Robert Service's "The Penguin History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-first Century" provides a superb panorama of Russia in the modern age. Russia's recent past has encompassed revolution, civil war, mass terror and two world wars, and the country is still undergoing huge change. In his acclaimed history, now revised and updated with a new introduction and final chapter, Robert Service explores the complex, changing interaction between rulers and ruled from Tsar Nicholas II, through the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917; from Lenin and Stalin through to Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin and beyond. This new edition also discusses Russia's unresolved economic and social difficulties and its determination to regain its leading role on the world stage and explains how, despite the recent years of de-communization, the seven decades of communist rule which penetrated every aspect of life still continue to influence Russia today. "Always well-informed and balanced in his judgements, clear and concise in his analysis...Service is extremely good on Soviet politics". (Orlando Figes, "Sunday Telegraph"). "A fine book...it is a dizzying tale and Service tells it well; he has none of the ideological baggage that has so often bedevilled Western histories of Russia".
(Brian Moynahan, "Sunday Times"). Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St Antony's College, Oxford. He has written several books, including the highly acclaimed "Lenin: A Biography", "Russia: Experiment with a People", "Stalin: A Biography" and "Comrades: A History of World Communism", as well as many other books on Russia's past and present. His most recent book, "Trotsky", has been shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize.