Sheila Fitzpatrick in Conversation with Linda Jaivin

The story of an empire made and an empire undone – and what emerged from the ashes – by one of the world’s leading authorities on Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia arrived in the world accidentally and departed unexpectedly.

More than a hundred years after the Russian Revolution, the tumultuous history of the Soviet Union continues to fascinate us and influence global politics. Here is an irresistible entree to a sweeping history. From revolution and Lenin to Stalin’s Great Terror, from World War II to Gorbachev’s perestroika policies, this is a lively, authoritative distillation of seventy-five years of communist rule and the collapse of an empire.

Sheila Fitzpatrick shows us the fate of non-Russian republics often left out of discussions of Soviet history, provides vivid portraits of key Soviet figures and traces the aftermath of the regime’s unexpected fall, including the rise of Vladimir Putin, a product of the Soviet system but not altogether a Soviet nostalgic. The Shortest History of the Soviet Union is a small masterpiece, replete with telling detail and peppered with some very black humour.

SHEILA FITZPATRICK is the multi-award-winning author of The Russian Revolution, Everyday Stalinism, Mischka’s War, On Stalin’s Team and White Russians, Red Peril, among other titles. She is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and a professor at the Australian Catholic University and Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney.

LINDA JAIVIN has been studying Chinese politics, language and culture for more than forty years. She has been a foreign correspondent in China, and is co-editor of the China Story Yearbook, associate of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University and the author of twelve books.