Towards the flame
Subtitle: empire, war and the end of Tsarist Russia
By: Dominic Lieven
Publisher: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books
Published: 2015
Place of publication: [London]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 428
ISBN-13: 9781846143816
Subjects: History; Foreign relations; World War, 1914-1918
Other titles: Empire, war, and the end of Tsarist Russia.
Description: "'As much as anything, World War I turned on the fate of Ukraine . . . 'The decision to go to war in 1914 had catastrophic consequences for Russia. The result was revolution, civil war and famine in 1917-20, followed by decades of Communist rule. Dominic Lieven's powerful and original new book, based on exhaustive and unprecedented study in Russian and many other foreign archives, explains why this suicidal decision was made and explores the world of the men who made it, thereby consigning their entire class to death or exile and making their country the victim of a uniquely terrible political experiment under Lenin and Stalin. But Towards the Flame is about far more than Russia. By looking at the origins and results of the First World War from a mostly Russian angle it offers a radically different view of why Europe descended into disaster. Dominic Lieven's interpretation of Europe's great war and Russia's revolution will overturn assumptions about events that still have major implications for world history down to the present day."--Book jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: A World of Empires; title: The Russian Empire; title: The Decision Makers; title: The Emergence of the Triple Entente, 1904-9; title: Crisis Follows Crisis, 1909-13; title: 1914; title: The July Crisis; title: War, Revolution, and Empire.