the History of Russia and Soviet Union: War, Science, Rise Fall a Superpower, 19171991

How do you write the history of a country that spent seventy years arguing with its own arithmetic?The Soviet Union announced 48,745 dead in the Winter War; its own archives recorded 126,875. It suppressed a census because the population came out too low, then published a figure the historians still distrust. Western analysts, correcting for the silence, went wrong in the other direction. This book follows the Soviet century from the bread queue that ended a dynasty to the three signatures that ended the state - and wherever the numbers are disputed, it says so, names who counted what, and explains why they differ.Inside, you'll find: - The Great Patriotic War in full - Barbarossa's 3.8 million men and 700,000 horses, the 1,523 factories moved beyond German reach in five months, and why Prokhorovka involved 294 German tanks rather than the 700 of legend.- The weapons, compared honestly - 84,070 T-34s against 1,347 Tiger Is, and the design philosophy that produced that ratio.- The Cold War by the numbers - from one Soviet warhead in 1949 to 40,159 in 1986, and the thirteen days when Washington believed it faced 11,000 Soviet troops on Cuba rather than 43,000.- Science that led the world, and science that lost it - Venus, Sputnik and the tokamak beside Lysenko, the cloned IBM, and a programmer who earned nothing from Tetris.- Why it ended - 77.85 percent voted to keep the Union in March 1991, and it was gone by December.No background in Russian history is assumed. Every technical term is explained where it appears.The Soviet Union lasted sixty-nine years and is still being counted.