Russian Revolution, October 1917. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov - 1870-1924). Undated Communist poster.

Russia

Music and revolution. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

ExploreSt Petersburg, Russia: the Venice of the north. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The World Cup story. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Scythians: the art of war

Striking workers carry banners through the streets of Petrograd (St Petersburg) at the start of the February Revolution that brought the fall of the Russian monarchy the next month. (Getty Images)

Russia’s revolutions: How 1917 shaped a century

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, depicted in an undated Communist poster. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The red dawn: the October Revolution

The LibraryVoices of the Cold War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev looking disappointed frustrated

The 1986 Reykjavík Summit: when hopes for nuclear peace were dashed

Czar Nicholas II with family. (Getty Images)

Books interview with Robert Service: "Nicholas II brought the Russian Revolution upon his own head". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Photograph of Vladimir Lenin, 1901. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

First World War

Books interview with Catherine Merridale: "This was the most important railway journey made in the 20th century"

Former US president Ronald Reagan and president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev during a meeting in Moscow, Russia, on 16 September 1990. (Photo by Wojtek Laski/Getty Images)

Transcending the Cold War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Sheet music.

History quiz – songs, space stations and capital cities. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Cold War summits. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Eleanor of Aquitaine.

History quiz – spacewalks, battles and Eleanor of Aquitaine. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

1914: Why Britain had to go to war

A Second World War memorial monument depicting Soviet soldiers

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

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

George Frederick Handel married opera's passion with the respectability of biblical texts, says Tim Blanning. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

10 milestones in the history of western music