The Shadow of the Winter Palace. Russia's Drift to Revolution 1825-1917

Exactly 175 years ago, on the Senate Square in St. Petersburg, a failed uprising ignited a process that would, one red October, finally sweep the autocracy away. The Shadow of the Winter Palace recounts an extraordinary century of Russian history, a politically tempestuous time that was also a Golden Age of intellectual and artistic achievement—the century of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. A master stylist and a distinguished historian, Edward Crankshaw limns portraits of the czars, the revolutionaries, and a host of other characters—and provides a riveting history packed with information about the past and implications for the present.