It is late February in 1917, and people are dancing in the palaces of Petrograd while protests are spreading in the streets. Believing that the Minister of the Interior has everything under control, Tsar Nikolas II leaves the capital with his glamorous train. He would never set foot there again for in a matter of days the seemingly unshakeable Tsarist Empire collapses, and with it all the alternatives that could have led Russia to a different future.

In spectacular detail, Jörg Baberowski captures the explosive dynamics of the last week of the Tsarist regime. Taking us inside the palaces, streets and halls where power changed hands, Baberowski describes the monumental events leading to the Tsar’s abdication as experienced by his family, cabinet officials, officers and the general public. From hastily called meetings and constantly ringing telephones to officers and reservists on the verge of mutiny, he reveals a political class caught off guard having lost touch with what was really happening, politically, militarily and democratically. This book offers a dazzling account of the fall of the Romanov family as well as an intimate portrait of Russian society at a pivotal point in its history.

Jörg Baberowski is Professor of Eastern European History at Humboldt-University in Berlin. He is the author of many books on the theory of history, on violence and on modern Russian and Soviet history, among others, Scorched Earth: Stalin’s Reign of Terror (2016). He is currently writing a history of Russia in war and revolution.