PENGUIN ORANGE SPINES : THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF MODERN RUSSIA – ROBERT SERVICE

Robert Service s The Penguin History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-first Century provides a superb panorama of Russia in the modern age. Russia s recent past has encompassed revolution, civil war, mass terror and two world wars, and the country is still undergoing huge change. In his acclaimed history, now revised and updated with a new introduction and final chapter, Robert Service explores the complex, changing interaction between rulers and ruled from Tsar Nicholas II, through the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917; from Lenin and Stalin through to Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin and beyond. This new edition also discusses Russia s unresolved economic and social difficulties and its determination to regain its leading role on the world stage and explains how, despite the recent years of de-communization, the seven decades of communist rule which penetrated every aspect of life still continue to influence Russia today. Always well-informed and balanced in his judgements, clear and concise in his analysis … Service is extremely good on Soviet politics Orlando Figes, Sunday Telegraph A fine book … it is a dizzying tale and Service tells it well; he has none of the ideological baggage that has so often bedevilled Western histories of Russia Brian Moynahan, Sunday Times Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St Antony s College, Oxford. He has written several books, including the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, Russia: Experiment with a People, Stalin: A Biography and Comrades: A History of World Communism, as well as many other books on Russia s past and present. His most recent book, Trotsky, has been shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize.