This text has established itself as the best general introduction to Russian history, providing a forceful and highly readable survey from earliest times to the post-Soviet State. At the heart of the book is the changing relationship between the State and Russian society at large. The second edition has been substantially rewritten and updated and new material and fresh insights from recently accessible research have been incorporated into every chapter.

Alexander Herzen (1812 70) was the most outstanding figure in the early period of the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin claimed him as a forerunner of the Bolsheviks, and Soviet scholars have sought to establish his latent sympathy with Marxism. In the west on the other hand, he has been seen as a precursor of Solzhenitsyn, the personification of protest against all forms of oppression. Dr Acton provides a compelling intellectual biography. The focus is on the years between 1847 and 1863. Herzen's ideas are set in the context of those political developments and dramatic private experiences that affected his outlook. His profound faith in human nature and in the inevitable triumph of socialism was undermined not only by the failure of the revolutions of 1848, but even more deeply by personal catastrophe - the discovery of the infidelity of his beautiful wife Natalie. This dual blow, Dr Acton shows, had a decisive impact upon Herzen's approach to Russian problems. It lay at the root of the ambivalent attitude he adopted towards peasant revolution in the critical period of Emancipation.

Volume Two of this new documentary history of the Soviet Union comprises over 270 documents and is organised into four chronologically distinct parts, subdivided thematically; it runs from the fraught diplomatic and military preamble of the Great Patriotic War to the final fracturing of the USSR along the national fault-lines of its 15 Union Republics. Slight overlap of chronological coverage with Volume One allows increased attention in Volume Two to foreign affairs. Areas in this volume that attract greatest student interest are the epic dramas at the beginning and end of the period -- the Great Patriotic War and Perestroika. The commentary is by Edward Acton, Professor of Modern European History at the University of East Anglia, who has published widely on the Russian revolution and the history of Russia and the USSR. The documents have been translated by Tom Stableford, Assistant Librarian, Slavonic and East European Collections, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

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This is the first volume of a new integrated documentary history of the Soviet Union. The Soviet story-the revolution, Lenin, Stalinism, the Great Patriotic War, the era of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Cold War, and the dramatic collapse under Gorbachev-looms large in history syllabuses across the world. This book will be a valuable resource for students at all levels, drawing upon the primary material that has come to light since the collapse of Communist rule in 1991. Combining lucid narrative commentary and a rich selection of evocative documents, it provides a lively entree to current debate over humanity's most momentous and tragic experiment. This volume is organised chronologically, subdivided thematically and incorporates over 200 documents. Key terms and references to individuals, places, events and institutions are explained and guidance provided on significant features of the primary sources. Conceived as companion to the highly-regarded, best-selling 4- volume Nazism 1919-1945: A Documentary Reader by Noakes & Pridham, also published by UEP, it assumes no prior knowledge of the subject.

Drawing on the work of dozens of scholars from Russia, Europe, Japan, and the United States, this encyclopedic volume provides a useful overview of the early years of the Soviet Union. Among the topics covered are the collapse of the moderate Kerensky government and the rise of Bolshevik power, the sweeping militarization of Soviet society (the Red Army had 4,400,000 regulars in 1920), and the contribution of members of the Russian intelligentsia to the apparatus of the Soviet state. Students of Soviet history will find this compendium, which weighs in at nearly 800 pages, to be a valuable resource.

Few events have provoked fiercer or more highly politicized historical controversy than the Russian Revolution. Edward Acton's stimulating new study combines an introduction to the momentous events of 1917 with an analysis of the controversy. As well as allowing an evaluation of a broad spread of traditional interpretations, his approach brings home the full implications of recent "revisionist" work and the radical reinterpretation of the revolution to which it points.