In the Perestroika era, a popular joke was that the Soviet Union was the only country in the world with an unpredictable past – a comment on Soviet historical ideology and the speed and superficiality of its replacement. Indeed Russia had been a land of thinly populated northern forests for the first eight or nine centuries of its existence, but it turned into one of the world’s most populous countries and is still the world’s largest in area. It was the world’s fifth industrial power in 1914 while still overwhelmingly rural. Then it embarked, or the Bolsheviks embarked it, on a utopian scheme to realize a new socialist order of society, one without classes or exploitation. At the same time they sought to become a fully industrialized modern state. In the latter goal it largely succeeded, if at colossal cost. For a short time, the Soviet Union was a superpower, or was almost one. For most of the twentieth century Russia was even a major player in world science and in literature, even if these never reached the heights achieved in the era of the tsars. The fate of the socialist dream is more a matter of irony than tragedy: the ruling party that was to create the new order, after seventy years of effort, effectively decided that wealth was better than power, that inequality was better than equality and it privatized itself. The result was a hybrid society, with private businesses that are not quite private and government institutions not quite governmental. The smaller and less powerful but (for many) richer state that succeeded the Soviet Union appeared on the scene mimicking the old Russia, with an ambiguous place in the world and in the eyes of its people. Whether or not it can realize the potential created by the previous millennium of Russian (and Soviet) history remains to be seen.
Further Reading
Russian history has never been blessed with an abundance of accessible works on its history and culture in English. Much of the existing literature is now seriously out of date and is not being replaced quickly. Hence the following is by no means an exhaustive list; rather it attempts to provide the general reader with accessible literature where possible though it occasionally includes academic studies. Reference works such as the Cambridge History of Russia, 3 vols. (2006) provide full bibliography. RUS AND EARLY RUSSIA
For the earliest centuries of Russian history, to the time of Peter the Great, the situation is particularly bad. The best overall introduction to the earlier centuries is Janet Martin, Medieval Russia 980–1584 (1995). John Fennell’s History of the Russian Church to 1448 (1995) covers the medieval period. Translations of the devotional and other literature of medieval Russia are Serge Zenkovsky, ed., and trans., Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales (1974) and Michael Klimenko, ed., Vita of St. Sergii of Radonezh (1980). Medieval Novgorod has never inspired the works in English that it deserves, especially after the decades of archeological excavation. An introduction is Henrik Birnbaum, Lord Novgorod the Great (1981). For the Mongol invasion and rule the foundation is Charles Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde (1985).
For the politics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see J. L. I. Fennell, Ivan the Great of Moscow (1963), Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (2003), the old but still useful S. P. Platonov, The Time of Troubles (1970), Philip Longworth, Alexis, Tsar of All the Russias (1984), and Lindsey Hughes, Sophia: Regent of Russia 1657–1704 (1990). Isolde Thyret, Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia (2001) provides a new perspective on the ruling dynasty. The evolution of the church and religion is covered mainly in scholarly monographs such as Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia: the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1992) and Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual and Reform: the Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the Seventeenth Century (1991). Ioann Shusherin’s seventeenth century account of Patriarch Nikon’s life has been translated as From Peasant to Patriarch, Kevin Kain and Katia Levintova, translators (2007) and see Archpriest Avvakum, the Life Written by Himself, trans. Kenneth Brostrom (1979). THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The political and cultural history of the era of Peter the Great and the eighteenth century are well covered. For Peter the best all around study remains Reinhard Wittram, Peter der Grosse, Czar und Kaiser (1964). More modern treatments are Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (1998) and Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great 1671–1725: the Struggle for Power (2001). A shorter version exists for both: Hughes’ Peter the Great: a Biography (2002) and Bushkovitch, Peter the Great (2001). The empresses between Peter and Catherine have not attracted much attention, but see Evgenii Anisimov, Empress Elizabeth: Her Reign and Her Russia 1741–1761, trans. John T. Alexander (1995); and Five Empresses, trans. Kathleen Carol (2004). Isabel de Madariaga’s Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (1981) and John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great: Life and Legend (1989) are lively accounts of the empress and her court while Simon Sebag Montefiore’s massive Prince of Princes: the Life of Potemkin (2000) describes a crucial figure. The correspondence of Catherine and Potemkin has been translated as Love and Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin, trans. Douglas Smith (2004). For court politics and other events see David L. Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian Russia: the Panin Party (1975) and John T. Alexander, Emperor of the Cossacks; Pugachev and the Frontier Jacquerie of 1773–1775 (1973). Influential attempts to analyze the Russian state are Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russa 1600–1800 (1983) and John P. LeDonne, Absolutism and Ruling Class: the Formation of the Russian Political Order 1700–1825 (1991). Social history is less well represented in English but see Michelle Marrese, A Woman’s Kingdom: Noblewomen and the Control of Property in Russia 1700–1861 (2002) and David Ransel, A Russian Merchant’s Tale: the Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tolchenov, Based on His Diary (2009). Important studies of foreign policy and empire include Jerzy Lukowski, The Partitions of Poland 1772, 1793, 1795 (1999); Alan W Fisher, The Russian Annexation of Crimea 1772–1783 (1970); and Michael Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Meet: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads 1600–1772 (1992).
