In a career that spanned more than five decades, Dmitri Baltermants was the premier photographer in the Soviet Union. An official photographer to the Kremlin and the photoeditor of the popular news magazine Ogonyok, Baltermants visually documented the twentieth-century history of this great nation, recording all levels of Soviet society - from the working-class people to the highest political leaders - and showing as never before the Soviets as a truly "human" people.

With an introduction by Baltermants's daughter, Tatiana, and accompanying text by noted historians Theodore H.

Von Laue and Angela Von Laue, Faces of a Nation chronicles the critical events and personalities of the twentieth-century Soviet Union, bringing an intimate understanding to the history and the people of this great nation from the 1917 Revolution through World War II to the cold war and the fall of the "iron curtain." The book closes with Russia's move toward a more democratic government and the 1996 presidential elections.