From revolution and Lenin to Stalin's Terror, from World War II to glasnost, this is an authoritative distillation of 75 years of communist rule, and the disintegration of an empire. Fitzpatrick charts the fate of countries often left out of Soviet histories, gives vivid portraits of key figures, and traces the aftermath of the regime's sudden collapse. She explores the rise of the oligarchs, the rebirth of the Church and the enigmatic figure of Vladimir Putin. The story of the rise and fall of the U.S.S.R. by one of the world's leading Soviet historians.