The book won the 2005 Robert Ferrell Award from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR).
The revised and expanded edition, The February Revolution, Petrograd, 1917: The End of the Tsarist Regime and the Birth of Dual Power, was published in 2017.
[4] His life-long interest in the February Revolution has culminated in the publication: The Last Tsar: the Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs (Basic Books: 2024).
[6] Hasegawa puts forward the view that the Soviet entry into the war, by breaking of the Neutrality Pact, played a more important role than the atomic bombs in Japan's decision to surrender.
[7] That view is in contrast to earlier critics of the bombing, such as Gar Alperovitz, who argued that US President Harry S. Truman's underlying objective was showcasing the might of the US military as a deterrent to the ambitions of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
According to the Australian historian Geoffrey Jukes, "[Hasegawa] demonstrates conclusively that it was the Soviet declaration of war, not the atomic bombs, that forced the Japanese to surrender unconditionally.