Putin says he’ll do whatever it takes in Ukraine. Biden is warning of “Armageddon.” Sixty years after the U.S.–Soviet standoff over Cuba, why is nuclear war still an ever-present worry?

Lea Ypi’s memoir recounts Albania’s troubled transition to democracy.

What the bureau’s decades-long surveillance of the international celebrity reveals about the U.S. government’s Cold War pathologies

Scholars have long relied on correspondence to peer into the minds of America’s presidents. But what if the letters were written by someone else?

Samantha Power did not set out to justify war.

The child witnesses in her new book focus on the bewildering experience of war.

The new HBO series raises the specter of an uninhabitable continent.

Why the revolutionary left has always been bad news for democracy

In their encounters with Western art, Soviet audiences found ways to reimagine themselves.

"Meeting Gorbachev" captures the promise of 1989 and mourns what came next.

“1983” imagines a terrifying alternate reality, but ignores the real dangers that Poland faces today.

Fifty years on, the Czech philosophers of the Prague Spring have much to offer the current moment.

Why Elizabeth Jennings won’t betray her ideals in the series finale.

Term limits enforced, oligarchy on the run—all thanks to a targeted, disciplined protest campaign.

Why have post-Soviet countries embraced populism and nostalgia?

Why is Armando Iannucci’s new film effectively banned in Russia?

Three recent documentaries track the ingenious ways that banned literature, films, and music circulated in the Soviet Union.

How the contest between capitalism and communism shaped world politics—and defines today’s inequalities.

Masha Gessen's new book traces the rise of repressive nationalism.

Buried beneath the Great Plains lies a decommissioned Air Force control center that was once powerful enough to lay waste to the Soviet Union.