KARL SCHLOGEL’S book is an intriguing history of the development of two perfumes in two different worlds, one of which is globally famous, the other almost unknown outside its homeland.

He begins his account in imperial Russia, where a highly developed perfume industry thrived in Moscow. They were led by two French perfume houses, Brocard & Co and Rallet & Co, with their head perfumers — August Michel at Brocard and Ernest Beaux at Rallet — working on closely related perfumes in honour of the tricentenary of the Romanov dynasty.

The October Revolution brought to an end this world of glittering excess for the few. But scents can survive revolutions and Beaux fled back to France, presenting his formula to Coco Chanel.

Michel stayed on in Moscow and continued to work at Brocard, now nationalised and renamed State Soap Factory No 5 — that number is purely coincidental — and while Beaux’s formula became the basis of Chanel Nº 5, in the USSR Michel developed Red Moscow (Krasnaya Moskva), the most successful perfume in the Soviet Union and still popular today.

Throughout the book, Schlogel highlights similarities and differences between the two worlds of France and the USSR, Beaux and Michel the perfumers and Coco Chanel and Polina Zhemchuzhina-Molotova, production controllers.

Although the life of Chanel may be well-known, there were some unsavoury aspects to her character, such as her distaste for Jews and communists. Born the daughter of a pedlar and a washerwoman, she quickly made her way to the top of international society, hobnobbing with the likes of Churchill, the Duke of Westminster and Edward, Prince of Wales.

When WWII broke out, she closed her business in revenge for her seamstresses going on strike in 1936 over pay and conditions. During the war, she lived in the Ritz alongside the Nazi top brass, having an affair and working with an officer in Nazi intelligence.

After the war, collaboration charges against her were dropped, despite obvious evidence — speculation has it that Churchill intervened on her behalf.

In contrast, Polina Zhemchuzhina-Molotova, who spent many years at the top of the Soviet cosmetics industry, is virtually unknown outside her own country. Also born very poor, she joined the Bolshevik Party and the Red Army in 1918, working under cover at great risk to her life at a time when Bolshevik success was by no means certain.

She rose to membership of the Communist Party central committee in 1939 and was the first woman to serve as a people’s commissar. If she is known in the West at all, it is probably as Madame Molotov, the wife of Stalin’s Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Chanel and Zhemchuzhina moved from the fringes of society to the centre, both geographically and in terms of power, showing resolute determination and availing themselves of every opportunity. But while one was loyal to herself, the other was devoted to the society she believed in.

As a professor of Eastern European history, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Schlogel veers more towards the politics than the perfume, claiming that the history of these two scents can give us a better understanding of the divisions of the 20th century.

As he plods a familiar path through the oft-repeated arguments against the Soviet Union, it almost seems that the history of the two perfumes is a hook on which to hang his views on that country, which may grate with some.

Nevertheless, a very interesting and readable book.

Published by Polity, £20.