Why did the 1917 American Red Cross Mission to Russia include more financiers than medical doctors? Rather than caring for the victims of war and revolution, its members seemed more intent on negotiating contracts with the Kerensky government, and s…

In the 1920s, with the end of the revolution, the Soviet government began investing resources and energy into creating a new type of book for the first generation of young Soviet readers. In a sense, these early books for children were the ABCs of S…

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the October 1917 uprising, is one of the most misunderstood leaders of the twentieth century. In his own time, there were many, even among his enemies, who acknowledged the full magnitude of his intellectual and poli…

Marking the bicentenary of Dostoevsky's birth, Dostoevsky at 200: The Novel in Modernity takes the writer's art - specifically the tension between experience and formal representation - as its central theme. While many critical approaches to Dostoev…

The clash between scholarship and politics-between truth and propaganda-was ruthless for historians in Istpart, the Russian Communist Central Committee's official historical department.Istpart was tasked with preserving the documentary record, compi…

This collection of eleven essays deals with Lenin's life in western European emigration in the years before the First World War. The first five essays explore Lenin's efforts to build a purely Bolshevik Party through the creation of a unique school…