Acknowledgements

This work would not have been possible without the constant support, guidance and encouragement of the author’s wife, Dori Riggs.

A great deal of important help was provided by the author’s Russian research assistants: Maria Hoffman, Varvara Kourova and Inna Volkova. More very appreciated work was done by his other assistants, Jackson Kaiser and Derek Turner. Invaluable comments and suggestions were given by Walter Moss, who reviewed a previous edition of the manuscript for this work. Amarjot Singh provided helpful suggestions.

Thanks are also due to the staff of the following institutions which opened their doors and collections to the author, making the research for this work a pleasure:

The University of California at Berkeley

The Hoover Institute at Stanford University

The International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam

The National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg

The State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg

Additionally, the author wishes to acknowledge the innovative and well conceived facilities provided to the public as a whole by Google, Yandex and Wikipedia. They have created on demand resources which are enormously useful for a project of this kind.