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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, new archives have become available as well as new perspectives, and all the contributors to this new volume have based their research on newly available material. While some chapters update those in the 1997 work, most break new ground, such as those dealing with the aircraft industry, the designers, and Soviet Air combat on the periphery.

The Editors' Introduction places the Russians in the history of aviation in the twentieth century, in terms of design, manufacturing, combat, diplomacy and civil aviation. Thus it is now possible to measure activities over Mother Russia against global developments in this first 100 years of aviation. While the Red Air Force reached its peak during the Great Patriotic War, Aeroflot was only approaching its own zenith when it was broken up by the emergence of the Commonwealth of Independent States after the demise of the Soviet Union.