Russia

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A portrait of Babur, founder of the Mughal dynasty which ruled over much of India from 1526 to 1858. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

How people make the past . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Q&A Why did the Germans never convince the Japanese to start a serious invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War?

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The Romanovs, 1913: Nicholas II with his wife and children. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Books interview with Simon Sebag Montefiore: The Romanovs . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of the author Leo Tolstoy on his 80th birthday. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

A brief history of War and Peace

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Stalin’s early years and Mein Kampf . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Red Army tank drivers on a street in the city of Rakov, Poland

1939: When Poland was torn to pieces

First World War: A German cavalry patrol in the battle of Tannenberg, where the Russian Narew-Army was encircled and beaten by the German troops led by Hindenburg and Ludendorff. (Film still!), 26.08.191 Date: 1914

First World War

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the bloody eastern front in 1914

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Monte Cassino and revolutionary Russia . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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The family of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, c1910.

Books interview with Helen Rappaport: the Romanov sisters . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Sport offered the two sides the perfect stage on which to get one over on the 'enemy', says Dominic Sandbrook. Pictured here is a queue for a football match between Arsenal and Dynamo Moscow. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Cold War in your living room . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The notion that men fought and died 'for nothing' is a fallacy, says Max Hastings. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

1914: Why Britain had to go to war

A Second World War memorial monument depicting Soviet soldiers

Q&A Why did Britain and France not declare war on the Soviet Union when the Red Army marched on Poland in September 1939?

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Illustration by Jonty Clark.

Ye olde travel guide: Astrakhan 1747 . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

German soldiers with a horse-drawn cart during the retreat from Ukraine in 1943. The idea of Teutonic efficiency was a triumph of Nazi spin, says James Holland. (Keystone/Getty Images)

The great misconceptions of the Second World War

The Battle on the Ice, fought between the men of Novgorod and the Teutonic Knights, was a landmark in European history, says Dominic Sandbrook. (Alamy)

A big day in history: Nevsky’s Russians crush the Teutonic Knights