The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I and Revolution

An Economist Best Book of the Year
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year.

"Lieven has a double gift: first, for harvesting details to convey the essence of an era and, second, for finding new, startling, and clarifying elements in familiar stories.  This is history with a heartbeat, and it could not be more engrossing."—Foreign Affairs

One of the world’s leading scholars offers a fresh interpretation of the linked origins of World War I and the Russian Revolution.

World War I and the Russian Revolution together shaped the twentieth century in profound ways. In The End of Tsarist Russia, Dominic Lieven connects for the first time the two events, providing both a history of the First World War’s origins from a Russian perspective and an international history of why the revolution happened.

Based on exhaustive work in seven Russian archives as well as many non-Russian sources, Dominic Lieven’s work is about far more than just Russia. By placing the crisis of empire at its core, Lieven links World War I to the sweep of twentieth-century global history. He shows how contemporary issues such as the struggle for Ukraine were already crucial elements in the run-up to 1914.

By incorporating into his book new approaches and comparisons, Lieven tells the story of war and revolution in a way that is truly original and thought-provoking.