The Shadow of the Winter Palace

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 Palacerecounts an extraordinary century of Russian history, a politically tempestuous time that was also a Golden Age of intellectual and artistic achievementthe century of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. A master stylist and a distinguished historian, Edward Crankshaw limns dazzling portraits of the czars, the revolutionaries, and a host of other unforgettable charactersand provides a riveting, sweeping history "jam-packed with information about the past and implications for the present"(Atlantic Monthly).

Edward Crankshaw (1909–1984) reported on Soviet affairs for the London Observer for more than two decades.