Last of the Empires: A History of the Soviet Union 1945-1991
`Review from previous edition Written in a clear, scholarly but penetrable style, it provides an abundance of information in a form that is accessible to anybody who wants or needs to remind himself of the chronology and content of those tumultuous years in the Soviet Union. It incorporates much of the new information that is emerging in post-communist, post-Soviet Russia, as formerly top-secret archives are opened to Russian and western scrutiny.' Economist`A shrewd, well-sourced history of the Soviet Union ... [Keep's] fluent narrative heeds murmurs from below as well as diktats from above.' New Statesman and Society`It is as fortunate as it is productive that Keep is a distinguished and vastly experienced historian of Russia in its several phases, that he should apply the rigour of exacting scholarship and the advantage of perspective to the death of a system whose antecedents and birth he had earlier chronicled. The temperate, scholarly analysis of Last of the Empires provides an exhaustive explanation for this complex, protracted tragedy whose consequences are yet fully to unfold.' Times Higher Education Supplement`Last of the Empires is filled with interest information gathered from a very broad range of sources which Keep recounts and analyses in a thoroughly professional manner ... judicious and well-informed work.' Times Literary Supplement