Surprisingly little known, the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-20 was to change the course of twentieth-century history. In White Eagle, Red Star, Norman Davies gives a full account of the War, with its dramatic climax in August 1920 when the Red Army - sure of victory and pledged to carry the Revolution across Europe to 'water our horses on the Rhine' - was crushed by a devastating Polish attack. Since known as the 'miracle on the Vistula', it remains one of the most decisive battles of the Western world. Drawing on both Polish and Russian sources, Norman Davies illustrates the narrative with documentary material which hitherto has not been readily available and shows how the War was far more an 'episode' in East European affairs, but largely determined the course of European history for the next twenty years or more.

The Battle of Warsaw in August 1920 has been described as one of the decisive battles of European history. At the start of the battle, the Red Army appeared to be on the verge of advancing through Poland into Germany to expand the Soviet revolution. Had the war spread into Germany, another great European war would have ensued, dragging in France and Britain. However, the Red Army was defeated by 'the miracle on the Vistula'. This campaign title explores the origins and outcomes of this momentous battle. In May 1920, the Polish Army intervened in war-torn Ukraine, pushing all the way to Kiev, but the Red Army, by now triumphant in most of the theatres of the Russian Civil War, turned its attention to this new threat. By the late summer of 1920, two Soviet armies had advanced into Poland and the overconfident Soviet leadership dreamed of advancing over a prostrate Polish Army into neighbouring Germany to ignite a Communist revolution in the heart of Europe. Thanks to the low density of forces on both sides and the huge distances involved, the conflict was a war of manoeuvre, with a curious mixture of traditional and advanced tactics. Horse cavalry played a dominant role in the fighting, but aeroplanes, tanks, and armoured trains lent the war an air of modernity. This illustrated study explores the war through the lens of the Battle of Warsaw, the turning point when, after a summer of disastrous retreat, the Polish army rallied and repulsed the Red Army at Warsaw and Lwow.

This volume provides an introduction to the history of the Soviet armed forces from 1917 to 1991. The authors highlight the many facets of the Cold War, including the rise of the Soviet Navy after the Great Patriotic War and the collapse of the Soviet Union which marks its twentieth anniversary in 2011.

Laura Engelstein, one of the greatest scholars of Russian history, has written a searing and defining account of the Russian Revolution, the fall of the old order, and the creation of the Soviet state.

Lenin - the man, the revolutionary, and the world leader - has remained an enigma, part myth arising from the tumult of the Russian Revolution and part image carefully controlled for nearly seventy years by the leaders of the Soviet Union and their sympathizers abroad. The Unknown Lenin, containing long concealed documents from the Soviet archives, helps correct the myth and revise the image. Lenin emerges here as a ruthless, manipulative leader who used terror, subversion, and persecution to achieve his goals.

The dramatic and little-known story of how, in the summer of 1920, Lenin came within a hair's breadth of shattering the painstakingly constructed Versailles peace settlement and spreading Bolshevism to western Europe.

The Riga peace of 1921 ended the Soviet-Polish war and is sometimes considered the most important Eastern European peace treaty of the inter-war period. This book offers an account of how the two sides came to sign the treaty - a pact that established a boundary with a measure of stability that would last untill 1939.