P. Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State (Cambridge, 1985), insightful treatment of propaganda as critical instrument in early phase of Soviet state-building
———Cinema and Soviet Society (2nd edn., New York, 2001), reinterpretation of film and its impact, 1917–53.
M. Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System (New York, 1985), analysis by the doyen of the first generation of historians of the Soviet period.
M. McAuley Soviet Politics, 1917–1991 (rev. edn., Oxford, 1992), standard survey of political history.
———Russia since 1914 (Harlow, 1998), useful reference source with brief thematic entries as well as a detailed chronology, biographies, and statistics.
R. McNeal et al. (eds.), Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (5 vols., Toronto, 1974–82), basic set of translated official party resolutions.
M. E. Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York, 1994), lively, critical account of Soviet ideology and rule.
E. Mawdsley and S. White, The Soviet Elite from Lenin to Gorbachev (Oxford, 2000), prosopography of the Central Committee from 1917 to 1991.
J. L. Nogee and R. H. Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy since World War II (4th edn., New York, 1992), authoritative, wide-ranging account of foreign policy.
A. Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917–91 (3rd edn., Harmondsworth, 1992), standard, but dated, history of Soviet economy.
R. R. Reese, The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917–1991 (New York, 2000), history of the Soviet army and its development.
———Red Commanders: A Social History of the Soviet Army Officer Corps, 1918–1991 (Lawrence, Kan., 2005), profile of the Soviet military officers, but more in terms of organizational than social history.
W. G. Rosenberg (ed.), Bolshevik Visions, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor, MI, 1990), valuable collection of documents on the cultural revolution.
L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (2nd edn., New York, 1971), full political history of the Soviet Communist Party.
R. Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), detailed survey, with emphasis on political history.
G. Simon, Nationalism and Policy towards the Nationalities in the Soviet Union (Boulder, Colo., 1991), systematic overview of Soviet nationality policies.
R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams (New York, 1991), sweeping account of utopian vision in early Soviet culture.
R. G. Suny (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia, iii: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 2006), collection of essays on key spheres of Soviet history.
A. Vatlin and L. Malashenko (eds.), Piggy Fox and the Sword of Revolution: Bolshevik Self-Portraits (New Haven, CT, 2006), caricature sketches by members of the Bolshevik élite in the 1920s-1930s.
D. Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (Berkeley, CA, 1999), environmentalism during the Soviet era.
9. RUSSIA IN WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1914–1921
E. Acton, Rethinking the Russian Revolution (London, 1990), critical analysis of historiography on 1917.
———V. Iu. Cherniaev, and W. G. Rosenberg (eds.), Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1921 (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), essays and guide to the revolutionary era.
P. Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921 (Princeton, NJ, 1991), standard account.
S. Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia (Cambridge, 2007), well-researched attempt to explain the failure of the Provisional Government in 1917.
F. Benvenuti, The Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 1918–22 (Cambridge, 1988), on party-military relations.
R. P. Browder and A. Kerensky (eds.), The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents, 3 vols. (Stanford, Calif., 1961), valuable but tendentious collection of documents.
E. N. Burdzhalov, Russia’s Second Revolution: The February 1917 Uprising in Petrograd (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), masterly account of the Petrograd revolution.
E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923, 3 vols. (London, 1985), classic study of the revolution and civil war.
W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917–1921, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ, 1987), reprint of well-informed, highly readable account.
B. Farnsworth, Alexandra Kollontai: Socialism, Feminism, and the Bolshevik Revolution (Stanford, Calif., 1980), biography of leading feminist, and a useful introduction to the ‘women’s question’ in the early Soviet era.
M. Ferro, October 1917: A Social History of the Russian Revolution (London, 1980), examines the aspirations and expectations of different social groups.
O. Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside (Oxford, 1989), solid regional study of the peasantry’s role in the civil war.
———and B. I. Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The
Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven, CT, 1999), exploration of the political culture emerging amidst the revolutionary upheavals of 1917.
S. Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of the Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, October 1917–1921 (Cambridge, 1970), standard account of cultural politics during the civil war.
P. Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking (Bloomington, Ind., 1999), on the six million refugees displaced during the First World War.
A. Gleason, P. Kenez, and R. Stites (eds.), Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington, Ind., 1985), important collection of essays.
W. Husband, Revolution in the Factory: The Birth of the Soviet Textile Industry, 1917–1920 (New York, 1990), on workers, trade unions, and revolution.
H. F. Jahn, Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War I (Ithaca, NY, 1995), on the disintegration of a common sense of nationhood during the war.
J. L. H. Keep, The Russian Revolution: A Study in Mass Mobilization (New York, 1976), comprehensive synthesis.
D. P. Koenker and W. G. Rosenberg, Strikes and Revolution in Russia, 1917 (Princeton, NJ, 1989), careful analysis of strikes and labour protest.
———and R. G. Suny (eds.), Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War: Explorations in Social History (Bloomington, Ind., 1989), valuable collection of essays.
M. McAuley, Bread and Justice (Oxford, 1991), broad-ranging study of Bolshevik policies and institution building in Petrograd.
M. McCauley (ed.), The Russian Revolution and the Soviet State, 1917–1921 (London, 1988), valuable collection of primary sources.
R. Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York, 1991), anti-revisionist, political account.
———Russia under the Bolshevik Regime (New York, 1994), popular survey, casting blame on the intelligentsia and traditional Russian political culture for rise of authoritarianism.
A. Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution (Bloomington, Ind., 1968), close study of the July uprising in 1917.
D. J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton, NJ, 2002), in-depth study of a province during the civil war, with powerful evidence of its devastating impact.