Russian & Soviet History

David Satter is one of the world's leading commentators on Russia. The two-volume book series Never Speak to Strangers is a collection of his articles and essays. Volume two includes articles about the Russia-Ukraine war and argues that this tragic conflict was preventable. David Satter's writings and interviews describe the psychological roots of the conflict. Picking up where the first...

This book exposes the history and the future of The Wagner Group, Russia's notorious and secretive mercenary army, revealing details of their operations never documented before. Using extensive leaks, first-hand accounts, and the byzantine paper trail left in the group's wake, Jack Margolin traces the Wagner Group from its roots as a battlefield rumour to a private military enterprise tens...

This unique exploration of Russian prose fiction about the Soviet labour camp system since the Stalin era compares representations of identity, ethics and memory across the corpus. The Soviet labour camp system, or Gulag, was a highly complex network of different types of penal institutions, scattered across the vast Soviet territory and affecting millions of Soviet citizens directly and indirectly....

Germany and Russia: two countries whose turbulent and interlocking histories have profoundly shaped the world in which we live today. The long twentieth century was, in many ways, a German-Russian century. In 1917, imperial Germany became the birthplace of Russia's October Revolution, whose ideological radicalism shook the established order of states. With Hitler's seizure of power and the outbreak of...

Preface by Jesse Benjamin and the Walter Rodney Foundation Introduction by Robin D.G. Kelley Afterword by Vijay Prashad In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading revolutionary thinkers of the Black Sixties. He became a leading force of dissent throughout the Caribbean and a lightning rod of controversy. The 1958 Rodney Riots erupted...

A world-renowned expert offers a focused, illustrated account of how Russian and Ukrainian armour fought during the crucial year of 2022, prior to the arrival of Western tanks. The invasion of Ukraine has seen full-scale mechanised warfare return to Europe. While Western armour and training has been a major part of Ukraine’s army since 2023, in the first year of...

Eight years after annexing Crimea, Russia embarked on a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Vladimir Putin viewed this attack on a neighbour as a legacy-defining mission, which sought to restore a central element of Russia's sphere of influence and undo Ukraine's surprisingly resilient democratic experiment. These aspirations were swiftly eviscerated, as the conflict degenerated into a bloody war...

Enriched by extraordinary first-hand accounts, this is a fascinating history of the dying days of the Third Reich as Stalin sought to consolidate his own empire. In January 1945, the Red Army launched a powerful offensive across the Vistula River to drive the Wehrmacht out of Poland, with the intention of securing a start line for an operation that would...

From acclaimed historian and author of Kremlin Winter and Blood on the Snow, a dramatic and expertly researched account of an extraordinary moment in Russia's recent history: The August Coup. In the summer of 1991, a group of eight plotters came together to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachëv, then the president of the USSR. These ruthless conspirators, who occupied positions of high...

Russian expert Mark Galeotti provides an in-depth look at the siege that pitted Ivan the Terrible and Russia's first standing army against the Khanate of Kazan, leading to Muscovy's rise. The Khanate of Kazan, one of the greatest Turkic successor states to the Mongol Golden Horde, had for generations been a thorn in Muscovy's side, raiding its lands for slaves...

Tunnel 29 is a "riveting" (Wall Street Journal) book that tells the unbelievable true story of an escape tunnel under the Berlin Wall—the people who built it, the spy who betrayed it, and the media event it inspired. In September 1961, at the height of the Cold War, 22-year-old Joachim Rudolph escaped from East Germany, one of the world's most...

When Stalin came to power, making music became a dangerous endeavour. Russian composers now had to create work that served the socialist state, and all artistic production was scrutinised for potential subversion. The Sound of Utopia offers a vivid portrait of Soviet musicians and composers struggling to create art in this climate of terror. Some successfully toed the ideological line,...

A 2022 BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: Sunday Times Irish Times Spectator Financial Times Telegraph * Aspects of History ‘The history book you need if you want to understand modern Russia’ ANNE APPLEBAUM ‘A magnificent, magisterial thousand year history of Russia . . . by one of the masters of Russian scholarship’ SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE ‘A great historian at the...

