This volume (Book 2) of Russian Through Propaganda is the continuation of Book 1, offering a second semester's worth of intensive Russian language learning. It presents all plural forms of noun and adjective case endings, introduces basic verbs of conveyance and basic prefixed forms, deals extensively with numbers and time expressions, and introduces comparative forms. It concludes with two special chapters dedicated to practical everyday conversation (for those heading to Russia), and an introduction to unadapted Soviet-era poetry and prose. Like Book 1, it is richly illustrated with Soviet propaganda posters whose slogans highlight each lesson's grammar. It is supplemented with a learner's Russian-English dictionary, an answer key, and useful grammar tables for reference. This new series of Russian language textbooks will continue with Books 3 and 4, entitled "Russian Through Poems and Paintings."

Russian, Book 1: Russian Through Propaganda is the first volume in a new series of Russian textbooks with a rigorous but rewarding approach to the language. It assumes no prior knowledge of Russian, and is intended for ambitious beginners, or more advanced students seeking a highly structured review of the language. It assumes that its readers are interested in long-term mastery of the language, within the rich historical, cultural, and literary contexts that often draw students to Russian in the first place. It therefore takes the time to explain challenging grammar topics in depth, striving to provide the full picture as clearly as possible. It is richly illustrated with Soviet-era propaganda posters, whose slogans serve as examples of each lesson's grammar. It is structured as a series of 50 daily lessons, which build upon one another and give a clear sense of progress. It is the equivalent of a semester of intensive college-level study of Russian. Free video lessons and a number of Russian-culture resources are available online at www.russianthroughpropaganda.com.

Main description: Much of the story about the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany has yet to be told. In Motherland in Danger, Karel Berkhoff addresses one of the most neglected questions facing historians of the Second World War: how did the Soviet leadership sell the campaign against the Germans to the people on the home front? For Stalin, the obstacles were manifold. Repelling the German invasion would require a mobilization so large that it would test the limits of the Soviet state. Could the USSR marshal the manpower necessary to face the threat? How could the authorities overcome inadequate infrastructure and supplies? Might Stalin's regime fail to survive a sustained conflict with the Germans? Motherland in Danger takes us inside the Stalinist state to witness, from up close, its propaganda machine. Using sources in many languages, including memoirs and documents of the Soviet censor, Berkhoff explores how the Soviet media reflected-and distorted-every aspect of the war, from the successes and blunders on the front lines to the institution of forced labor on farm fields and factory floors. He also details the media's handling of Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust, as well as its stinting treatment of the Allies, particularly the United States, the UK, and Poland. Berkhoff demonstrates not only that propaganda was critical to the Soviet war effort but also that it has colored perceptions of the war to the present day, both inside and outside of Russia.

Learn how the perception of truth has been weaponized in modern politics with this "insightful" account of propaganda in Russia and beyond during the age of disinformation (New York Times). When information is a weapon, every opinion is an act of war. We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, and Trump seek to shape our very reality. In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we've lost not only our grip on peace and democracy -- but our very notion of what those words even mean. Peter Pomerantsev takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, "behavioral change" salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia -- but the answers he finds there are not what he expected. Blending reportage, family history, and intellectual adventure, This Is Not Propaganda explores how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves when reality seems to be coming apart.

Russia employs a sophisticated social media campaign against former Soviet states that includes news tweets, nonattributed comments on web pages, troll and bot social media accounts, and fake hashtag and Twitter campaigns. Nowhere is this threat more tangible than in Ukraine. Researchers analyzed social media data and conducted interviews with regional and security experts to understand the critical ingredients to countering this campaign.

This is Book 3 in a series of Russian language textbooks that began with Russian Through Propaganda (Books 1 and 2). This volume shifts its attention from the Soviet era to the Imperial era, illustrating its discussions of intermediate grammar with paintings depicting Russian history and culture. Classical poems by the likes of Pushkin and Lermontov provide examples of the grammar, which includes such topics as advanced aspect, prefixed verbs of motion, and deverbal forms - all of which are essential for reading real Russian literature. The book culminates with a reading selection that includes Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman," two short stories by Chekhov ("Death of a Clerk" and "A Little Joke"), and one by Tolstoy ("Alyosha the Pot") - all of them extensively glossed. This series, which is geared toward ambitious students who wish to learn Russian culture along with the language, will continue with Book 4.

