Recounting the tale of the Russians' passage through the shattering experience of the First World War and the revolutions of 1917, W. Bruce Lincoln offers a profoundly intelligent and detailed chronology of the watershed events and devastating hardships that led to the Bolshevik Revolution. Mining an abundance of resources, including letters, diaries, memoirs, government reports, and military dispatches, he allows the reader to step directly into army HQs, state council chambers, boudoirs, trenches, and revolutionary hideaways of the men and women who shaped the events of this crucial era.