This fully updated new edition of Sheila Fitzpatrick's classic short history of the Russian Revolution takes into account the new archival and other evidence that has come to light since the first edition in 2001, incorporating material that was previously inaccessible not only to Western but also to Soviet historians.
Fitzpatrick takes the story from the context of 1917, through Stalin's 'revolution from above', to the great purges of the 1930s. She tells a gripping story of a Marxist revolution that was intended to transform the world, visited enormous suffering on the Russian people, and, like the French Revolution before it, ended up by devouring its own children.