The Soviet colossus : history and aftermath / Michael G. Kort.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The fundamentals of Russian history -- Prologue -- The autocratic state -- The nineteenth-century crisis -- The people -- The intelligentsia: strangers in a strange land -- The end of the old order -- Capitalism comes to Russia -- The revolutionaries regroup -- The final years and last stand -- Lenin's Russia -- 1917: Russia's two revolutions -- Into the fire: the Civil War -- New policies and new problems -- Steeling the revolution -- Bolshevism without Lenin -- The revolution from above -- Trial by fire: the Great Patriotic War -- Conservative Stalinism -- The socialist superpower -- Khrushchev: reforming the revolution -- The Brezhnev Era: the graying of the revolution -- Gorbachev: from restructuring to deconstruction -- The Russian Federation -- The Russian devolution -- Russia in the twenty-first century -- Chronology.