With his new book, Karl Schlögel has written a historical pièce de résistance: two perfumes, the French Chanel Nº 5 and the Soviet Red Moscow, provide him with the material to explore the dramatic events of 20th-century European history from an unusual perspective. The turmoil of the Russian Revolution brought the formula for a fragrance, which had been created for the 300th anniversary of the Romanovs, to France. It provided the basis for Coco Chanel’s Nº 5 and its Soviet counterpart, which is still produced today under the name »Red Moscow«. Polina Zhemchuzhina, wife of Foreign Minister Molotov, was director of the state-run perfume industry. She later fell victim to a cleansing campaign while Coco Chanel collaborated with the German occupiers. An apparently insignificant coincidence leads Karl Schlögel to a series of astonishing discoveries about an epoch we thought we knew well.