This book provides a wide-ranging history of every aspect of Stalin's dictatorship over the peoples of the Soviet Union. Drawing on a huge array of primary and secondary sources, The Stalin Era is a first-hand account of Stalinist thought, policy, and the effects of both of these. The book places the man and his ideology into context both within pre-Revolutionary Russia, Lenin's Soviet Union, and post-Stalinist Russia. The Stalin Era examines collectivization; industrialization; terror; government; the cult of Stalin; education and science; family; religion and the Russian Orthodox Church; and art and the state.

Yegor Gaidar, a hero of Russian reform, has provided a courageous and clear-headed wakeup call for his own people and the world. He argues persuasively that today s Kremlin leaders are heading down the same economic path that led their Communist predecessors to disaster. Combining personal experience, deep analysis and a rare grasp of facts--including from previously classified documents--Gaidar has produced a book of insight and importance. It is must-reading for anyone trying to comprehend what really happened to the Soviet Union, why its system was inherently instable, and why nostalgia for the days of empire fashionable at the highest levels in Russia today--is wrongheaded and dangerous.

Russia is the world's largest country. Nearly twice the size of the United States, it stretches across 11 time zones, from west to east. Russia's unique landscape is made up of several vegetation zones, from forests to deserts. Russia's population is as diverse as its geography. Although Russians make up nearly 80 percent of the population, more than 100 ethnic groups make this vast land their home, the largest groups being the Tatars and Ukrainians.

The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire, 1650-1831 by John P. LeDonne
At its height, the Russian empire covered eleven time zones and stretched from Scandinavia to the Pacific Ocean. Arguing against the traditional historical view that Russia, surrounded and threatened by enemies, was always on the defensive, John P. LeDonne contends that Russia developed a long-term strategy not in response to immediate threats but in line with its own expansionist urges to control the Eurasian Heartland. LeDonne narrates how the government from Moscow and Petersburg expanded the empire by deploying its army as well as by extending its patronage to frontier societies in return for their serving the interests of the empire. He considers three theaters on which the Russians expanded: the Western (Baltic, Germany, Poland); the Southern (Ottoman and Persian Empires); and the Eastern (China, Siberia, Central Asia). In his analysis of military power, he weighs the role of geography and locale, as well as economic issues, in the evolution of a larger imperial strategy. Rather than viewing Russia as peripheral to European Great Power politics, LeDonne makes a powerful case for Russia as an expansionist, militaristic, and authoritarian regime that challenged the great states and empires of its time. (Amazon.Com)