From acclaimed historian and author of Kremlin Winter and Blood on the Snow, a dramatic and expertly researched account of an extraordinary moment in Russia’s recent history: the August Coup.In the summer of 1991, a group of eight plotters came together to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachëv, then the president of the USSR. These ruthless conspirators, who occupied positions of high office, declared a state of emergency to restore stability through author...

According to Wikipedia: "Robert William Service (January 16, 1874 September 11, 1958) was a poet and writer, sometimes referred to as "the Bard of the Yukon".[1][2] He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North, including the poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew", "The Law of the Yukon", and "The Cremation of Sam McGee". His writing was so expressive that his readers took him for a hard-bitten old Klondike prospector, not the later-arriving bank clerk he actually was. In addition to...

From acclaimed historian and author of Kremlin Winter and Blood on the Snow, a dramatic and expertly researched account of an extraordinary moment in Russia’s recent history: the August Coup.In the summer of 1991, a group of eight plotters came together to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachëv, then the president of the USSR. These ruthless conspirators, who occupied positions of high office, declared a state of emergency to restore stability through author...

Robert Service's The Penguin History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-first Century provides a superb panorama of Russia in the modern age.Russia's recent past has encompassed revolution, civil war, mass terror and two world wars, and the country is still undergoing huge change.In his acclaimed history, now revised and updated with a new introduction and final chapter, Robert Service explores the complex, changing interaction between ru...

This new and revised edition of poems about the men and women of the North features the most loved ballads by Robert Service, and is illustrated with lively art by Marilen Van Nimwegen. While living in Whitehorse, Robert Service wrote The Cremation of Sam McGee, and other well-known poems. He wrote and published into his mid-eighties. He was quoted as saying, I just go for a walk and come back with a poem in my pocket.

Almost two decades have passed since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR.Robert Service, one of our finest historians of modern Russia, sets out to examine the history of communism throughout the world. His uncomfortable conclusion - and an important message for the twenty-first century - is that although communism in its original form is now dead or dying, the poverty and injustice that enabled its rise are still dangerously alive.Unsettling, compellin...

Russia has long played an influential part in its world of Islam, and not all the dimensions are as widely understood as they ought to be. In Russia and Its Islamic World, Robert Service examines Russia's interactions with Islam at home and around the globe and pinpoints the tsarist and Soviet legacy, current complications, and future possibilities. The author details how the Russian encounter with Islam was close and problematic long before the twenty-first century and how Russia...

This popular, concise and highly readable study discusses the key themes and debates about the Russian Revolution. Robert Service's lively analysis examines:- state and society under the Romanovs from 1900- The February and October Revolutions of 1917- The final years of the Romanov dynasty and the start of the Soviet order- Comparisons with political, social and economic trends elsewhere in the world- The extent to which the later development of the ...

'A terrific book about a terrifying subject by the best historian of Russia working today' - Michael BurleighIn Blood on the Snow, Robert Service returns to the subject that has formed the backbone of his long and distinguished career: the Russian Revolution.For Service, the great unanswered question is how to reconcile the two vital narratives that underpin the extraordinary but troubled events of 1917. One puts the blame squarely...

A comprehensive overview of twentieth-century Russian history that treats the years from 1917 to 2000 as a single period and analyses the peculiar mixture of political, economic and social ingredients that made up the Soviet compound. It takes the reader from the age of communist rule to the changes that occurred in 1991 and the more uncertain world of Yeltsin and Putin.

Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics since Boris Yeltsin relinquished the presidency in his favour in May 2000. He served two terms as president, before himself relinquishing the post to his prime minister, Dimitri Medvedev, only to return to presidential power for a third time in 2012.Putin’s rule, whether as president or prime minister, has been marked by a steady increase in domestic repression and international assertiveness. Despite this, there have been signs of libe...

Drawing on a wealth of unexplored material - available for the first time since the collapse of the former Soviet Union - Robert Service's biography of Stalin is the most authoritative yet published. It concentrates not simply on Stalin as dedicated bureaucrat or serial political killer, but on a fuller assessment of his formative interactions in Georgia, his youthful revolutionary activism, his relationship with Lenin, with his family, and with his party members.'This is effec...