Britain and Russia maintained a frosty civility for a few years after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. However, by the 1820s, their relations degenerated into constant acrimonious rivalry over Persia, the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia – the Great Game – and, towards the end of the century, East Asia. The First Cold War presents for the first time the Russian perspective...

Ukraine expert Winfried Schneider-Deters intervenes in the debate on Russia's war against Ukraine with three timely essays, written during the winter of war in Kyiv in 2022/2023. He critically discusses the ambivalent reception of Russian aggression not only in German society. Calls by intellectuals to stop arms deliveries and to negotiate and compromise with the aggressor are, in effect, calls...

A history of relations between Britain and Russia from the nineteenth century to the present. With Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma, statesman and author David Owen tells the story of Britain’s relationship with Russia, which has been surprisingly underexplored. Through his characteristic insight and expertise, he depicts a relationship governed by principle as often as by suspicion, expediency, and necessity. When...

The monumental biography of the most influential leader on the world stage in the last twenty years. Magisterial - Guardian Outstanding - Ian Kershaw Vladimir Putin is a pariah to the West. Alone among world leaders, he has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm and has threatened to do so. He...

Richard Sorge is one of history's most famous spies. This hard-drinking, womanising, motorcycle-crashing Soviet officer penetrated the German embassy in Tokyo during the 1930s and gathered intelligence credited with changing the course of the Second World War. It is an intriguing tale; but Sorge's spy ring was just one chapter in a much longer history of Russian and Soviet espionage...

An epic story of courage, genius and terrible folly, this is the first history of how the Soviet Union's scientists became both the glory and the laughing stock of the intellectual world. Simon Ings weaves together what happened when a handful of impoverished and underemployed graduates, professors and entrepreneurs, collectors and charlatans, bound themselves to a failing government to create...

The 1917 Revolution sent shockwaves throughout the globe, setting a chain of events in motion that would change the entire course of the 20th century. With the overthrow of the Romanov Dynasty, Russia was plunged into the political unknown and, from the crucible of social unrest, ideological conflict and violent civil war, the world’s first communist state was forged. In...

The issues that are the most and the least divisive in Russia The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 created a new Russia, with new territorial boundaries and new political and economic systems. The hybrid political economy that emerged incorporated commitments to markets and democracy that were undermined by the state's economic interventions and authoritarian restrictions. In this book,...

This book comprises twelve essays on Stalinism by leading international historians, whose work presents a range of interpretations regarding Stalinism's origins and consequences. In particular, the essays address the following questions: Why did the October Revolution of 1917 result not in a communist utopia but in the Stalinist dictatorship, with prison camps, bloody purges, and unprecedented state repression? Was Stalin...

The third edition of this acclaimed book offers a systematic analysis of Putin’s three wars, placing the Second Chechen War, the war with Georgia of 2008, and the current war with Ukraine in their broader historical context. Drawing on extensive original Russian sources, Marcel H. Van Herpen analyzes in detail how Putin’s wars have been prepared and conducted, and why...

For nearly two centuries, readers all over the world have turned to the great canon of Russian literature. Love and death, war and peace, yes, even crime and punishment; readers across the globe have found in Russian writing a substantial measure of intellectual provocation, aesthetic pleasure, emotional resonance, and personal solace. Why We (Still) Need Russian Literature explores the familiar...

After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Russia and the West is more strained now than it has been in the past 25 years. Putin’s motives, his reasons for seeking confrontation with the West, remain for many a mystery. Not for Mikhail Gorbachev. In this new work, Russia’s elder statesman draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience to reveal...

Why aren’t ordinary Russians more outraged by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? Inside the Kremlin’s own historical propaganda narratives, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes complete sense. From its World War II cult to anti-Western conspiracy theories, the Kremlin has long used myth and memory to legitimise repression at home and imperialism abroad, its patriotic history resonating with and persuading large swathes...

