During the twentieth century, Russia, Ukraine and other territories of the former Soviet Union Experienced more violent deaths than anywere else on earth. The First World War, the atrocious civil war of 1918-23, the state-created famine on the early 1930s, the great purges and the vast sacrifice of the war against Hitler. This book is, in part, a history of how Russians remembered their dead; it is also a history of modern Russia from a stage and disturbing angle, weaving a history of the larger society into a narrative of mourning.