Towards the Flame

byDominic Lieven

Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia

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'As much as anything, World War I turned on the fate of Ukraine...'

The decision to go to war in 1914 had catastrophic consequences for Russia. The result was revolution, civil war and famine in 1917-20, followed by decades of Communist rule. Dominic Lieven's powerful and original new book, based on exhaustive and unprecedented study in Russian and many other foreign archives, explains why this suicidal decision was made and explores the world of the men who made it, thereby consigning their entire class to death or exile and making their country the victim of a uniquely terrible political experiment under Lenin and Stalin.

But Towards the Flame is about far more than Russia.

By looking at the origins and results of the First World War from a mostly Russian angle it offers a radically different view of why Europe descended into disaster. Dominic Lieven's interpretation of Europe's great war and Russia's revolution will overturn assumptions about events that still have major implications for world history down to the present day.
A book of immense scholarship and engaging readability. Through an eastern window rarely opened to Western gaze, it illuminates the end of Europe's old order and the explosive start of the twentieth century. A century later, we are still struggling with this era's epic legacies.
David Reynolds, author of The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century

About Dominic Lieven

Dominic Lieven is an Honorary Fellow and an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His Russia Against Napoleon won the Wolfson Prize (UK) and the Prix Napoléon (France). His latest book, Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia won the Pushkin House Prize (UK), the Valdai Club Prize (Russia) and the Ambassador of the New Europe Prize (Poland).
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9781846143823
  • Length: 480 pages
  • Price: £7.99
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