The sudden ending of the Cold War, surely the dominant feature of the second half of the 20th century, continues to be one of the most unexpected and perplexing events of our time. Explanations provided by the winners and losers in the Cold War differ considerably and often contradict each other. Even taken together, they do not provide a compelling...

Highly innovative and theoretically incisive, Two Lenins is the first book-length anthropological examination of how social reality can be organised around different yet concurrent ideas of time. Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov grounds his theoretical exploration in fascinating ethnographic and historical material on two Lenins: the first is the famed Soviet leader of the early twentieth century, and the second is a Siberian...

Peter Buck Feller's father disappeared in Moscow in 1938, when Feller was just six months old. As a young boy, he asked his mother about him, but his questions went invariably unanswered. Decades later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Feller embarked on a detailed search to reclaim his father. His journey took him and his adult daughters to...

Explores how the search for meaning in the post-Soviet era has given rise to a revival of ancient spiritual traditions and a plethora of new movements Reveals the survival of ancient Slavic deities, pagan practices, and folk medicine tradition in modern Russia, including the indigenous pre-Christian customs of the Mari people and the shamanic traditions of Siberia. Examines the precursors...

The first English translation of a Kalmyk epic nearly lost to history. This is the first English translation of Jangar, the heroic epic of the Kalmyk nomads, who are the Western Mongols of Genghis Khan’s medieval empire in Europe. Today, Kalmykia is situated in the territory that was once the Golden Horde, founded by the son of Genghis Khan, Juchi....

A fascinating study of the root motivations behind the political activities and philosophies of Putin’s government in Russia “Part intellectual history, part portrait gallery... Black Wind, White Snow traces the background to Putin’s ideas with verve and clarity.” — Geoffrey Hosking, Financial Times “Required reading. This is a vivid, panoramic history of bad ideas, chasing the metastasis of the doctrine...

After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Russia and the West is more strained now than it has been in the past 25 years. Putin’s motives, his reasons for seeking confrontation with the West, remain for many a mystery. Not for Mikhail Gorbachev. In this new work, Russia’s elder statesman draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience to reveal...

The Lost Peace by Richard Sakwa is the first account of the new Cold War, revealing how today’s renewed era of global great power competition could threaten us all. Three decades after the Cold War ended, the hopes for a new and more cooperative era in world politics have been lost. With the rise of China and the resurgence of...

Commissioned by Oliver Stone in 2015 for the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Tariq Ali's captivating screenplay of the life and times of Vladimir Lenin brings one of the most exciting moments in history to life. From the author of The Dilemmas of Lenin, Ali's drama recasts the historic figures anew. From young firebrand to global revolutionary leader, Lenin remains...

A leading expert on foreign policy reveals how tensions between America, NATO, and Russia transformed geopolitics in a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2021 “Sarotte has the receipts, as it were: her authoritative tale draws on thousands of memos, letters, briefs, and other once secret documents—including many that have never been published before—which both fill in and complicate settled narratives...

In his timely new book, Mikhail Shishkin argues that Russia is not a 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma': we just don't know enough about it. So what is the real story behind Putin's autocratic regime and its invasion of Ukraine? In My Russia: War or Peace? Shishkin traces the roots of Russia's problems, from the 'Kievan Rus'...

Russian Machine Guns since 1945, written by noted authority Leroy Thompson, is a fully illustrated study that describes and depicts the machine guns used by Soviet and Russian troops after 1945. Following the USSR’s victory in World War II, the Soviet armed forces adopted a series of new or improved machine guns. At the squad level, the 7.62mm RPD and...

Women in the First World War and the Russian Civil War explores how Russian literature and autobiographical writing portrayed nurses, women soldiers, and commanders who served in the First World War and the Russian Civil War.Simonova’s research challenges the traditional perception of war as a masculine domain, introducing the concept of military femininities, particularly “expanded femininity,” which combines traditional feminine...

