'Based on research among thousands of unpublished documents concealed in the Communist Party archives until the fall of the regime, Lenin: Life and Legacy is a crushing indictment of the regime's founder...' Sally Laird, Observer In the first fully documented life of one of the greatest revolutionaries in history, Dmitri Volkogonov is free for the first time to assess Lenin's life and legacy, unconstrained by demands of political orthodoxy. In addition to showing conclusively that the violence and coercion that characterised the Soviet system derived entirely from Lenin, the author also describes in detail the personal life of Lenin: his family antecedents, his private finances, the early funding of the Bolshevik Party, his relationship with his mistress Inessa Armand, and the debilitating illness that crippled the final months of his life

'Absorbing... I now place Volkogonov's great biographical triptych [Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky] at the top of my reading list on the Russian revolution.' Niall Ferguson, Sunday Times Following Stalin (1991) and Lenin (1994), Dmitri Vokogonov completes his grand trilogy of biographies of the giants who dominated the history of the Soviet Union. A dynamic and inspiring public speaker, military hero of the Russian civil war, and a brilliant organiser and theorist, Trotsky also played a large part in advocating the system of state terror which was ultimately to lead to the nightmare of Stalinism. Widely regarded as Lenin's likely successor, he was outmanoeuvred by his implacable enemy, Stalin, expelled from the Communist Party, exiled, and finally murdered in Mexico in 1940 by Stalin's agents.

Stalin was one of the most ruthless and authoritarian dictators in world history. This concise title presents Lenin's heir from his beginnings for priesthood to General Secretary of the Communist Party.

This is the verbatim record of a secret and hitherto unpublished meeting, held in the Kremlin in April 1940, devoted to a post mortem of the Finnish campaign.

"Is there a Western world leader whose reputation has not been re-analysed and reassessed, usually to his or her detriment?" With this question, Harold Shukman introduces "Redefining Stalinism," a collection of articles published 50 years after Stalin's death. With the opening of Soviet archives to an unprecedented degree since the demise of the USSR, totalitarian and revisionist arguments about Stalin and the Stalinist system can be more closely explored. Topics range from a survey of recent Western views of Stalin's Russia, to an account of Stalin's approach to intelligence, two separate analyses of totalitarianism, the politics of obligation, the cult of the dead in Soviet political memory, and the de-mythologising of Stalin in the years immediately following his death.

From 14-17 April 1940, a meeting was held in the Kremlin to examine and analyze the performance of the Red Army in the recent Soviet-Finnish War. T he participants were all the army commanders who had taken part in the campaign, and some members of the Politburo, notably Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov. This book is an English translation of the verbatim record held in the Russian State Socio-Political History Archives in Moscow. Marshals Kliment Voroshilov and Grigory Kulik co-chaired the sessions, but it was Stalin who guided the proceedings. Forty-six regimental, divisional, corps, army and front commanders, and senior Red Army officials delivered their reports and engaged in debate. Stalin gave a long speech at the closing of the last session in which he expounded his views on all aspects of military policy.

'Here is a vivacious account of how in the 1950s, under Eden and Lloyd at the Foreign Office, some 5,000 young men doing national service were quietly siphoned off from their units, secluded in Cornwall and Fifeshire, or, more boldly, next door to the Guards depot at Coulsdon in Surrey, and put through crash courses in Russian till they could speak it fluently ...' M. R. D. Foot, "Spectator"

Lambasted by the Soviets as a 'spy school', the Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL) was a major Cold War initiative, which pushed 5000 young National Servicemen through intensive training as Russian translators and interpreters, primarily to meet the needs of Britain's signals intelligence operations. Its pupils included a remarkable cross-section of talented young men who went on to a diversity of glittering careers: professors of Russian, Chinese, ancient philosophy, economics; the historian Sir Martin Gilbert; authors such as Alan Bennett, Dennis Potter and Michael Frayn; screenwriter Jack Rosenthal; stage director Sir Peter Hall; and churchmen ranging from a bishop to a displaced Carmelite friar.

Geoffrey Elliot and Harold Shukman, both of whom emerged from JSSL as interpreters, have drawn on many personal recollections and interviews with fellow students, as well as once highly classified documents in the Public Record Office, in order to reveal this fascinating story for the first time.

'A highly entertaining read ... No one interested in late 20th century theatre or literature can afford to ignore this book.' "Spectator"

'Elliott and Shukman write with style and wit ... They record something more than a byway in the history of the cold war, a true contribution to British history.' Michael Bourdeaux, "Times Higher Education Supplement"

'An engaging, quirky account of this strange offshoot of the Cold War ... a kind of Virgin Soldiers for clever clogs.' Michael Leapman, "Independent"

When Britain was compelled to introduce conscription in 1916, the question arose of what to do with its 'friendly aliens'its 30,000 Russian-Jewish refugees of military age. The Tsar didn't want them back to serve in his army, and they had no desire to help his war effort. But when sections of the British press commented that as asylum seekers they should show gratitude and join up, a campaign with strong anti-Semitic overtones took off and became Parliamentary business. Then the Tsar was overthrown, and by the summer of 1917 the question was settled with the new regime: Russian Jews of military age had to choose either to join the British Army or to return to Russia to serve there. MI5 and Special Branch kept watch on the Communist Club in the West End, where Russian revolutionaries agitated tailors, cobblers and cabinet-makers who agonised over what to do. Many ended up in the British Army or were exempted for war work, but nearly 4,000 chose to go back to Russiafor a variety of rea