The Shortest History of the Soviet Union
by Sheila Fitzpatrick
Australian historian and 20th century Russia specialist Sheila Fitzpatrick’s The Shortest History of the Soviet Union covers its seven-decade, complex history in just 230 pages—with comfortable spacing and quite a few illustrations. It’s part of ‘The Shortest History of…’ series (which also has a highly recommended short history of China by Linda Jaivin).
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“In 2020 or so, I was commissioned to write The Shortest History of the Soviet Union. That was really interesting to me, because I had been around for quite a lot of the Soviet Union, maybe about half. I first went there as a graduate exchange student in 1966. The Soviet Union had then collapsed in 1991, and thirty years later seemed a good time to look back at it and reflect on, ‘What was all that about?’ That was a big challenge, I can tell you. Not only did I have to get in all the important things that happened in the Soviet Union, but because of the way it collapsed into constituent national republics—which became countries like Ukraine and Georgia—I had to run that theme through the whole book. There are 16 different republics!” Read more...
The best books on The Soviet Union
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Historian