The Stakes of a Global War is a compelling collection of editorial articles spanning over two decades, from 1999 to 2025, by one of the bravest and most insightful commentators writing on Russia today, Andrei Piontkovsky. This powerful work dissects the rise of "Putinism" and its profound impact on Russia and the world stage.Piontkovsky, a Russian scientist and political writer,...

With the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s Russia seems to have stepped out of time, reverting to an imperial era of conquest and expansion. But as Roger Reese points out in this comprehensive new history, Russia’s way of war has changed little from one century to the next, one regime to another, from the army of the tsar to the...

This timely text charts the metamorphosis of Russian media and culture in the 21st century. It considers how, when Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, Russia's media and culture industry had enjoyed nearly a decade of almost unrestricted freedom. Yet, by the time he launched his illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia's independent media was crushed, while the...

Rebel Russia by Anna Arutunyan delves into the fascinating saga of Russian rebels such as Navalny, Lenin, and Pugachev, who have captivated readers and writers for decades with their epic battles against the Leviathan of the Russian state. The rebel’s story often culminates in exile, imprisonment, or martyrdom, planting seeds for future reform against the very Leviathan they challenged. Why...

“Moving and illuminating.” - The Washington Post In Displaced, Russian journalist Valery Panyushkin chronicles the devastating impact of his country's invasion of Ukraine. By uncovering the stories of ordinary Ukrainians thrust into the chaos of war and transformed overnight from citizens into victims and refugees, Panyushkin sheds light on the brutal crimes committed by the Russian regime and offers a...

In Displaced, Russian journalist Valery Panyushkin chronicles the devastating impact of his country's invasion of Ukraine. By uncovering the stories of ordinary Ukrainians thrust into the chaos of war, and transformed overnight from citizens into victims and refugees, Panyushkin sheds light on the brutal crimes committed by the Russian regime, and offers a necessary act of truth-telling and atonement. Reporting...

When a twenty-year-old Ukrainian arrived in London as a candidate for the position of secret agent in Britain's Secret Intelligence Bureau, the chiefs of what would one day become MI5 were wise to hire him, as he would become Britain's greatest spy, a man known by several names.His ingenuity and his mastery of the trade, and his audacity and coolness...

‘A brilliant book’ Alastair Campbell, The Rest is Politics'The essential, must-read insider account of the West’s cat and mouse economic warfare against Russia and how it is changing the face of global trade. Magisterial and gripping’ Catherine Belton‘A brilliant, engagingly written and timely book’ Owen Matthews‘A very good book’ Mark Galeotti Undeterred by eight years of timid US sanctions, Vladimir...

Winner of the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, this dramatic new account of the dawn of modern East Asia places Korea at the centre of a transformed world order wrought by imperial greed and devastating wars. In the nineteenth century, Russia participated in two "great games." One, well known, pitted the tsar's empire against Britain in Central Asia....

An original history of Russia's thousand-year past, tracing the forces and the myths that have shaped Putin's politics and rekindled the Cold War.Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped history. In the decades after the collapse of Soviet communism, the West convinced itself that liberal democracy would henceforth be the dominant, ultimately unique, system of governance - a hubris that...

Inspired by the life of Florence Nightingale, this literary gem is part historical fiction, part ghost story, and utterly original. Mayfair, 1910. At the age of ninety, Florence Nightingale is frail and no longer of sound mind. After a storied career as a nurse, writer, and statistician, she now leads a reclusive existence. One summer evening, she is astonished to...

How Russia Got Big accounts for Russia's changing physical scope over some seven centuries. Even people who know little about Russia know that it is big. This concise book tells the story of how it became so. Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in the early 14th century, Paul W. Werth recounts the construction of the world's largest country—from...

An incisive and engaging account of post-Soviet Russia—showing how and why the country has come into confrontation with the West The escalation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered the most violent conflict seen on European soil for decades. Millions of people have been displaced, and thousands killed. As the conflict continues, many in the West are seeking...

