The transliterations in this book are a simplified version of the system used by the US Library of Congress. The first difference consists in the dropping of both the diacritical mark and the so-called soft i. Thus whereas the Library of Congress system has Sokol’nikov and Krestinskii, this book has Sokolnikov and Krestinski. Secondly, the yo sound which appears in words such as Gorbachyov is given as an ë, as in Gorbachëv. Thirdly, the yeh sound is rendered as ye when it occurs at the beginning of proper nouns such as Yeltsin.
These differences are intended to make the text less exotic in appearance. By and large, I have kept to the Russian version of proper names. But some look so odd in English that I have Anglicized them: thus Alexander rather than Aleksandr. Finally there are several non-Russian names in the text. In the case of Polish, Hungarian and Czech leaders, for example, their names are given in their native version; and the names of Ukrainian leaders are transliterated without the simplification used for Russians. This is inconsistent, but it helps to give a sense of the variety of countries involved in Russian history. A further inconsistency lies in my use of Russian-language names for most places in the USSR: thus Kharkov, not Kharkiv. Until all of us become more accustomed to place-names according to their post-Soviet official nomenclature this seems a decent workable compromise.
1 The Russian Empire in 1900
2 The Soviet Union, 1924–1936
3 The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after 1945
4 The Commonwealth of Independent States in 1997
5 The Russian Federation 1997