A provocative analysis of the relationship between Russia and the West, and a prophecy of its ultimate outcome"Europe never had, nor did she ever claim to have, a mission to fulfill towards Russia. At the most, she desired concessions or economic booty. But for almost a century, Russia had been conscious of a mission towards Europe; this feeling finally crystallized into a Russian national consciousness. Russia did not crave to enrich herself by conquest--she only desired to redeem the Western world. The Russian soul finds its greatest happiness in sacrifice and is perpetually striving towards an all-embracing unity. It desires to embody in flesh and blood the concept of universal humanity. The Russian soul overflowed into the Western world which, in its desire for the whole, it sought to capture. It seeks, not to complete itself, but to offer lavishly; it seeks not to take but to give. The Russian soul is a messianic soul, whose ultimate aim and ultimate bliss are the exuberance and abandonment with which it desires to become immersed in the All." (p. 26)"What I am now about to say may appear bold, but it must nevertheless be said. Russia is the only country which can and will redeem Europe--for the simple reason that toward all vital problems she assumes an attitude which is diametrically opposed to that of all European nations. Out of the depths of her unique suffering, and because of it, Russia is able to bring a deeper knowledge of mankind and of the meaning of human life to the other nations. The Russians possess the spiritual qualities required for this task, qualities that are lacking in every Western nation."In its present form, the problem of East and West represents, at one and the same time, the great problem of the rebirth of humanity, the possibility of regenerating the West, a reminder of the necessity of reuniting a divided mankind and the task of creating the perfect type of human being." (p. 31)

Russia is dying from within. Oligarchs and oil barons may still dominate international news coverage, but their prosperity masks a deep-rooted demographic tragedy. Faced with staggering population decline—and near-certain economic collapse—driven by toxic levels of alcohol abuse, Russia is also battling a deeper sickness: a spiritual one, born out of the country’s long totalitarian experiment. In The Last Man in Russia, award-winning journalist Oliver Bullough uses the tale of a lone priest to give life to this national crisis. Father Dmitry Dudko, a dissident Orthodox Christian, was thrown into a Stalinist labor camp for writing poetry. Undaunted, on his release in the mid-1950s he began to preach to congregations across Russia with little concern for his own safety. At a time when the Soviet government denied its subjects the prospect of advancement, and turned friend against friend and brother against brother, Dudko urged his followers to cling to hope. He maintained a circle of sacred trust at the heart of one of history’s most deceitful systems. But as Bullough reveals, this courageous group of believers was eventually shattered by a terrible act of betrayal—one that exposes the full extent of the Communist tragedy. Still, Dudko’s dream endures. Although most Russians have forgotten the man himself, the embers of hope that survived the darkness are once more beginning to burn. Leading readers from a churchyard in Moscow to the snow-blanketed ghost towns of rural Russia, and from the forgotten graves of Stalin’s victims to a rock festival in an old gulag camp, The Last Man in Russia is at once a travelogue, a sociological study, a biography, and a cri de coeur for a dying nation—one that, Bullough shows, might yet be saved.

A Brown Man in Russia describes the fantastical travels of a young, colored American traveler as he backpacks across Russia in the middle of winter via the Trans-Siberian. The book is a hybrid between the curmudgeonly travelogues of Paul Theroux and the philosophical works of Robert Pirsig. Styled in the vein of Hofstadter, the author lays out a series of absurd, but true stories followed by a deeper rumination on what they mean and why they matter. Each chapter presents a vivid anecdote from the perspective of the fumbling traveler and concludes with a deeper lesson to be gleaned. For those who recognize the discordant nature of our world in a time ripe for demagoguery and for those who want to make it better, the book is an all too welcome antidote. It explores the current global climate of despair over differences and outputs a very different message – one of hope and shared understanding. At times surreal, at times inappropriate, at times hilarious, and at times deeply human, A Brown Man in Russia is a reminder to those who feel marginalized, hopeless, or endlessly divided that harmony is achievable even in the most unlikely of places.

In most analyses of the Cold War's end the ideological aspects of Gorbachev's "new thinking" are treated largely as incidental to the broader considerations of power. English demonstrates that Gorbachev's foreign policy was the result of an intellectual revolution. He analyzes the rise of a liberal policy-academic elite and its impact on the Cold War's end.

A dazzling work of intellectual history by a world-renowned scholar, spanning the years from Peter the Great to the fall of the Soviet Union, this book gives us a clear and sweeping view of Russia not as an eternal barbarian menace but as an outermost, if laggard, member in the continuum of European nations.

My corpse managed to keep talking for twenty years. That's the time it took between the Soviet KGB dosing my champagne with a near-fatal volume of a drug called SP-117, in order to get the truth out of me; and a Russian oligarch sending two gunmen to fire their pistols into me, to stop the truth getting out.With hindsight, those who weren't watching when Vladimir Putin was small insist he was bigger than he was, but good at keeping secrets. Big or small physically or politically, they have still been unable to fathom Putin's character, or explain why, after so many years in power, Putin remains as characterless as when he started. I was watching from the beginning; the KGB elixir allowed me to see through the secrets to the truth of the matter.This was that Putin has remained the nondescript I had first met, but that the potency attributed to him now was picked up from a group of men on whom he depended for his rise, and on whom he still depends for his power. These were, these are the Russian oligarchs whose stories I have been investigating and reporting every day. By penetrating their secrets, I measure how Putin rules Russia; better to say, how Russia is ruled, and with what effect.