The purpose of this book is to provide an introduction to contemporary Russia by examining its past. This second edition includes new material and expands sections dealing with the late imperial and Soviet periods. Coverage emphasizes historical developments which cast most light on the present situation, and concentrates on the following themes: how the writ of the Tsar and then the Communist Party came to run over one-sixth of the earth's surface; the complex way in which the country's international setting has interacted with its socio-political development; why Europe's most radical socialist revolution took place here; the impact of this on political, economic, social and cultural developments; and the process by which, in the Soviet period, the state came to mediate such a broad range of human activity. The book argues that this "statization" has conditioned the development of post-Soviet Russia above any other factor. The relationship between state and society, between the power - coercive, administrative, legal, cultural and economic - at the disposal of the tsar, politburo or president and the social body at large, thus forms the central thread of the analysis.