Russia's attack on Ukraine marks an epochal break in European and global history. Undoubtedly, the decision to go to war is closely linked to one person, Vladimir Putin, but Russia's war is not driven solely by one man's power calculations. We can only make sense of Russia's actions in Ukraine, argues the distinguished historian Martin Schulze Wessel, by putting them...

A thrilling new biography of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky—composer of some of the world's most popular orchestral and theatrical music. "A lively, argumentative and thoughtful reflection on one of the 19th century's most important musical figures." —Michael O'Donnell, Wall Street Journal Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive,...

In December 1994, having received assurances within the Budapest Memorandum agreement that its sovereignty would be respected and secured by Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Ukraine gave up the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world and joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, endowing the nonproliferation regime with substantial momentum. Based on original and heretofore...

The Russo-Ukraine War is a vital learning opportunity for military strategists across the globe. The first and clearest lesson to be gleaned from it is this: the soundness of a military's strategy and the nimbleness with which it can adapt to unforeseen circumstances are the two most important factors in deciding victory or defeat. The War for Ukraine analyzes the...

As in many postcommunist states, politics in Ukraine revolves around the issue of national identity. Ukrainian nationalists see themselves as one of the world’s oldest and most civilised peoples, as “older brothers” to the younger Russian culture. Yet Ukraine became independent only in 1991, and Ukrainians often feel like a minority in their own country, where Russian is still the...

A vivid and intimate account of the Ukrainian Revolution, the rare moment when the political became the existential. "Shore brilliantly captures the contingency, uncertainty, and chaos that was transmuted into the remarkable, seemingly transcendent solidarity of the Maidan's unified resistance to a corrupt and cruel régime." — Charles Taylor, professor emeritus of philosophy, McGill University What is worth dying for?...

An original investigation into the reading strategies and uses of books by Jews in the Soviet era. In The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf, Marat Grinberg argues that in an environment where Judaism had been all but destroyed, and a public Jewish presence routinely delegitimised, reading uniquely provided many Soviet Jews with an entry to communal memory and identity. The bookshelf was...

Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, its legacy and the accompanying Russian-American tension continue to loom large. Russia’s access to detailed information on the United States and its allies may not seem so shocking in this day of data clouds and leaks, but long before we had satellite imagery of any neighbourhood at a finger’s reach,...

Once you accept that the impossible is really possible, what happens in Russia makes perfect sense. "A few pages into David Satter’s truly terrifying book, one realises that his title is smack-on accurate: modern Russia is a frightening member of the world community to an extent of which most persons are blissfully unaware."—Joseph C. Goulden, Washington Times "Satter...persuasively supplies evidence...

Celebrated food scholar Darra Goldstein takes readers on a vivid tour of history and culture through Russian cuisine. The Kingdom of Rye unearths the foods and flavours of the Russian land. Preeminent food studies scholar Darra Goldstein offers readers a concise, engaging, and gorgeously crafted story of Russian cuisine and culture. This story demonstrates how national identity is revealed through...

Celebrated food scholar Darra Goldstein takes readers on a vivid tour of history and culture through Russian cuisine. The Kingdom of Rye unearths the foods and flavours of the Russian land. Preeminent food studies scholar Darra Goldstein offers readers a concise, engaging, and gorgeously crafted story of Russian cuisine and culture. This story demonstrates how national identity is revealed through...

The Frontline presents a selection of essays drawn together for the first time to form a companion volume to Serhii Plokhy's The Gates of Europe and Chernobyl. Here, he expands upon his analysis in earlier works of key events in Ukrainian history, including Ukraine's complex relations with Russia and the West, the burden of tragedies such as the Holodomor and...

The Frontline presents a selection of essays drawn together for the first time to form a companion volume to Serhii Plokhy's The Gates of Europe and Chernobyl. Here, he expands upon his analysis in earlier works of key events in Ukrainian history, including Ukraine's complex relations with Russia and the West, the burden of tragedies such as the Holodomor and...

