Imperial and Soviet Russia: Power, Privilege, and the Challenge of Modernity

About this book

It is impossible to make sense of the modern world without understanding the vast, and ultimately unsuccessful, experiment with Communism that began in Russia in 1917. Imperial and Soviet Russia offers a coherent interpretation of the turbulent history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union during the last two centuries. Tracing the roots of the Communist experiment in the peasant world of traditional Russia, it shows how the harsh social and economic changes of the nineteenth century created enough dislocation to topple the tsarist regime and bring the Bolsheviks to power in 1917.