Robert Legvold

EU   January/February 2019 Capsule Review

No Place for Russia: European Security Institutions Since 1989

Hill offers a balanced history of the sad devolution of relations between Russia and the West, from the high hopes in the years after the Cold War to today’s fractured...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Race & Ethnicity   January/February 2019 Capsule Review

A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism

Hanebrink follows the virulent and enduring myth that communism was, and remains, a Jewish plot: from its European origins in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Intelligence   January/February 2019 Capsule Review

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB officer, was recruited by the British intelligence in 1973. He provided critical information to the West, bringing down Soviet spy...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Economic Development   January/February 2019 Capsule Review

Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan

In this original contribution, Kalinovsky outlines the calculations of the national and local figures who led the effort to promote economic development in newly...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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War & Military Strategy   January/February 2019 Capsule Review

The Kremlin Letters: Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence With Churchill and Roosevelt

Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin exchanged 682 messages between Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, in June 1941, and Roosevelt’s death,...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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War & Military Strategy   January/February 2019 Capsule Review

Russian “Hybrid Warfare”: Resurgence and Politicisation

Fridman explains where the notion of hybrid war comes from, how Americans and Russians understand it differently, and, above all, why and how it has been deployed and...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Czech Republic   November/December 2018 Capsule Review

Communists and Their Victims: The Quest for Justice in the Czech Republic

After the fall of an authoritarian regime, countries often spend years trying to come to terms with the past and find justice for the victims of state oppression....

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Politics & Society   November/December 2018 Capsule Review

Tito and His Comrades

It is no small feat to capture the essence of a figure in whom courage, stalwartness, and even compassion mixed with cunning, ego, and brutality, but Pirjevec succeeds...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Business   November/December 2018 Capsule Review

Rich Russians: From Oligarchs to Bourgeoisie

The term “Russian oligarch” suggests ostentatious wealth and gangster-like behavior. But Schimpfössl argues that is an outdated image, more suited to the 1990s than...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Religion   November/December 2018 Capsule Review

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism

Smolkin describes a nuanced and variable relationship between atheism and religion in the Soviet Union.

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Vladimir Putin   November/December 2018 Capsule Review

The Code of Putinism

To understand how informal networks of interlocking govern the Russia and carry out foreign policy, one needs to know the “code” that guides them, which Taylor says...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Politics & Society   November/December 2018 Capsule Review

The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order

The future, Maçães argues in this startlingly original assessment, will be dominated by an emerging Eurasian “supercontinent,” shaped by China’s, Russia’s, and the EU...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Arms Control & Disarmament   September/October 2018 Capsule Review

The Kremlinologist: Llewellyn E. Thompson, America’s Man in Cold War Moscow; From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia

Llewellyn Thompson served eight U.S. presidents as a diplomat, including two stints as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. This rigorously documented book by his two...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Russia & FSU   September/October 2018 Capsule Review

The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia

Gangsters turn up in every society, but the shape they take and the ways in which they operate depend to a great extent on the culture and politics of their countries...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Russia & FSU   September/October 2018 Capsule Review

A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada

In 1852, the Russian frigate Pallada set sail from a naval base near St. Petersburg on a voyage that would round the Cape of Good Hope, cross the Indian Ocean to...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Russia & FSU   September/October 2018 Capsule Review

The Treacherous Path: An Insider’s Account of Modern Russia

Yakunin is one of Russia’s wealthiest people. A former KGB officer, entrepreneur, government official, head of Russian Railways, and, at times, member of President...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Politics & Society   September/October 2018 Capsule Review

Orbán: Hungary’s Strongman

Lendvai’s tautly argued, baleful account of the career of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will correct anyone who once harbored the illusion that eastern...

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Russia & FSU   May/June 2018 Capsule Review

Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe

Bechev introduces a sophisticated and cool-headed corrective to the crude image of Russian foreign policy favored by much of the Western press.

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Ukraine   May/June 2018 Capsule Review

Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes From the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine

The story of Stalin’s terror is well known, except for one dimension: the fate of those among the tormentors who were themselves swept into the meat grinder.

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

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Romania   May/June 2018 Capsule Review

My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File

From 1973 to 1988, Verdery, an anthropologist, spent a total of nearly four years conducting field research in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania.

Reviewed by Robert Legvold

This article is paywall-free.