This book looks at the past and present condition of Russian nationalism. Its chapters examine the influence of tsarist and Soviet official policies upon national identity, and seek to explain the broader political, social and cultural factors which helped or hindered the ambitions of rulers. The changeability of Russian national consciousness is exmphasised. Several chapters also highlight the various long-standing inhibitions to the emergence of a consolidated civic nationalism in a Russian Federation which gained its independence at the break-up of the USSR.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was an event of the greatest importance, but the social groups which were crucial to its development and outcome have been little written about. This book brings together a number of prominent British researchers whose work focusses on the connections among politics, social aspirations and economics, and offers new insights into the reasons why, only months after the last tsar fell from power in February 1917, it was the Bolsheviks who seized control and established a communist regime.

This book overhauls our concept of man---his past and future. No tool in the arsenal of science can match the clarifying power of the concept of evolution when properly understood. The authors, with the help of this concept, provide a new and unified interpretation of the evolution of species, of man, and of human society. What is more, in the light of this knowledge they offer a striking reinterpretation of what the role of the United States may be in the conflict among the societies of East and West. The evolution of life is closely paralleled by the evolution of man's culture. Scientists have too long ignored this lesson. To see man from the perspective of evolutionary theory is to see him and his culture as an organic whole---a living creation struggling for growth. This approach goes beyond the sterile cultural relativism that has troubled science; in its place the authors discover evolutionary laws that have not hitherto been formulated.