Russia

Fifty years after Khrushchev’s famous denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, John Etty examines what was at stake.

Russell Tarr explains how the Bolsheviks established their grip on Russia after the 1917 Revolution, and at what cost.

Geoffrey Hosking looks at the place of Russia within the Soviet Union, a position fraught with paradoxes that still resonate today.

Vincent Barnett contrasts Marxist idealism with the changing economic reality in the USSR.

The greatest battle of Napoleon’s career took place on December 2nd, 1805. Although it is often called the Battle of the Three Emperors, Michael Adams sees it as a very personal clash between two men struggling for the mastery of Europe.

Merchant Ivory’s latest film White Countess tells the story of a high-born Russian woman reduced to poverty and prostitution to support her family – refugees of the Bolshevik Revolution – in a Shanghai slum. Fraser Newham investigates the experience of the real White Russians of Shanghai and discovers this scenario to be close to the truth for many exiled Russian women.

Ian Thatcher refuses to take Trotsky at his own valuation.

Stewart Lone looks beyond the idea of the impassive, self-sacrificing citizen to discover how ordinary Japanese people really reacted to the war with Russia in 1904-05.

A rebellion erupted on the Russian battleship Potemkin on 14 June 1905.