This book is a political history of the long twentieth century (1870-1914). Rowe’s contribution focuses on the Soviet Union in the Cold War era. The emergence of the Soviet empire is discussed, and Moscow’s struggle against Western imperialism is explained and reviewed with an emphasis on the Soviet vantage point. Rowe’s chapter gives a glimpse into the economic and political nature of the Soviet state, and seeks answers as to why Moscow chose confrontation in the post-war years and why the Socialist state and its empire finally crumbled in 1991.