Writers Read,” Nagorski said, “At a time when Putin’s Russia is once again claiming a special status and scorning the West and
Last Friday the Jerusalem Post published an article citing a recent statement made by chief spokesman of Russia’s Air Force, Colonel Aleksandr Drobyshevsky, who publicly acknowledged a major historical detail related to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (Six Days’ War). The detail refers to reconnaissance flights over Israel, specifically one flight
This week marked the death, at age 76, of Russia’s first freely elected leader. Presiding over both reform and decline, inspiring both hope and disappointment, Yeltsin was a controversial figure in his lifetime, and the debate over his legacy will continue long past his death. Several recent Yale University Press
On Sunday The Boston Globe ran a profile of Jonathan Brent, the associate director and editorial director of Yale University Press and the executive editor of the Annals of Communism Series. The series is a 20-book project that “provides new and vivid details from documents that have been mined by