Two new biographies of the Left's hero choose to ignore his dark side

Gennadi Sosonko's intimate personal knowledge of the Soviet Union's greatest grandmasters is unrivaled — and he was a useful player himself

Anne Applebaum's magisterial Iron Curtain tells the largely untold story of Eastern Europe's suppression at the hands of the Soviets after the Second World War

Dictatorships may not be lumbering behemoths, but William J Dobson overstates the extent to which authoritarians have changed their ways