Drawing on a range of sources, including passionate eye-witness accounts, official documents and newly available materials, this book places the Soviet experience in a historical and globally comparative context. It examines: the emergence of Marxism-Leninism; the revolutions of 1917, the consolidation of Bolshevik power and Lenin's legacy; Stalinism and the new economic policy; collectivization and industrialization; the great terror; World War II and the Cold War; reform and stagnation under Kruschev, Brezhnev and Andropov; and Glasnost, Perestroika and the end of the USSR.
