ATLAS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY: From 800 B.C....

ATLAS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY: From 800 B.C. to the Present Day by Martin Gilbert (Oxford University Press: $12.95; 161 pp.). In this concise atlas, Gilbert uses the geography of the past to elucidate the present. The xenophobia of conservative Russian politicians becomes more comprehensible when the reader learns that between 1240 and 1942, virtually every part of the country endured at least one invasion, culminating in the German offensive of 1941-45, in which 7.5 million Soviet soldiers and 3 million civilians perished. The maps showing Russian expansion into Poland and western Ukraine in the late 18th Century and into the Caucasus during the 19th Century help to explain the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union.