The third volume of The Cambridge History presents a comprehensive political, intellectual, social, and cultural history of Russia and the USSR in the twentieth century. This reference work highlights not only the ethnically Russian region, but also non-Russian peoples within the tsarist and Soviet multinational states and the post-Soviet republics. The chapters address, among other things, the revolutions at the beginning of the twentieth century, the 1920s, the Stalinist years of the 1930s, the Second World War, the period after Stalin, and the eventual demise of the USSR. This study goes beyond traditional Cold War interpretations and draws on new primary and archival sources that have become available since the dissolution of the USSR.