Russia

Vincent Barnett contrasts Marxist idealism with the changing economic reality in the USSR.

The greatest battle of Napoleon’s career took place on December 2nd, 1805. Although it is often called the Battle of the Three Emperors, Michael Adams sees it as a very personal clash between two men struggling for the mastery of Europe.

Merchant Ivory’s latest film White Countess tells the story of a high-born Russian woman reduced to poverty and prostitution to support her family – refugees of the Bolshevik Revolution – in a Shanghai slum. Fraser Newham investigates the experience of the real White Russians of Shanghai and discovers this scenario to be close to the truth for many exiled Russian women.

Ian Thatcher refuses to take Trotsky at his own valuation.

Stewart Lone looks beyond the idea of the impassive, self-sacrificing citizen to discover how ordinary Japanese people really reacted to the war with Russia in 1904-05.

A rebellion erupted on the Russian battleship Potemkin on 14 June 1905.

Beryl Williams marks the centenary of the revolutionary year 1905, and discusses the impact of the massacre outside the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, and the complex events throughout Russia that preceded and followed Bloody Sunday.

A mutual defence treaty between Communist states was signed on 14 May 1955.

Simon Henderson places a key figure into the context of modern Russian history.