Soviet Revolution

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union traces the dramatic journey of one of history’s most powerful and enigmatic states—from the revolutionary upheavals of 1917 to the collapse of the USSR in 1991, and the emergence of post-Soviet Russia under Vladimir Putin. This comprehensive history explores the rise of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Stalin’s brutal consolidation of power, the transformative impact of industrialization and collectivization, and the global tensions of the Cold War. It examines the policies, struggles, and reforms that shaped Soviet society, the eventual unraveling of ...

For more than 40 years, communism held eight European nations in its iron fist. Yet by the end of 1989, all of these nations had thrown off communism, declared independence, and embarked on the road to democracy.

It is June 1936. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) has finally been granted a visa for asylum in Norway, having been banned first from living in Paris, and then the whole of France. With him comes the draft of The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, which is completed...

The Russian Revolution: The Fall of the Romanovs and the Rise of Soviet Power A History for Curious Minds How did one of the largest empires on earth collapse in a matter of months? And how did that collapse give rise to one of the most powerful ideological states of the twentieth century? The Russian Revolution: The Fall of the Romanovs and the Rise of Soviet Power offers a clear and structured guide to one of history’s most consequential turning points. Rather than overwhelming you with dates or assuming prior expertise, this book helps you see the forces that drove events—how ...

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most cataclysmic events in world history, profoundly shaping politics, international relations, social patterns, economics and science in the century that followed. It created long-lasting aftershocks which travelled far beyond its geographical...

Born in Ukraine in 1879, Lev Davidovich Bronstein (known as Leon Trotsky) became one of the most significant figures in the crowded history of the twentieth century. Simon Webb’s biography, written after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, places particular emphasis on Trotsky as a Ukrainian, and sets his life against the background of Ukrainian, Russian and British history and culture, and the story of Russian colonialism.

The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution, and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history. In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions?

The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schlögel, one of the world's leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization. A museum of—and travel guide to—the Soviet past, The Soviet Century explores in evocative detail both the largest and smallest aspects of life in the USSR.

Bloomsbury presents Red Dawn Over China by Frank Dikötter, read by Daniel York Loh. A Financial Times and Foreign Policy Most Anticipated Book of 2026 From renowned, prize-winning historian Frank Dikötter, a commanding new history of China’s path to Communism. The history of modern China has...

The Russian Revolution was the most important and progressive political event of the 20th century. There is a lot to learn from these explosive political episodes and many remarkable stories to discover.

Narrated by Ignat Solzhenitsyn, the author’s son. A major literary event: available for the first time in an English language edition, an early autobiographical novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Gulag Archipelago—“among the greatest Russian writers" (Wall Street...

As Joshua Rubenstein writes in his preface, “Leon Trotsky haunts our historical memory. A preeminent revolutionary figure and a masterful writer, Trotsky led an upheaval that helped to define the contours of twentieth-century politics.” In this lucid and judicious evocation of Trotsky’s life, Joshua Rubenstein gives us an interpretation for the twenty-first century.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An intimate and masterful biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski—President Carter’s national security advisor and one of America’s leading geopolitical thinkers—from one of the finest columnists and political writers at work today. Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key...

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and NPR “We come to see in FDR the magisterial, central figure in the greatest and richest political tapestry of our nation’s entire history” —Nigel Hamilton, Boston Globe “Meticulously researched and authoritative” —Douglas...

A bold new history of Europe, from ancient Greece to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe, award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never...

Petersburg, 1914. The white nights are beautiful, the literary cafés are arguing about art and apocalypse, and the drawing rooms of the intelligentsia are full of people whose cultivation of sensibility has been conducted, for a generation, at the expense of any adequate preparation for what is coming. The poet Bessonov — Silver Age genius, capable of seeing the catastrophe and incapable of doing anything with the seeing except rendering it in verse — moves through this world with the ease of someone who has mistaken the most beautiful form of inadequacy for a sufficient relationship ...

By 1920 the outcome of the Civil War is being determined. Denikin's White Army has reached its furthest advance and broken; the Red Army is consolidating across the vast geography of the former Russian Empire; and the question that The Eighteenth Year had rendered in its full uncertainty — who will govern Russia, what will survive, whether the ordeal has a destination — is becoming an answer. The answer is bleak. It is also, Tolstoy insists in the word he chose for the trilogy's title, morning. Roshchin has been fighting for the White cause — the cause that drew the imperial officer, ...

Friedrich Kargan has no country, no father, and no name that the world will recognize. Born illegitimate on the eastern margins of the old Russian empire, he finds in the revolutionary movement what his personal history has denied him: a purpose, a community, a reason to exist. He will give everything to the cause — his youth, his freedom, years of Siberian exile, the one love of his life. And when the revolution finally succeeds, he will return to Russia to see what has been built in the name of everything he believed in. What he finds will cost him the rest. The Silent Prophet is Joseph...

Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century traces all the continuities and ruptures that led from the founding revolution of October 1917, to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship, the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years, and the glasnost and perestroika policies of Gorbachev.

From a preeminent scholar of Eastern Europe and New York Times bestselling author, the essential history of Russian imperialism. “A singularly fascinating account of Russian nationalism through the ages.” —Financial Times In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion...