A History of the Soviet Union 1945-1991

Review from previous edition Written in a clear, scholarly but penetrable style, it provides an abundance of information in a form that is accessible to anybody who wants or needs to remind himself of the chronology and content of those tumultuous years in the Soviet Union. It incorporates much of the new information that is emerging in post-communist, post-Soviet Russia, as formerly top-secret archives are opened to Russian and western scrutiny.'EconomistA shrewd, well-sourced history of the Soviet Union … [Keep’s] fluent narrative heeds murmurs from below as well as diktats from above.‘New Statesman & SocietyIt is as fortunate as it is productive that Keep is a distinguished and vastly experienced historian of Russia in its several phases, that he should apply the rigour of exacting scholarship and the advantage of perspective to the death of a system whose antecedents and birth he had earlier chronicled. The temperate, scholarly analysis of Last of the Empires provides an exhaustive explanation for this complex, protracted tragedy whose consequences are yetfully to unfold.'Times Higher Education SupplementLast of the Empires is filled with interest information gathered from a very broad range of sources which Keep recounts and analyses in a thoroughly professional manner … judicious and well-informed work.‘Times Literary Supplement

John Keep has studied and lectured in Russian History for many years. He was a research assistant with the Foreign Office from 1953 to 1954, a lecturer in Modern Russian History at the University of London between 1954 and 1966, and Reader in Russian Studies there from 1966 to 1970. In 1964 he became a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and he was Professor of Russian History at the University of Toronto between 1970 and 1988. He has now retired.