What Had Been Made

EPILOGUE · 1922–1924 · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

Look at the settled map. The red has flooded back out almost to the old imperial frontiers, and on 30 December 1922 it acquired a name: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, founded at Moscow as a federation of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia and Transcaucasia — nationality in the form, the Party in the content. The last foreign troops had left Vladivostok in October. The empire had been destroyed and rebuilt on the same ground under a new flag, by a party that had promised peace, land and bread and delivered civil war, requisition and famine — and yet had won, and would now rule for seven deca

The turn: Lenin dies at Gorki, 21 January 1924.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.