Robert Service is a historian and academic who has written exten-
sively on the entire period of Soviet rule in Russia, particularly the era
from the October Revolution to Stalin’s death. Service is the author of
twelve books, including Spies and Commissars, the acclaimed Lenin:
A Biography, Stalin: A Biography, and Comrades: A History of World
Communism. He is currently an emeritus professor of Russian history
at the University of Oxford and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s
Hoover Institution.