the Soviet Union
Dull, duller and Dulles – was Churchill’s jibe about America’s Cold War icon unfair?
John Foster Dulles was forever going on about ‘boldness’ and dynamic change, but his limitations of perspective and philosophy become glaringly obvious in this latest biography
Who started the Cold War?
It was America, with its decision to build a global liberal order – not the Soviet Union, with plans to spread communism in Europe, argues Vladislav Zubok
Heights of absurdity
The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has rendered what might otherwise have seemed a fairly niche study of a…
Gorbachev’s failed experiment
Thirty years ago the Soviet Union was guttering to its close. Those of us who were there remember the exhilarating…
No regrets
Kim Philby once remarked to the journalist Murray Sayle that ‘to betray, you must first belong. I never belonged’. Kim,…
The internet was never intended to spy on us
There is a trend in non-fiction — in fact my editor has been on to me about this lately —…
1983: the year the world nearly ended
In 1983, Soviet spies skulked in our midnight streets to check the lights were out. The Kremlin, convinced the West…
Trahison des clercs — a phrase that dates back all the way to 1927
I had long associated the phrase trahison des clercs with the writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft, though I can’t put my finger…
Heroines of the Soviet Union
Klara Goncharova, a Soviet anti-aircraft gunner, wondered at the end of the second world war how anyone could stand to…
The four men who averted the Apocalypse
Robert Service’s account of the greatest turning point in modern history is unlikely to be bettered, says Sherard Cowper-Coles
Dick at his trickiest
In the more than 40 years since Richard Nixon resigned as president — disgraced as much by his inveterate lying…
Broken dreams
As Masha Gessen herself admits — and as friends and journalist colleagues repeatedly told her — it was a strange…
There’s no substitute for human intelligence
Spying may be one of the two oldest professions, but unlike the other one it has changed quite a lot…
Micro-managing the terror
‘Lately, the paradoxical turns of recent Russian history… have given my research more than scholarly relevance,’ remarks Oleg Khlevniuk in…
Deep in the heart of darkness
For decades, all the outside world knew was that Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader, had been done away with.…
