Almost two decades have passed since the collapse of communism in Eastern
Europe and the USSR. Robert Service, one of our finest historians of modern
Russia, sets out to examine the history of communism throughout the world. His
uncomfortable conclusion - and an important message for the twenty-first century
- is that although communism in its original form is now dead or dying, the
poverty and injustice that enabled its rise are still dangerously alive.
Unsettling, compellingly written and brilliantly argued, this is a superb work
of history and one that demands to be read.
'Bears all the hallmarks of a classic work of