No one, not even Mikhail Gorbachev, anticipated what was in store when the Soviet Union embarked in the 1980s on a radical course of long-overdue structural reform. The consequences of that momentous decision, which set in motion a transformation eventually affecting the entire postwar world order, [...]

Gives an intimate view of the Bolshevik regime's inner geography, bringing to the fore materials from Soviet military intelligence and the secret police. This book explains how chaos from revolution and civil war became a permanent feature of Soviet administration, even as the regime and Stalin acqu[...]

A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world
It has the quality of myth: a poor cobbler's son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian empire, reinvents himself as a top leader in a band of revolutionary zealots. When the band se[...]