Event Calendar
Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and noted Russian historian, Robert Service, will discuss his newest book "Spies and Commissars: Russia and the West in the Bolshevik Revolution" (McMillan, 2011). This book tells the story of how the Bolsheviks tried to spread their revolution across Europe, revealing that revolutionary Russia was shaped not only by Lenin and Trotsky, but by an extraordinary miscellany of people: spies and commissars, but also diplomats, reporters, and dissidents, as well as intellectuals, opportunistic businessmen, and casual travelers. Service tells the story of these characters: everyone from the ineffectual but perfectly positioned Somerset Maugham to vain writers and revolutionary sympathizers whose love affairs were as dangerous as their politics.
Service is also fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, and has authored numerous books. Notably, he was awarded the 2009 Duff Cooper Prize for his biography Trotsky (Harvard University Press, 2009).
This event is open to the public.