**A "Best Non-Fiction to Read This Year" Selection from The New StatesmanA magisterial, revisionist narrative history of the Soviet Union in its post-Stalin heyday, bringing a forgotten society to vivid life and offering a new explanation for how it suddenly collapsed.**To those of us in the West, the Soviet Union is synonymous with Stalinism. The common view of the USSR is of a brutal regime that squelched dissent and oversaw a drab, terrified society. Yet as Camb...

A history of Russophobia and its living legacy in world affairs With proof of election-meddling and the relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin an ongoing conundrum, little wonder many Americans are experiencing what historian Mark B. Smith calls "the Russia Anxiety." This is no new phenomenon. Time and time again, the West has judged Russia on assumptions of its inherent cunning, malevolence, and brutality. Yet for much of its history, Russia functioned no di...