Phoenix -- The eighteenth century -- The height and decline of imperial Russia, 1789-1855 -- Domestic convulsions, 1855-1905 -- Fatal foreign entanglements and a failed revolution, 1877-1914 -- Forging Soviet civilization -- The inevitable triumph of Stalinism? -- The Great Patriotic War and the Cold War -- Embattled leader of the "second world", 1953-1982 -- The fall of the Soviet Union and beyond.