This book is intended primarily for the nonspecialist reader and for the student new to the study of Russian and Soviet affairs, although it is hoped that specialists will also find it useful. Therefore I have tried to keep the footnotes to a minimum, restricting them for the most part to works directly quoted, and I have limited the bibliography to those books most likely to be of value to the general reader. Where a work is available in English I have cited the translation. Whenever possible, however, I have gone back to the Russian text to check quotations, revising the translation as indicated.

In transliterating Russian names from the Cyrillic alphabet I have used a modified version of the Library of Congress system. When citing translations and quoting from them, however, I have preserved the transliteration they use. Prerevolutionary spelling has been modernized.

Whether, and to what degree, Russian first names should be Anglicized is largely a matter of taste. In general, I have Anglicized those names that have close English equivalents, as well as the names of rulers. Exceptions have been made in cases where an individual has become known in the West by a particular variant of his name (e.g., Leon rather than Leo or Lev Trotsky, Evgeny rather than Eugene Evtushenko).