Russia

Hammer and sickle on a red flag

Why did the Soviet Union adopt the hammer and sickle, and how did it become a symbol of communist revolution?

Dictator of Soviet Russia, Joseph Stalin, addresses voters, of the Stalin election district in Moscow, on the even of the election in which Russians voted for the first time under the new constitution.

Josef Stalin: the paranoid dictator who forged the Soviet Union into a superpower

Premium

A German soldier seeks cover from the Soviet artillery fire in a field. In the background, smoke rises from the hitting grenades. (Photo by Alamy)

Operation Bagration 1944: the perfect victory on the Eastern Front . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

Memorial to the U.S. Navy at Utah Beach, where it fought on D-Day in Normandy, France

From the USA’s ‘good war’ to Britain’s ‘great hurrah’: how is D-Day remembered around the world? . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Ewan Macgregor in 'A Gentleman in Moscow' and the Hotel Metropol in Moscow

The incredible real history of A Gentleman in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol

Lenin's body lying in state in 1924

The death of Lenin, a century on: the long afterlife of Russia’s pre-emiment revolutionary

Premium

Gulag inmates were not simply imprisoned, but forced to carry out hard labour. (Photo by Getty Images)

The founding and fall of the USSR . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, seen in 1975, would have been the leading candidate to be the first person to step on the Moon had the Soviets landed before the US (Photo by Space Frontiers/Getty Images)

What if... The Soviets had landed on the Moon first and won the Space Race? . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

Japanese soldiers and sailors disembark at Vladivostok, 22 August 1918. Of all the foreign interventions into the Russian civil war, the one from Japan was by far the largest, growing to 70,000 troops. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Britain’s Russian fiasco: Allied intervention in the Russian civil war . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Soldiers in the Crimean War

Your ultimate guide to the Crimean War

Conspiracy WL Anastasia

Conspiracy Did Anastasia survive the massacre of the Romanovs?

The hammer and sickle, seen held aloft by the figures in this Soviet-era statue, symbolised unity between the working class and the peasantry

When and why did the Soviet Union fall? Your history guide to the USSR

Premium

Cuban Missile Crisis WL

Episode 4 The road to resolution . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

Cuban Missile Crisis WL

Episode 3 Dangerous days . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

Mikhail Gorbachev as seen in a 1995 portrait. His leadership saw the Soviet Union undergo dramatic reform, leading to its dissolution in 1991 (Photo by Dana Gluckstein / mptvimages / eyevine)

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as a Cold War hero or a failed idealist: the historians’ verdict . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.