Publisher's description: Leon Trotsky has always aroused strong passions-historians love and hate him in equal measure. This new biography provides a full account of his political life, based upon a wealth of primary sources, including previously unpublished material. Ian D. Thatcher paints a new picture of Trotsky's standing in Russian and world history. Key myths about Trotsky's heroic work as a revolutionary, especially in Russia's first revolution of 1905 and the Russian Civil War, are thrown into question. Although Trotsky had a limited understanding of crucial contemporary events such as Hitler's rise to power, he was an important thinker and politician, not least as a trenchant critic of Stalin's version of communism. This study provides a clear and accessible introduction to Trotsky's life and thought for anyone interested in twentieth-century Russian and World History.

Examines the connection between leadership and history in an exploration of the twentieth-century Soviet Union

The third and concluding volume of the author's biographical trilogy covers Trotsky's years of exile and the social and political events in Stalinist Russia up to time of his murder in Mexico in 1940

Product Description: Drawing on his own diary as well as secret documents and transcripts of high-level meetings, Anatoly Chernyaev recounts the drama that swept the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991. As Gorbachev’s chief foreign policy aide for most of that period, he played a central role in efforts to halt the arms race, discard a confrontational ideology, and open his country to the world...read more

This second volume of Deutscher's celebrated trilogy traces the great struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in 1921. A brilliantly-told tale, it ends with Trotsky's dramatic banishment in 1929.

This first volume of Deutscher's celebrated Trotsky trilogy traces Trotsky's early activities, his motivating idea of permanent revolution, his long feud and final reconciliation with Lenin, and his pivotal role in the October 1917 insurrection.

Chronicles the life and political career of the former foreign minister of the Soviet Union (view table of contents)

Examines how the Soviet Communist Party encouraged the veneration of Lenin as a revolutionary figure in order to achieve its political goals

Product Description: Despite its eventual failure, the Bolshevik experiment remains the sole example of revolutionary socialist rule. From 1917, the Bolsheviks confronted the fundamental questions of our time: how can a real alternative to capitalism be achieved? Can mass democracy triumph over bureaucracy? Nikolai Bukharin took a leading role in grappling with such problems...read more

A portrait of the Soviet leader describes Stalin's childhood, his roles as student, revolutionary, and communist theoretician, his clash with Lenin, the great Terror, and the Nazi-Soviet pact (view table of contents)

Discusses his views on national security, human rights, the Afghan war, the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact

The late Soviet Foreign Minister offers a candid account of his life and the personalities and events that shaped his career, providing incisive portraits of his political contemporaries and an analysis of the continuing implications of Stalinism for theUSSR

Traces the life of the Russian revolutionary, explains why he is still regarded as a traitor in the Soviet Union, and assesses his place in Russian history