The history of modern Russia traditionally has Communism at its center. In this radical new history, Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Popov show, however, that the real driver from early in the Russian Revolution was the Cheka—Russia’s shape-shifting intelligence services. Wrapped in a brutal fight to the death with the Party, it lured Russia into submission from 1918. Over close to a century its murder-plots and unsurpassed scheming culminated in the capture of the Kremlin in 2000 by ex-FSB chief Vladimir Putin.

Drawing on Popov’s ground-breaking personal work-archives as senior officer in one of the KGB’s key secret directorates, and Felshtinsky’s encyclopedic knowledge of Russian state archives open in the 1990s, little-known Russian sources, and access to leading oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky, they cast Russia’s modern history in a novel light.

From Red Terror to Terrorist State is the first comprehensive history of the Cheka, its vice-like hold over Russia, global reach and ambitions. A monumental record by two exceptional Russian-intelligence experts, it presents an unrivaled wealth of unknown, authoritative, and detailed facts. Narrated from inside the intelligence services, it fundamentally transforms our understanding of how Russia works and how the Kremlin should be viewed.