Newtonville: ORP, 2026/, pp. 280, ill., hc. 2nd edition greatly expanded. Memoir of a Cold War foot soldier; Early education, Toronto & Cambridge University; travels in Iran + comments on the 1980 hostage crisis; intelligence work at NATO-Brussels and how the West thwarted Soviet ambitions; Research Fellow at Harvard under the director Adam Ulam; dealings with East German spy Rainer Rupp; perestroika observations; business dealings and the CIA; Soviet/Russian book world in transition; etc. NOTE: [2nd ed. to be published in 2026 when Ukrainian war is concluded.].

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Bibliographic Details

Title: Soviet Observer: My very Small Part in the Collapse of the Soviet Union. 2nd ed.
Publisher: Oriental Research Partners
Publication Date: 2012
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0892502428
ISBN 13: 9780892502424
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: New
Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

This book is Philip Clendenning's personal journey leading to the exciting Cold War world of economic espionage and reportage. He describes the Toronto of his boyhood; high school and university, and then to Reza Shah's Iran; to Cambridge University and after to NATO's secret Economic Directorate; finally to Harvard's Russian Research Center to monitor the crumbling Soviet Union. The reader will meet a variety of individuals such as Adam Ulam, the astute Harvard political scientist cooling analyzing Bolshevik leaders; Murray Feshbach, the West's leading demographer and health expert; the dissident writer Konstantin Kuzminsky, and Rainer Rupp, East Germany's most trusted spy within the heart of NATO. Clendenning's story is not a simple academic tale of explaining the dry outlay of historical events. Rather it is a story of his development of a Cold War foot soldier. He uses humor, wry observations, and insightfulness to tell a story of how a country began its journey into West European history, rose briefly, wasted its power, finally collapsing with no one to mourn its passing.

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Store Description

ORP is a publishing company established in 1971 designed to fill the needs of individuals and libraries seeking non-fiction scholarly books. Our specialties include art, linguistics and most Slavic topics, especially Russian history. ORP also has over 110 original publications. ORP also acts as a library wholesaler and sells new Slavic books to university libraries world-wide including Harvard, Toronto, Milan, Oxford, Hokkaido, Yale, UCLA, Canberra, Princeton, Heidelberg, etc.

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Oriental Research Partners
MA, U.S.A.

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