Books about Post soviet from Amazon.com

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Price: $8.92 [Notify me when price goes down.]

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence, becoming the seventh state to emerge from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia A tiny country of just two million people, 90% of whom are ethnic Albanians, Kosovo is central-geographically, historically, and politically-to the future of the Western Balkans and, in turn, its potential future within the European Union. But the fate of both Kosovo, condemned by Serbian leaders as a "fake state" and the region as a whole, remains uncertain.
In Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know, Tim Judah provides a straight-forward guide to the complicated place that is Kosovo. Judah, who has spent years covering the region, offers succinct, penetrating answers to a wide range of questions: Why is Kosovo important? Who are the Albanians? Who are the Serbs? Why is Kosovo so important to Serbs? What role does Kosovo play in the region and in the world? Judah reveals how things stand now and presents the history and geopolitical dynamics that have led to it. The most important of these is the question of the right to self-determination, invoked by the Kosovo Albanians, as opposed to right of territorial integrity invoked by the Serbs. For many Serbs, Kosovo's declaration of independence and subsequent recognition has been traumatic, a savage blow to national pride. Albanians, on the other hand, believe their independence rights an historical wrong: the Serbian conquest (Serbs say "liberation") of Kosovo in 1912.
For anyone wishing to understand both the history and possible future of Kosovo at this pivotal moment in its history, this book offers a wealth of insight and information in a uniquely accessible format..
Price: $9.31 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Pulitzer Prize-winning look at the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe.
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Hailed as "the most dramatic and comprehensive account" of the early years of Russian capitalism (New York Times Book Review)

David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs Focusing on six of these cunning and ruthless men--Alexander Smolensky, Yuri Luzhkov, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky, and Vladimir Gusinsky--Hoffman reveals how a few players rose to the pinnacle of Russia's new capitalism.

The oligarchs started small. Before perestroika, they lived the lives of Soviet citizens, stuck in a dead-end system, cramped apartments, and long bread lines. But as Communism loosened, they found gaps in the economy and reaped their first fortunes by getting their hands on fast money. As the government weakened and their businesses flourished, they grew greedier. The state auctioned off its own assets, and they grabbed the biggest oil companies, mines, and factories. They went on wild borrowing sprees, taking billions of dollars from gullible western lenders. When the ruble collapsed, the tycoons saved themselves by hiding their assets and running for cover. This is a saga of brilliant triumphs and magnificent failures, the untold story of how a rapacious, unruly capitalism was born out of the ashes of Soviet communism..
Price: $12.40 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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"Stalking the Red Bear", for the first time ever, describes the action principally from the perspective of a commanding officer of a nuclear submarine during the Cold War - the one man aboard a sub who makes the critical decisions - taking readers closer to the Soviet target than any work on submarine espionage has ever done before. This is the untold story of a covert submarine espionage operation against the Soviet Union during the Cold War as experienced by the Commanding Officer of an active submarine. Few individuals outside the intelligence and submarine communities knew anything about these top-secret missions. Cloaking itself in virtual invisibility to avoid detection, the USS Blackfin went sub vs. sub deep within Soviet-controlled waters north of the Arctic Circle, where the risks were extraordinarily high and anything could happen..
Price: $17.13 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Soviet T-80 Standard Tank was the last tank fielded before the Soviet collapse, and the most controversial Like the US M1 Abrams tank, the T-80 used a turbine power plant rather than a conventional diesel. Although the design was blessed with some of the most sophisticated armament, fire controls, and multi-layer armor ever fielded on a Soviet tank, its power plant remained a source of considerable trouble through its career. It saw very little service in the Chechen War, though T-80 tanks were used in some of the regional conflicts in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Although the collapse of the Soviet Union might seem the end of the story, the T-80 lived on in Ukraine where one of its tank plants was based. A diesel powered version of the T-80 was developed, the T-84, which was successfully exported, including a major sale to Pakistan to counterbalance the Indian Army's Russian T-90 tanks. Steven J Zaloga charts the little-known history of the T-80, covering the initial construction, through the development to the subsequent variants, the T-84 and Russia's enigmatic "Black Eagle Tank." Accompanying detailed cut-away artwork illustrates the unusual design features that made the T-80 so controversial..
Price: $12.21 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Eleanor Lerman, whose last collection, The Mystery of Meteors (2001), was named by Library Journal as "Best of Poetry, 2001," returns with a dazzling, funny, and seriously mature new book.

In Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds, Lerman boldly wrests contemporary mysticism from a hard-knock New York Jewish consciousness. She's a solid witness to the 1960s, Cold War, Vietnam, sexual revolution, and drugs. However, in her favor, she's traveled through baby boomer irony, bought the T-shirt, and found her way back.

Eleanor Lerman has been nominated for a National Book Award, received the inaugural Juniper Prize, and was the recipient of a fiction grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a lifelong New Yorker.

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Price: $8.30 [Notify me when price goes down.]

At a year-end publishers’ party at the zenith of the roaring 1990s, the editor of a "laddie" men’s magazine asked his newest staff writer to pitch him the wildest, most over-the-top idea for an adventure travel piece that he could think of. "You name it, we’ll do it!," the editor promised. Remembering his childhood fascination with the Kazakh S.S.R. and its description in National Geographic as "the most remote place on earth," Ted Rall proposed a reckless headlong plunge into the belly of post-Soviet Central Asia. "I’ll drive the Silk Road from Beijing to Istanbul," Rall said, "via Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey. I won’t do research. I’ll just show up and see what happens."

Five years after having been cut loose by the imploding Soviet Union the Central Asian republics—colloquially known as the Stans—were reeling from an identity crisis precipitated by economic collapse. Citizens of a great superpower woke up to find themselves in Third World anarchy. Closed societies were opening up for the first time. Guards at the Chinese-Kazakh border detained Rall for hours at one checkpoint after another; they still faxed Moscow for advice on how to handle him. They had never seen an American passport.

What began as a lark yielded a stunning series of revelations. Elderly people were starving to death in nations sitting atop the world’s largest untapped reserves of oil and natural gas. Looters were cavalierly ambling around in flatbed trucks loaded with disinterred nuclear missiles. Statues of and slogans by crazy dictators were springing up as quickly as their corrupt military policemen could rob a passing motorist. And on the main drag in the capital city of each of these profoundly dysfunctional societies, a gleaming American embassy whose staff was quietly calling the shots in a new campaign to de-Russify access to those staggering energy resources.

CIA agents, oilmen and prostitutes mixed uneasily and awkwardly in ad hoc British-style pubs where beers cost a dollar—a day’s pay and more than enough to keep out the locals. In an extreme case of the "oil curse," wealth was being pillaged by U.S.-backed autocrats while their subjects plunged into poverty. Meanwhile Taliban-trained Islamic radicals were waiting to fill the vacuum.

It was a volatile mix. But did anybody care?

Rall’s magazine account of his 1997 misadventures through Central Asia, "Silk Road to Ruin," was soon followed by a feature he launched on his Los Angeles radio talk show. "Stan Watch: Breaking News from Central Asia," was intended as a send-up of Americans’ disinterest in foreign affairs. Again, the joke turned serious. "Stan Watch"’s obscure news stories about the world’s most remote countries, which many Americans couldn’t even pronounce, became wildly popular. NPR and the BBC simulcast it. A 1999 assassination attempt on Uzbek president Islam Karimov became a subject of intense speculation. Americans, it turned out, were interested in the outside world. They just couldn’t read about it in their local newspaper.

Soon, no one knew more about Central Asia than Rall.

Transformed by what he saw being done in America's name and eager to sound the alarm, he became an expert. He returned to visit the region's most rural mountain villages. He brought two dozen ordinary Americans on the bus tour from hell. He went as a rogue independent and as a guest of the State Department. He returned to cover the American invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, then went back again. Capitals moved, street names changed and the economic fortunes of entire nations turned on a dime from year to the next, but those changes merely reinforced Rall’s firm belief that Central Asia is the new Middle East: thrilling, terrifying, simultaneously hopeful and bleak, a battleground for proxy war and endless chaos. It is the ultimate tectonic, cultural and political collision zone. Far away from television cameras and Western reporters, Central Asia is poised to spawn some of the new century’s worst nightmares..
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