In the eighteenth century Russia entered the world of European culture and the Enlightenment. James Cracraft chronicles Peter’s time in The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (1988), The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery (1997), and The Petrine Revolution in Russian Culture (2004). The best introductions to Russian culture from Peter to 1800 are Marina Ritzarev, Eighteenth Century Russian Music (2006); W Gareth Jones, Nikolay Novikov: Enlightener of Russia (1984); Denis Fonvizin, Dramatic Works, trans. Marvin Kantor (1974) and Political and Legal Writings, trans. Walter Gleason (1985); and Alexander Radishchev, Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, trans. Leo Wiener (1966).
For the time of Paul and Alexander I Roderick E. McGrew, Paul I of Russia 1754–1801 (1992) attempts to defend Paul’s reputation, while Janet M. Hartley, Alexander I (1994) is briefer and more balanced. Russia’s wars are well handled in Norman E Saul, Russia and the Mediterranean 1797–1807 (1970) and Dominic Lieven’s magisterial Russia against Napoleon: the Battle for Europe 1807 to 1814 (2009). For the internal politics of the empire in the first half of the nineteenth century see Marc Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia 1772–1839 (2d ed., 1969); W. Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias (1989). On the Decembrist revolt a now rather old introduction is Anatole G. Mazour, First Russian Revolution, 1825: the Decembrist Movement: its Origins, Development, and Significance (1967), while more modern treatments of the main figures include Patrick O’Meara, K F Ryleev: a Political Biography of the Decembrist Poet (1984); Glynn Barratt, Rebel on the Bridge: a Life of the Decembrist Baron Andrey Rozen 1800–1884 (1975); and Christine Sutherland, Princess of Siberia: the Story of Maria Volkonsky and the Decembrist Exiles (1984). The debates inside the Russian intelligentsia from 1825 to the Crimean War are reflected in Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: the History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth Century Russian Thought, trans. Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka (1975) and E. H. Carr
, The Romantic Exiles (1933). The best portrait of the era is Alexander Herzen’s autobiography, My Past and Thoughts, trans. Constance Garnett, 4 vols. (1968). The evolution of thought in government circles is the theme of Cynthia Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education: an Intellectual Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov 1786–1855 (1984) and W Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats 1825–1861 (1986). FROM THE GREAT REFORMS TO 1917
For the reform era W. Bruce Lincoln, The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia (1990) provides an introduction. Unfortunately there is no full biography of Alexander II or any other major figure of the government during his reign. The revolutionary movement during the same period has attracted more attention. Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What is To Be Done?, trans. Michael R. Katz (1989) influenced a whole generation, for which see Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (1988). Another important influence was Herzen, whose writings in translation are Alexander Herzen, From the Other Shore and The Russian People and Socialism, trans. Moura Budberg and Richard Wollheim (1979). A brilliant portrait of the age is Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons. The fullest account of the movement is Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia, trans. Francis Haskell (1960).
Sidney Harcave, Count Sergei Witte and the Twilight of Imperial Russia : a Biography (2004); Terrence Emmons, The Formation of Political Parties and the First National Elections in Russia (1983); Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, 2 vols. (1998–1992); and the same author’s P A Stolypin, The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia (2001) cover the politics of the last generation before 1917. Sergei U. Witte’s Memoirs of Count Witte, trans. Sidney Harcave (1990) provide a vivid if scarcely objective picture of the government.
