Lenin and the Making of the Soviet State: A Brief History with Documents

JEFFREY BROOKS is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Thank You Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (2000) and When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (1985; reprinted 2003), which won the Vucinich Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies for best book by an American in 1985. Professor Brooks received the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award in Arts and Sciences for 2004. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

GEORGIY CHERNYAVSKIY, an independent researcher, was a professor at Kharkov University until 1996. His most recent books, both published in Russian, are Sagas of the Truth and Lies: Political Dramas of the Twentieth Century (2004) and The Shadow of the Devil's Wing: Bolshevism and National Socialism--A Comparative Historical Analysis (2003).