Russia

Leo Steveni was a British officer based in St Petersburg at the time of the Russian Revolution. He became an active eyewitness to the chaos of the Civil War that followed.

The October Revolution of 1917 inspired a generation of Bolshevik youth to embrace new ideals of socialist living in the commune.

An 18th-century map produced by Anna van Westerstee Beeck marks a pivotal moment in the histories of Russia, Sweden and Ukraine.

Alexander Kerensky, the last Russian premier before the Bolsheviks took power, decided to continue the war with Germany. He and his nascent democracy would pay the price.

Underneath the sweeping history of the Russian Revolution is another story, one told through the lesser-known people, moments and objects of a world in transformation.

The 'healer' and friend to Tsar Nicholas II was killed on 17 December 1916.

For the tsarist regime, Siberia was a ‘vast prison without a roof’, where thousands of revolutionaries and political opponents were exiled. It became, as Daniel Beer explains, a laboratory of the Russian Revolution.

The reforming Tsar sought to westernise his empire, yet in 1723 he published an uncompromising reassertion of his absolutist doctrine, which has traditionally marked Russia’s national consciousness.

What does Russia’s history of political assassination reveal about its rulers?

Daniel Beer reassesses W. Bruce Lincoln’s 1976 study of Tsar Alexander III’s brief reign, which combined reaction with rapid industrialisation and left a troubling legacy for his successors.