Short History of Russia

Jeremy Black is Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University. He is a prolific lecturer and writer, the author of over 180 books. Many concern aspects of eighteenth-century British, European and American political, diplomatic and military history but he has also published on the history of the press, cartography, warfare, culture and on the nature and uses of history itself. He sits, or has sat, on the editorial boards of History Today, International History Review, Journal of Military History, and Media History.

'Jeremy Black employs WWII to test the whole complex of his theses on Russian history and to confirm their validity. Analysis of the Soviet socio-political and economic system in the 1930s and WWII provides the author with the line of discourse for the post-Stalinist era. It reached the important fork in the road in the 1980s, when the natural die-out of the communist gerontocracy and factional struggle brought Mikhail Gorbachev to ultimate power. Jeremy Black recounts this situation in detail and follows in Gorbachev’s reforming years, full of different options. They unfolded toward the Soviet Union’s collapse, which, at the same time, became a resurgence of historical Russia. It is the outcome that Jeremy Black highlights with the subtitle Return to another country. In this context, the thesis is controversial, and nevertheless, it is a cohesive concept on its own. The author establishes its validity by discussing Russian history following the collapse of the USSR. I would not steal the intrigue by retelling the concept; it must be read in the author’s presentation. The concept of Russia's radical change and return to its intrinsic nature at once makes the book a must-read for everyone attending today’s Russia.'