The Soviet century

"In The Soviet Century Moshe Lewin traces the USSR's history in all its complexity, drawing widely upon previously unavailable archive material. Highlighting key factors such as demography, economics, culture and political repression, Lewin guides us through the inner workings of a system which is still barely understood. In the process, he overturns widely held beliefs about the USSR's leaders, the state - party system and the Soviet bureaucracy - the 'tentacled octopus' which held real power." "Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century takes in all the continuities and ruptures that led, via a complex route, from the founding revolution of October 1917 to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship and the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years."--Jacket.