[1] Carr subsequently distilled the research contained in these fourteen volumes into a short book titled The Russian Revolution: from Lenin to Stalin, 1917-1929 which covers the same period as the large history.

The History of Soviet Russia volumes met with a positive reception by historians and a generally negative one by cold war kremlinologists.

[7] American journalist Harrison Salisbury called Carr "one of the half dozen greatest specialists in Soviet affairs and in Soviet-German relations".

[10] British historian Hugh Seton-Watson called Carr "an object of admiration and gratitude" for his work in Soviet studies.

[12] In 1983, four American historians, namely Geoff Eley, W. Rosenberg, Moshe Lewin and Ronald Suny, wrote in a joint article in the London Review of Books of the "grandeur" of Carr's work and his "extraordinary pioneering quality".

[14] Eric Hobsbawm wrote that Carr's History of Soviet Russia "constitutes, with Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, the most remarkable effort of single-handed historical scholarship undertaken in Britain within living memory".

[22] Nenarokov called Carr a "honest, objective scholar, espousing liberal principles and attempting on the basis of an enormous documentary base to create a satisfactory picture of the epoch he was considering and those involved in it, to assist a sober and realistic perception of the USSR and a better understanding of the great social processes of the twentieth century".

[22] However, Nenarokov expressed some concern about Carr's use of Stalinist language such as calling Nikolai Bukharin part of the "right deviation" in the Bolshevik Party without the use of the quotation marks.

[28] Pipes was later to compare Carr's single paragraph dismissal in the History of Soviet Russia of the 1921 famine as unimportant with Holocaust denial.