This classic Soviet Union history traces the USSR from 1917 to its fall, offering “a master class in understanding the structures and intricate workings of the Soviet system” (Ian Kershaw, historian and Hitler biographer).Today, the Soviet Union remains the most extraordinary but tragic attempt to create a society beyond capitalism. Yet its history was one that for a long time proved impossible to write.In The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin follows th...

This volume is the product of an international conference held in the autumn of 1988, around the time Nikolai Bukharin was officially rehabilitated - a benchmark in the history of glasnost and the process of legitimating perestroika. Conference participants from 19 countries, including the USSR and China, took occasion to reconsider the record and legacy of Bukharin as revolutionary, economist and political theorist. They offer a many-sided but critical re-examination of Bolshevism's "inte...

One of the great political strategists of his era, V. I. Lenin continues to attract historical interest, yet his complex personality eludes full understanding. This new edition of Moshe Lewin's classic political biography, including an afterword by the author, suggests new approaches for studying the Marxist visionary and founder of the Soviet state. Lenin's Last Struggle offers invaluable insights into the rise of the Bolshevik party and the Soviet Union, a saga complicated by complex str...

This classic Soviet Union history traces the USSR from 1917, to its fall, offering "a master class in understanding the structures and intricate workings of the Soviet system" (Ian Kershaw, historian and Hitler biographer).Today, the Soviet Union remains the most extraordinary but tragic attempt to create a society beyond capitalism. Yet its history was one that for a long time proved impossible to write.In The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin follows t...

"The Soviet Tragedy is an essential coda to the literature of Soviet studies...Insofar as [he] returns the power of ideology to its central place in Soviet history, Malia has made an enormous contribution. He has written the history of a utopian illusion and the tragic consequences it had for the people of the Soviet Union and the world."-- David Remnick, The New York Review of Books"In Martin Malia, the Soviet Union had one of its most acute observers. Wi...

An extensive revision of the valued but unobtainable 1960 edition. Nearly 300 key documents are now readily available in translation.

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded–and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs, Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross, drawing upon two decades of reflection, revisit this crash. In a crisp, concise, unsentimental narrative, they employ three case studies–East Germany, Romania, and Poland–to illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be ...

Here is a pioneering account of everyday life under Stalin, written by one of our foremost authorities on modern Russian history. Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, Sheila Fitzpatrick shows that with the adoption of collectivization and the first Five-Year Plan, everyday life was utterly transformed. With the abolition of the market, shortages of food, clothing, and all kinds of consumer goods became endemic. As peasants fled the collectivized villages, major cities were soon in the gri...

"A fresh multi-faceted look at the overthrow of the Soviet State, the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, and the campaign to introduce capitalism from above. Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny have given us a clear and powerful Marxist analysis of the momentous events which most directly shaped world politics today, the destruction of the USSR, the 'Superpower' of socialism."-Norman Markowitz, author of The Rise and Fall of the People's Century"I have not read anything e...

The Russian Revolution had a decisive impact on the history of the twentieth century. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet regime and the opening of its archives, it has become possible to step back and see the full picture. Starting with an overview of the roots of the revolution, Fitzpatrick takes the story from 1917, through Stalin's 'revolution from above', to the great purges of the 1930s. She tells a gripping story of a Marxist revolution that was intended to transform t...

In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed masterwork The State and Revolution. This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Ma...

Almost twenty years after the Soviet Unions' end, what are we to make of its existence? Was it a heroic experiment, an unmitigated disaster, or a viable if flawed response to the modern world? Taking a fresh approach to the study of the Soviet Union, this Very Short Introduction blends political history with an investigation into the society and culture at the time. Stephen Lovell examines aspects of patriotism, political violence, poverty, and ideology; and provides answers to so...