A fresh and stimulating analysis of the relationship between domestic and foreign policy in Russia before the First World War, now available in English for the first time. "By far the most perceptive, knowledgeable, and intelligent work on the last half century of imperial Russia in print."-Theodore H. Von Laue, Russian History "This important, tightly packed book . . . analyzes the basic problems of Russian imperialism thoroughly and with enormous erudition. . . . Scholars concerned with imperialism and Russian domestic and foreign problems will welcome this thought-provoking work."-David...

This short and updated introduction by one of Europe's leading specialists in Russian and Soviet history presents a broad survey combined with a penetrating analysis of the key issues of the Russian Revolution, such as the nature of pre-Revolutionary society and politics, the many links between war and revolution (e.g., the effects of the war on the Bolshevik theory of revolution), the possibilities open to the Provisional Government, political alternatives to Bolshevism, and the place of the Revolution in contemporary intellectual debate in the West. The particular originality of this volume...