Nikolai Bondarenko

On the 29th of August 1949, the USSR set off their first atomic bomb, just four years after the Americans. The speed with which they achieved this surprised the world. What nobody knew was that it was the result of espionage. At the centre of the operation was a very unusual female spy, Elizabeth Zaroubin, in a story worthy of the best spy novels ever written.

The Bronze Night riots began on April 26, 2007, with the removal of a statue in central Tallinn. Estonians considered the so-called Bronze Soldier in the city center a symbol of Communist repression, while for many in the Russian-speaking community, the statue— originally named "Monument to the Liberators of Tallinn“— symbolized the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.