Russia’s First World War is a neglected subject. For the background see D. C. B. Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War (1983) and for war itself Norman Stone, The Eastern Front 1914–1917 (1975) is still the only overview. See also Peter Gatrell, Russia’s First World War: a Social and Economic History (2005). Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, 2 vols. (1980–1987) provides a transition to the revolution. The revolution itself was fully portrayed in William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 2 vols. (1987, originally 1935). The best brief account is Steven Anthony Smith, The Russian Revolution: a Very Short Introduction (2002). John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World (originally 1919) is the classic picture of October by a sympathetic American. For the February Revolution Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, The February Revolution: Petrograd 1917 (1981) is unsurpassed, and on October there is Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: Petrograd 1917 (1976). For the Civil War see Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (1987) and Jonathan D. Smele, The Civil War in Siberia: the Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak 1918–1920 (1996). ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Work on the economic history of Russia is mostly old and not numerous. An exception is Peter Gatrell, The Tsarist Economy 1850–1917 (1986). The largest group in Russian society, the peasantry has not found many students in the English speaking world, but to be recommended are David Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930: the World the Peasants Made (1999); Steven L. Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control in Russia: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov (1986); and Christine Worobec, Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period (1991). The merchants becoming modern businessmen have found their historians in Alfred Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (1982) and T. C. Owen, Capitalism and Politics in Russia: a Social History of the Moscow Merchants 1855–1905 (1981). The working class and its early strike and political activity was once a subject of great interest. Reginal Zelnik, Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: the Factory Workers of St. Petersburg 1855–1870 (1971) and Walter Sablinsky, The Road to Bloody Sunday: Father Gapon and the St. Petersburg Massacre of 1905 (1976) were pioneers. Women, the family and sexuality are the subject of Barbara Engel, Between the Fields and City: Women, Work and the Family in Russia 1861–1914 (1994), the same author’s Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia (1983); Richard Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism 1860–1930 (1978); and Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-siècle Russia (1992). There is no overview of the history of religion in modern Russia for any period, but useful monographs include Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of the Revolution (2004); Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (2000); and for the theologically inclined Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov – Orthodox Theology in a New Key (2000). FOREIGN POLICY AND EMPIRE
The study of Russia as an empire has flourished in recent years. Older studies looked at Russia as a conglomerate of national minorities: Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: a Multiethnic History, trans. Alfred Clayton (2001); Ronald Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation (2d ed. 1994); Mikhailo Hrushevskyi, History of Ukraine (1941); M. B. Olcott, The Kazakhs (2d ed., 1995); and Edward C. Thaden, ed., Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland (1981). On the Jews in Russia Hans Rogger, Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia (1986) and Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: the Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (2002) offer some new perspectives. More recent work takes the perspective of empire: Robert Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (2006); Daniel R. Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (2003); Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East 1840–1865 (1999); and David Wolff, To the Harbin Station: the Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria 1898–1914 (1999). Some historians combine foreign policy with the imperial perspective, such as David Schimmelpenninck, Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan (2001). The crux of Russian foreign policy in the nineteenth century was its involvement in the Balkans with the Ottoman Empire and the Slavs. See Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements 1806–1914 (1991); and David Goldfrank, The Origins of the Crimean War (1994). THE SOVIET ERA
For the Soviet era, the most accessible are probably the recent biographies of Soviet leaders. Robert Service’s trilogy Lenin (2000), Stalin (2004), and Trotsky (2009) make a good beginning. William Taubman’s Khrushchev: the Man and his Era (2003) covers his subject’s early years in the Stalin era as well as his years of power. Ronald Suny’s The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States (2d ed., 2011) is more comprehensive and provides extensive bibliography.
The 1920’s and 1930’s are the subject of many recent monographs. Some of the more useful are Jeremy Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question 1917–1923 (1999); Lewis Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society between Revolutions 1918–1929 (1992); Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: a Study of Collectivization (1968); Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times – Soviet Russia in the 1930’s (1999) and her Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (1996); and Wendy Goldman, Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Socialt Life 1917–1936 (1993); Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union 1923–1939 (2001); Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle, trans. Nora Seligman Fvorov (2009). DOCUMENTARY COLLECTIONS
The Soviet Union was not just another dictatorship. It also was an attempt to remake the whole of society, and even the best historians often have difficulty conveying a sense of what life was about in those years. Since 1991 Russian historians have produced a vast and continuing flood of documents from that era, many of which have been translated into English. A dip into the volumes of the Yale University Press series, Annals of Communis
m, will reward the general reader. The most useful are: J. Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov, eds., The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks 1932–1939 (1999); History of the Gulag: from Collectivization to the Great Terror, Oleg V. Khlevniuk et al. ed., trans. Vadim A. Staklo (2004); The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence 1931–1936, ed., R.W. Davies et al., trans. Steven Shabad (2003); Stalin’s Letters to Molotov 1925–1936, eds. Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg V. Khlevniuk, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (1995); War against the Peasantry 1927–1930, ed. Lynne Viola et al., trans., Steven Shabad (2005). THE WAR
The Soviet war against Nazi Germany has given rise to a gigantic and ever-expanding literature, complicated by new understanding of both sides. The best overall history is that of Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: the Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945 (2005). A portrait of Moscow in the terrible days of 1941 is Rodric Braithwaite, Moscow 1941: a City and its People at War (2006). For those with greater interest in detailed military history the many works of David Glantz, such as When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (1995) will be satisfying. For understanding the German side of the war the turning point was the appropriately titled work of General Klaus Reinhardt, Moscow – the Turning Point: the Failure of Hitler’s Strategy in the Winter of 1941–42, translated by Karl B. Keenan (1992, German original 1972). Reinhardt was the first to point out that the casualties and material losses of the Wehrmacht were so great by the end of 1941 that the German effort was essentially doomed. Greater background on this issue is provided by Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: the Making and Remaking of the Nazi Economy (2006). On German extermination and exploitation policies see Geoffrey P. Megargee, War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (2006). The vast literature on the Holocaust also provides insight into German policies in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. THE COLD WAR AND THE END OF THE USSR
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