Close to a miracle ... an immensely readable overview ... full of anecdotes and lively detail, but also meeting the highest academic standards’ – SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK A concise and essential history of the Soviet Union, including chapters on Russia and Vladimir Putin, and its impact on the future of the world. The Soviet Union arrived in the world accidentally and departed unexpectedly. More than a hundred years after the Russian Revolution, its tumultuous history continues to captivate us and influence global politics today. From the Revolution and Lenin to Stalin’s Terror, from the Great Patriotic War to Gorbachev, The Shortest History of the Soviet Union is a lively and authoritative distillation of 75 years of communist rule, written by one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject. Sheila Fitzpatrick explores the fate of non-Russian republics often left out of the history books, gives portraits of key figures and traces the aftermath of the regime’s sudden collapse, including the rise of Vladimir Putin, a product of the Soviet system if not quite the Soviet nostalgic he is sometimes claimed to be. Colourful asides on everything from ‘Red Moscow’ (‘the Soviet Chanel No. 5’) to Soviet jazz provide a fascinating backdrop to the main narrative. This is a small masterpiece of history writing – essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this century as well as the last.