In the quarter century before World War I, change came to Russia at a dizzying pace. The industrial revolution, the building of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the disastrous Russo-Japanese War, and the Revolution of 1905 drastically reshaped the lives of both the ruling classes and ordinary people. Imperial Russia was home to more than a hundred million men and women, but by the time Vladimir Lenin announced the Bolsheviks' revolutionary victory, one in three had either perished or fled in exile.



In War's Dark Shadow explores the lives, thoughts, and hopes of the Russian people as they entered the twentieth century.