In his last major Tübingen lecture, Dietrich Geyer traced Russia's history from its rise to a European great power to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Using his command of language and trove of knowledge and great expertise after five decades of research, the renowned German historian of Eastern Europe introduces the reader to four centuries of Russian and Soviet history.

Dietrich Geyer, Prof. Dr. em. Universität Tübingen; Jörg Baberowski, Osteuropahistoriker, Berlin; Rainer Lindner, Universität Konstanz.