A History of Twentieth-Century Russia - Softcover

Service, R

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674403487 ISBN 13: 9780674403482

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Russia has had an extraordinary history in the twentieth century. As the first Communist society, the USSR was both an admired model and an object of fear and hatred to the rest of the world.How are we to make sense of this history? "A History of Twentieth-Century Russia" treats the years from 1917 to 1991 as a single period and analyzes the peculiar mixture of political, economic, and social ingredients that made up the Soviet formula. Under a succession of leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev, various methods were used to conserve and strengthen this compound. At times the emphasis was upon shaking up the ingredients, at others upon stabilization. All this occurred against a background of dictatorship, civil war, forcible industrialization, terror, world war, and the postwar arms race. Communist ideas and practices never fully pervaded the society of the USSR. Yet an impact was made and, as this book expertly documents, Russia since 1991 has encountered difficulties in completely eradicating the legacy of Communism."A History of Twentieth-Century Russia" is the first work to use the mass of material that has become available in the documentary collections, memoirs, and archives over the past decade. It is an extraordinarily lucid, masterful account of the most complex and turbulent period in Russia's long history.

About this title

Review:

Robert Service's synthesis of Western and Russian historical writings provides a balanced assessment of the political leadership's interaction with Russian society from the last tsar to Boris Yeltsin...Service's comprehensive and well-written book serves as a solid reference tool for the general public and historians alike.--Isabel A. Tirado "American Historical Review "

About the Author:

Robert Service is a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford and Lecturer at the University of Oxford. Most recently he has written LENIN: A BIOGRAPHY and RUSSIA: EXPERIMENT WITH A PEOPLE.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0674403487
• ISBN 13: 9780674403482
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 688