Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Russia
A courageous journalist was murdered after warning us twenty years ago about the Russian method of war.
The former foreign minister of Russia provides a unique look inside his country's leadership and reflects on the prospects for democracy there.
For nearly three decades the author has warned that if we ignored Putin's ambitions he would become a global problem.
At the 2007 funeral for Read more >>
Vladimir Putin and his clique ruthlessly took over Russia’s assets and used their billions to undermine Western institutions and democracies.
Editor’s Note: Catherine Belton is a London-based correspondent for Reuters who was Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times from 2007 to 2013. Read more >>
Vladimir Putin used historical references and a claim of fighting “fascism” to justify war on Ukraine, despite his own glaring Hitlerian behavior.
Six essays in this issue provide historical context for the tragic and brutal war unfolding in Ukraine.
“We need to turn to history,” claims Vladimir Putin, “to have a better understanding of the present and look into the future.” Read more >>
For a decade, the West has sleep-walked through a new kind of warfare being waged from Moscow. It took Putin's ground war against Ukraine to wake people up.
In additio Read more >>
Much of what we know today about the leadership of the Soviet Union and the mindset of the Cold War era is due to the late son of Nikita Khrushchev.
Sergei Khrushchev, Read more >>
Twenty-two years ago, the Soviet Parliament suspended the Communist Party after the failure of a dramatic coup attempt to remove Gorbachev.
The first American to leave the Earth's atmosphere recalls the momentous flight that put us on a course for the moon.
THE SHRILL RINGING WOKE ME from deep sleep early in the morning of April 12, 1961. I was confused for a moment, but only a moment. I was in my room in the Holiday Inn at Cocoa Beach, Florida. Read more >>
The Russians claim they want to be more like us— but do they have any idea who we are?
The Russian road to democracy is not going to be easy. In the forty-five-volume edition of Vladimir Lenin’s collected works, the index shows no entry for Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams, or James Madison. Read more >>
The Cold War was an anomaly: more often than not the world’s two greatest states have lived together in uneasy amity. And what now?
Exactly two hundred years after George Washington’s inauguration as the first President of the United States and three hundred years after Peter the Great’s ascent to the Russian throne, a new chapter opened in the history of the relations of the two greatest Read more >>
Early in the century a young American accurately predicted Japan’s imperialism and China’s and Russia’s rise. Then he set out to become China’s soldier leader.
In October 1941 Clare Boothe Luce, the playwright, journalist, politician, and wife of the magazine tycoon Henry Luce, had dinner with half a dozen army officers in their quarters on top of an ancient Spanish fort beside the harbor of Manila. Read more >>
Back around the beginning of the twentieth century, when royalty was royalty and Imperial Pomp expressed the ultimate in human strutting, the czar of Russia one day held a grand review of his imperial guard and invited all and sundry to come and see. Read more >>
As Lincoln lay dying from an assassin’s bullet across the street from Ford’s Theatre through the grim night of April 14, 1865, frequent bulletins on his sinking condition clicked between the major American cities along the country’s spreading web of Morse tel Read more >>
Vodka at breakfast was only one of the minor problems when Russians entertained Americans
It was 5 P.M. on Sunday, the fourth of February, 1945. After seven months of dispatches and a month of frantic preparation by the Soviets, the Big Three conference at Yalta on the Black Sea was about to commence. Read more >>
Curiosity motivated the first American who crossed Siberia. But he also made a handsome profit.
In the summer of 1918, with Russia removed from World War I as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution, the United States sent troops into Russia at two points. It did so only after the greatest soul-searching on the part of President Wilson, who had said that “the treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations … will be the acid test of their good will …” Two factors influenced the decision. In the Far East, Japan had made a move to occupy Siberia, apparently threatening America’s “open door” policy for China. In North Russia, English and French leaders had hopes of reviving the eastern front against Germany. In addition, large stores of Allied war supplies had been left at the port of Archangel. The expedition to North Russia resulted in fierce combat between American and Soviet soldiers and throws significant light on the forty years of difficult relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that were to follow.
Read more >>