Robert Service

Professor of Russian History Robert Service

Trotsky is perhaps the most intriguing and, given his prominence, the most understudied of the Soviet revolutionaries. Using new archival sources, Robert Service offers new insights. He discusses Trotsky's fractious relations with the leaders he was trying to unify; his attempt to disguise his political closeness to Stalin; and his role in the early 1920s as the progenitor of political and cultural Stalinism. Trotsky evinced a surprisingly glacial and schematic approach to making revolution. Service recounts Trotsky's role in the botched German revolution of 1923; his willingness to subject Europe to a Red Army invasion in the 1920s; and his assumption that peasants could easily be pushed onto collective farms. Although Trotsky's followers clung to the stubborn view of him as a pure revolutionary and a powerful intellect unjustly hounded into exile by Stalin, the reality is very different.--From publisher description.

A Biography

Trotsky

This anthology combines five earlier collections of verse by Robert Service, a British-Canadian poet affectionately termed "the Bard of the Yukon" for his poetic depictions of life in rural Northwest Canada. Beginning life in Lancashire, England, as a boy Robert Service demonstrated a liking for verse and poems, particularly the romantic poetry native to England. He spent three years with his aunts in Ayrshire, Scotland before finally settling in Glasgow with his parents. In these formative years, he would often write his own poetry, but never took it seriously as a career - instead, he apprenticed at a bank. Young and idealistic, the age of twenty-one Service moved to the Pacific coast with dreams of working on a ranch as a cowboy. Yet life in North America proved difficult: drifting up and down the west coast, the young man was unable to hold down work for long and often subsisted on family members who had emigrated to Canada. Eventually, the penniless Service would be hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, using his experience from Scotland to land the work. Throughout his undistinguished youth, Service continued to author verses and even made small sums by selling these to magazines such as The Colonist. Yet it was only after his bank sent him to the distant north, to the city of Whitehorse in the Yukon, that poetry became a serious endeavor. Hearing of demand for locally relevant poems, Service at first wrote verse for the local saloon, whose patrons yearned for original entertainment each evening. After meeting with approval here, Service pursued the idea further - he spoke with locals and heard their stories. He would also venture out into the beautiful wilds of Yukon, and using his own creative flair would author many unique verses. Although the many anecdotes Robert Service used to inspire his verse were unlikely to have occurred, they were all good stories representative of Yukon culture. Sending a book of his verses south for publication, it was there that Service met with great acclaim. William Briggs, the Toronto-based publisher sought by Service's father realized that the poetry could be a sensation both in and outside Canada and made an immediate offer. The resulting collection, Songs of Sourdough, was an immediate bestseller. This edition contains Songs of Sourdough together with several later collections authored by Robert Service, who spent later years in Paris. Hoping to replicate the authenticity of his earlier work, Service would often venture to the poorer quarters of Paris to take in the city's vivid underbelly; the resulting collection, Ballads of a Bohemian, is also contained in this collection, as are three other such works.

Songs of a Sourdough, Ballads of a Cheechako, Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, Ballads of a Bohemian

The Collected Verse of Robert Service

A narrative drawing upon primary sources focuses upon the political and economic history of Russia from 1900 through 1997

A History of Twentieth-century Russia

Overthrowing the conventional image of Stalin as an uneducated political administrator inexplicably transformed into a pathological killer, Robert Service reveals a more complex and fascinating story behind this notorious twentieth-century figure. Drawing on unexplored archives and personal testimonies gathered from across Russia and Georgia, this is the first full-scale biography of the Soviet dictator in twenty years. Service describes in unprecedented detail the first half of Stalin's life--his childhood in Georgia as the son of a violent, drunkard father and a devoted mother; his education and religious training; and his political activity as a young revolutionary. No mere messenger for Lenin, Stalin was a prominent activist long before the Russian Revolution. Equally compelling is the depiction of Stalin as Soviet leader. Service recasts the image of Stalin as unimpeded despot; his control was not limitless. And his conviction that enemies surrounded him was not entirely unfounded. Stalin was not just a vengeful dictator but also a man fascinated by ideas and a voracious reader of Marxist doctrine and Russian and Georgian literature as well as an internationalist committed to seeing Russia assume a powerful role on the world stage. In examining the multidimensional legacy of Stalin, Service helps explain why later would-be reformers--such as Khrushchev and Gorbachev--found the Stalinist legacy surprisingly hard to dislodge. Rather than diminishing the horrors of Stalinism, this is an account all the more disturbing for presenting a believable human portrait. Service's lifetime engagement with Soviet Russia has resulted in the most comprehensive and compelling portrayal of Stalin to date.

Stalin

Filled with fresh insights and information, this biography the first Soviet leader delves deeply into this heavily mythologized life to show why he was so feared, respected, and loved in Russia.

Lenin--a Biography

"Service describes in unprecedented detail the first half of Stalin's life - his childhood in Georgia as the son of a violent, drunkard father and a devoted mother; his education and religious training; and his political activity as a young revolutionary. No mere messenger for Lenin, Stalin was a prominent activist long before the Russian Revolution. Equally compelling is the depiction of Stalin as Soviet leader. Service recasts the image of Stalin as unimpeded despot; his control was not limitless. And his conviction that enemies surrounded him was not entirely unfounded.".

Professor of Russian History Robert Service

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