• The best books on The Soviet Union - The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • The best books on The Soviet Union - Khrushchev Remembers by Nikita Khrushchev
  • The best books on The Soviet Union - The Trial Begins by Andrei Sinyavsky (published under the name Abram Tertz)
  • The best books on The Soviet Union - Twenty Letters to a Friend by Svetlana Alliluyeva
  • The best books on The Soviet Union - A Precocious Autobiography by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

The best books on The Soviet Union, recommended by Sheila Fitzpatrick

The Soviet Union was the world’s first communist country and lasted around seven decades. It played a key role in defeating Nazism in Europe and became a global superpower before collapsing unexpectedly in 1991. Sheila Fitzpatrick, a leading historian of the Soviet Union, recommends books that bring to life different aspects of it, from forced labour in Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey (GULAG) to the heady days of the Khrushchev thaw and including the memoir of Stalin’s beloved daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva.