Russian Revolution, October 1917. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov - 1870-1924). Undated Communist poster.

Russia

A colourised portrait of Anton Chekhov, from 1901

History heroWilliam Boyd chooses Anton Chekhov (1860–1904).

Uncovering the truth about WW2’s Katyn massacre.

How close to nuclear war did the Cuban Missile Crisis get?.

Happier days: The tsar and his family pose for a portrait in c1910, years before he was swept from power and murdered. Maria, Olga and Tatiana (left to right) are at the back. Alexandra and Nicholas are seated with Alexey at their feet. Anastasia is far right. (Photo by Getty Images)

The last days of the Romanovs: could George V have saved the family?

How constitutions changed the world.

Barbarossa: Hitler’s greatest gamble.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov

Vladimir Lenin and his lust for power

Stalin: the real victor of WW2.

Sending the first man into space.

Police lead away a suffragettes, arrested for chaining herself to the railings of Buckingham Palace

Female activism: 10 remarkable protests from around the world.

The Cold War: everything you wanted to know.

A photograph of the battle of Moscow, 1942, first printed in Signal, a magazine published by the German Third Reich from 1940 to 1945. (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Second World War

Operation Barbarossa: why Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was his greatest mistake

Mary Seacole is best known for her work during the Crimean War, where she cared for injured soldiers. But she was also well-known as a hotelier, traveller and author – a celebrity of the Victorian era. This is a contemporary painting of her

Mary SeacoleVictorian celebrity, joyful hotelier and Crimean nurse

An engraving of the thin Red Line, depicting the 93rd Regiment at the battle of Balaklava

Q&AWhat was the Thin Red Line?

The space race: everything you wanted to know

The space race: everything you wanted to know.

English cavalry attacking the Sikh at the Battle of Aliwal

Victoria the warrior queen.

Illustration of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava during the Crimean War

Victorians and war: which conflicts were fought during the Victorian era?

Editor’s pick: Lenin’s revolutionary train journey.

Monument to Prince Vladimir the Great in Moscow

Q&AWho were the Kievan Rus and what do they have to do with the Vikings?

Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, also known as Rasputin

Rasputin: the 'mad monk' who became a friend to the Romanovs

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall: everything you need to know

The Cuban Missile Crisis: everything you wanted to know.

A mushroom cloud produced by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb during Operation Ivy, an American nuclear test that took place in 1952. (SSPL/Getty Images)

How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world.

History Traveller, part 2: St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow.

Rutger Bregman. (Rutger Bregman (Photo by Maartje ter Horst)

Rutger Bregman’s optimistic history of the world.

Florence Nightingale

The life and legend of Florence Nightingale.

Tectonic foliation in metamorphic rocks at Porthleven, Cornwall. (Photo by Getty Images)

How the world made us.

Hollow victory: Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, attends Paris VE Day celebrations. But many faced privation and uncertainty as the war drew to a close. (Photo by Getty Images)

VE Day at 75The bitter taste of victory: why May 1945 was not a time of celebration for everyone.

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. (Photo by Getty Images)

Yuri Gagarin: 8 things you (probably) didn’t know about the first man in space

On the trail of the lost pianos of Siberia (Photo by Michael Turek)

Russia’s musical journeys.