A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia, where even dictatorship is a reality show Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell's Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the wild and bizarre heart of twenty-first-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship-far subtler than twentieth-century strains-that is rapidly rising to challenge the West. When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system. Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.

Putin's Propaganda Machine examines Russia’s “information war,” one of the most striking features of its intervention in Ukraine. Marcel H. Van Herpen argues that the Kremlin’s propaganda offensive is a carefully prepared strategy, implemented and tested over the last decade. Initially intended as a tool to enhance Russia’s soft power, it quickly developed into one of the main instruments of Russia’s new imperialism, reminiscent of the height of the Cold War. The author describes a multifaceted strategy that makes use of diverse instruments, including mimicking Western public diplomacy initiatives, hiring Western public-relations firms, setting up front organizations, buying Western media outlets, financing political parties, organizing a worldwide propaganda offensive through the Kremlin’s cable network RT, and publishing paid supplements in leading Western newspapers. In this information war, key roles are assigned to the Russian diaspora and the Russian Orthodox Church, the latter focused on spreading so-called traditional values and attacking universal human rights and Western democracy in international fora. Van Herpen demonstrates that the Kremlin’s propaganda machine not only plays a central role in its “hybrid war” in Ukraine, but also has broader international objectives, targeting in particular Europe’s two leading countries—France and Germany—with the goal of forming a geopolitical triangle, consisting of a Moscow-Berlin-Paris axis, intended to roll back the influence of NATO and the United States in Europe. Drawing on years of research, Van Herpen shows how the Kremlin has built an array of soft power instruments and transformed them into effective weapons in a new information war with the West.

Peter Kenez's comprehensive study of the Soviet propaganda system, describes how the Bolshevik Party went about reaching the Russian people. Kenez focuses on the experiences of the Russian people. The book is both a major contribution to our understanding of the genius of the Soviet state, and of the nature of propaganda in the twentieth-century.

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is one of the most gripping novels in the Russian canon. Often described as a murder mystery in search of a motive, it follows a former student in St. Petersburg, Rodion Raskolnikov, as he commits a grisly murder - a murder he justifies by both a peculiar sort of "arithmetic" and by a theory about the right of "extraordinary" people to wade through blood on their path to power. Yet his crime itself suggests that he is far from extraordinary - at least, not in the sense he had hoped. As he seeks out the real motivation behind his crime, he is confronted with life's deepest questions: what it means to have a self that one cannot be rid of, and to have an existence one did not ask for and cannot rationally understand. Is life an unfathomable gift, to be affirmed in defiance of any objective measure? Or is it an empty, meaningless joke? And, perhaps most importantly: when life seems over, can we dare to believe that a new life is possible? While locked in psychological warfare with the lead investigator, Porfiry Petrovich, and tempted by the depraved Svidrigailov to embrace his darkest inclinations, Raskolnikov must choose whether to end his life, or to confess, and try to begin again. Along the way, he strikes up an unlikely acquaintance with Sonya, a prostitute, who reveals a kind of existence previously unknown to him. This volume contains a condensed but otherwise unedited and unsimplified version of the novel that follows the novel's main plotline - from the opening lines to the epilogue - allowing students of Russian to delve into Dostoevsky's text in considerable depth. Facing the original Russian text is a new English translation, made specifically for this purpose. Also included are original photographs of many of the locations in the novel, allowing you to follow Raskolnikov's footsteps through St. Petersburg. Designed to help students of Russian begin to enjoy real Russian literature in the original without constantly reaching for a dictionary, this parallel-text edition features detailed Russian vocabulary notes, including all the important forms you need (especially aspectual pairs and conjugation types for all verbs); the text and notes are also marked for stress. The book also features comprehensive grammar tables for reference, with everything from conjugation patterns, to case endings, to verbs of motion and participles.About the Author... Mark Pettus holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Princeton University. Altogether, he's spent around six years living, studying, and working in Russia. Today he is a lecturer in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton. Mark is the author of the Russian Through Propaganda textbook series (Books 1 and 2), and its continuation, Russian Through Poems and Paintings (Books 3 and 4). He is now working on additional books for students of Russian, including the Reading Russian series of which the present volume is a part. Check out www.russianthroughpropaganda.com for a variety of resources for students of Russian language, literature, and culture.