Looking two hundred years in the past, an enlightening study of the neglected liberal tradition in Russian political thought with resonance for today. On December 14, 1825, a group of young Russian army officers led three thousand troops to Senate Square in St. Petersburg, aiming to force the senate to adopt a liberal constitution and transform the Russian Empire. The...

The Collector is a fascinating biography detailing the life of Sergei Shchukin, the great collector who transformed Russia’s art world. Sergei Shchukin was not only a highly successful textiles merchant in the latter half of the nineteenth century, but he also possessed an extraordinary eye for beauty. Shchukin was one of the first to appreciate the quality of the Impressionists...

In this overview of the Baltic region from the Vikings to the European Union, Michael North presents the sea and the lands that surround it as a Nordic Mediterranean, a maritime zone of shared influence, with its own distinct patterns of trade, cultural exchange, and conflict. Covering over a thousand years in a part of the world where seas have...

The extraordinary true story of Polish-Jewish child refugees who escaped the Nazis and found refuge in Iran. More than a million Jews escaped east from Nazi-occupied Poland to Soviet-occupied Poland. There, they suffered extreme deprivation in Siberian gulags and “Special Settlements” and then, once “liberated,” journeyed to the Soviet Central Asian Republics. The majority of Polish Jews who survived the...

A compelling intellectual biography of Stalin told through his personal library In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words, and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A...

A compelling intellectual biography of Stalin told through his personal library "[A] fascinating new study."—Michael O'Donnell, Wall Street Journal In this engaging life of the twentieth century's most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words, and his voracious appetite...

A penetrating look into the extreme plutocracy Vladimir Putin has created and its implications for Russia’s future “Full of insight and informed judgment, former diplomat Anders Åslund takes aim at the ‘authoritarian kleptocracy’ and the inner circles of power.”—John Lloyd, Financial Times This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control...

A history of relations between Britain and Russia from the nineteenth century to the present. With Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma, statesman and author David Owen tells the story of Britain’s relationship with Russia, which has been surprisingly underexplored. Through his characteristic insight and expertise, he depicts a relationship governed by principle as often as by suspicion, expediency, and necessity. When...

Remembering Katyn explores the Soviet massacre of over 21,000 Polish prisoners in 1940, remembered today as Stalin’s emblematic mass murder, shrouded in one of history's most extensive cover-ups. Paradoxically, the majority of its victims perished far from the forest in western Russia that lends its name to this tragedy, with their remains buried in killing fields scattered across Russia, Ukraine,...

In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a bloody escalation of a conflict that had begun eight years earlier. What drove Vladimir Putin to launch Europe's largest land war since World War II? Lucian Kim—an on-the-ground reporter in the region for decades—offers a gripping, definitive account of Russia's path to war, from Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Maidan...

How succession in authoritarian regimes was less a competition of visions for the future and more a settling of scores “Joseph Torigian’s stellar research and personal interviews have produced a brilliant, meticulous study. It fundamentally undermines what political scientists have presumed to be the way Chinese Communist and Soviet politics operate.”—Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine The political successions...

So shattering were the aftereffects of Kishinev, the rampage that broke out in late-Tsarist Russia in April 1903, that one historian remarked it was "nothing less than a prototype for the Holocaust itself." In three days of violence, 49 Jews were killed and 600 raped or wounded, while more than 1,000 Jewish-owned houses and stores were ransacked and destroyed. Recounted...

A pioneering examination of history, current affairs, and daily life along the Russia–China border, one of the world's least understood and most politically charged frontiers. The border between Russia and China winds for 2,600 miles through rivers, swamps, and vast taiga forests. It's a thin line of direct engagement, extraordinary contrasts, frequent tension, and occasional war between two of the...

Why aren’t ordinary Russians more outraged by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? Inside the Kremlin’s own historical propaganda narratives, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes complete sense. From its World War II cult to anti-Western conspiracy theories, the Kremlin has long used myth and memory to legitimise repression at home and imperialism abroad, its patriotic history resonating with and persuading large swathes...