Spies and Commissars

Key Features

• From the award-winning historian and biographer of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, a break-out book about the early years of Soviet Russia
• Robert Service is widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts on Soviet Russia
• This is much more commercial territory than his previous works-immensely readable narrative nonfiction

About the Book: Spies and Commissars: Bolshevik Russia and The West

Russia and the West in the Russian Revolution

In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, the Western powers were anxious to prevent the spread of Bolshevism across Europe. Lenin and Trotsky were equally anxious that the Communist vision they were busy introducing in Russia should do just that. But neither side knew anything about the other. The revolution and Russia's withdrawal from the First World War had ensured a diplomatic exodus from Moscow and the usual routes to vital information had been closed off. Into this void stepped an extraordinary collection of opportunists, journalists and spies sometimes indeed journalists who were spies and vice versa: in Moscow Britain's Arthur Ransom, the American John Reed and Sidney Reilly 'Ace of Spies' all traded information and brokered deals between Russia and the West; in Berlin, Paris and London, the likes of Maxim Litvinov, Adolf Offer and Kamenev tried to infiltrate the political elite and influence foreign policy to the Bolshevik's advantage. Robert Service, acclaimed historian and one of our finest commentators on matters Soviet, turns his meticulous eye to this ragtag group of people and, with narrative flair and impeccable research, reveals one of the great untold stories of the twentieth century.

About the Author: Robert Service

Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St Anthony's College, Oxford. He has written several books, including the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, Russia: Experiment with a People , Stalin: A Biography and Comrades: A History of World Communism , as well as many other books on Russia's past and present. Trotsky: A Biography was awarded the 2009 Duff Cooper Prize. Married with four children, he lives in London.