August Coup

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, Blood on the Snow, Stalin: A Biography and Comrades: A History of World Communism, as well as many other books on Russia's past and present. Trotsky: A Biography was awarded the Duff Cooper Prize. Married with four children, he lives in London.

Robert Service is the English-speaking world’s foremost historian of 20th-century Russia and Bolshevism . . . Service has displayed a remarkable grasp of the vast sources, and a delightfully clear writing style which makes even the complexities of Soviet bureaucracy easy to understand . . . Service guides the reader through the chaos of the collapsing system and the machinations of the coup leaders with ease and grace . . . magnificent