A beautifully written and immensely readable chronicle of Russia under the last four tsars...a splendid achievement -The Economist Exactly 175 years ago， on the Senate Square in St. Petersburg， a failed uprising ignited a process that would， one red October， finally sweep the autocracy away. The Shadow of the Winter Palace recounts an extraordinary century of Russian history， a politically tempestuous time that was also a Golden Age of intellectual and artistic achievement-the century of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy， of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. A master stylist and a distinguished historian， Edward Crankshaw limns dazzling portraits of the czars， the revolutionaries， and a host of other unforgettable characters-and provides a riveting， sweeping history "jam-packed with information about the past and implications for the present" (The Atlantic Monthly). "Crankshaw is a superbly literate historian...His greatest forte is a sympathetic yet never mawkish insight into the psyche of the men on whom rested the burden of ruling the vast empire. His portrait of Nicholas I is a masterpiece." -New York Times Book Review