ROBERT SERVICE is a British historian, academic and author who has written extensively on the history of the Soviet Union, particularly the era from the October Revolution to Stalin’s death. He was until 2013 a professor of Russian history at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is best known for his biographies of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. His latest books include The End of the Cold War: 1985–1991 (2015), The Last of the Tsars: Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution (2017), and Russia and Its Islamic World (2017).