Robert Service, a noted Russian historian and political commentator, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford.

His research interests concern Russian history and politics in all its aspects, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Service was awarded the 2009 Duff Cooper Prize for his biography Trotsky (Harvard University Press, 2009).

His most recent publication is Spies and Commissars: Russia and the West in the Bolshevik Revolution (McMillan, 2011). He is the author of Dictionary of 20th Century Communism (Princeton University Press, 2010) coedited with Silvio Pons, The Russian Revolution 1900–1927, 4th edition (London, 2009); author of Lenin: A Biography (London, 2000); “Architectural Problems of Reform in the Soviet Union: From Design to Collapse” in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, vol. 2 (2001); Russia: Experiment with a People (London and Harvard, 2002); “Stalinism and the Soviet State Order” in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, vol. 1 (2003); A History of Modern Russia. From Tsarism to the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edition, expanded and updated (London and Cambridge, MA, 2009); Stalin: A Biography (London and Cambridge, MA, 2004); “Military Policy, International Relations and Soviet Security after October 1917,” in Russia: War, Peace and Diplomacy. Essays in Honour of John Erickson (London, 2004); “Soviet Political Leadership and 'Sovietological' Modelling,” in Leading Russia: Putin in Perspective: Essays in Honour of Archie Brown (Oxford , 2005); and Comrades: A World History of Communism (London and Cambridge, MA, 2007).

Service holds an MA in modern languages from the University of Cambridge and an MA and a PhD in government from the University of Essex.