From Red Terror to Terrorist State
$59.99
Russia’s Secret Services and Their Fight for World Domination 1917-2036
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Description
Paperback edition of the acclaimed history of the Russian intelligence services and how they strove to seize power from 1917 and succeeded in 1999, turning Russia into the terrorist state it is today.
The history of Russia since 1917 has always been told as the story of the Communist Party, with the secret police as its instrument – the sword and shield of the Party. This groundbreaking book revolutionises that account. It argues that the Cheka and its successors were never ancillary but the Party’s equal, locked in a century-long contest for control of the state, starting with its founder Felix Dzerzhinsky – a ruthless killer – and succeeding with Vladimir Putin in 1999. It created a unique state, a country that is run entirely by its intelligence apparatus from the smallest detail to the main policies.
Reviews
'Well-written and -documented and recommended for those researching or teaching courses on the Soviet and Russian security services.' East Asia Studies (formerly Soviet Studies)
'Reframing Russia's modern history in terms of the evolution of its intelligence services.' Survival
'facts worthy of John le Carre.' Telegraph
'Many insights into both the Soviet and the more recent neo-Soviet political systems in Russia.' East West Review: The Journal of the Great-Britain Russia Society
'Shines a light on the rationale for Putin's dictatorship... for all those wishing to understand the enigma that is Russia, Professor Colin Shindler, Jewish Chronicle
'Very interesting in its long lines to the world's present predicament.' Paolo Valentino, Corriere della Sera
'One of the most illuminating books on the history of contemporary Russia. A must read.' La Revista
'Unputdownable.' Martin Dewhirst, Honorary Fellow Glasgow University
'A stunning book.' Silicon Curtain
'A scholarly and scrupulous analysis as well as a dark crime story which describes a bloodthirsty monster so slippery that it has so far defied description.' Viktor Suvorov, ex-GRU colonel and historian
'[L]eading experts on Russian assassinations.' Bill Browder
'[A] detailed, compelling history of the deep-seated thirst for carnage endemic in Russia's intelligence services. A magisterial work by two of its foremost experts.' Oleg Kalugin, ex-KGB major-general
'Destined to become the standard work.' Yuri Shvets, ex-KGB resident in Washington DC and former Putin classmate
'Truly interesting.' Victor Sebestyen
'Meticulous and timely... many new facts.' Former ambassador Eugene Berg, La Revue Defense Nationale
'A powerful dissection of a secret and sprawling institution whose members - if they do not succumb to novichok, indigestion, or the law of gravity first - know that they can never retire. Bruno Deniel-Laurent, Revue des Deux Mondes
'We come across a thousand spies and double agents and as many secretive and camouflaged assassinations as "accidents"... How the Cheka, the political police created by the Bolsheviks and Lenin in the aftermath of the October Revolution, quickly became autonomous from political power and from all - powerful Communist Party to defend its own political line as well as its members, with one objective: one day to upset our world order.' Romain Gubert, Le Point
