Russia A History

by Gregory L. Freeze

  PLATES

  1. 1169: Novgorod icon about victory in the struggle for Kievan succession

  2. Kizhi wooden church from the fourteenth century

  3. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich 1645–76

  4. 17th century: Engraving of peasants

  5. Peter the Great

  6. Catherine the Great

  7. Religious procession in the 1870s, (Ilya Repin painting)

  8. Nicholas II and family

  9. Peasant elders c.1910

  10. Petrograd demonstration in 1917

  11. Antireligious campaign

  12. Sculpture by Vera Mukhina, ‘The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman’

  13. Doctoring photographs

  14. Ukrainian collective farmers handing a corn wreath to Nikita Khrushchev, 19 September 1963

  15. Party Congress: Brezhnev, Podgnorny, Andropov, Kosygin

  16. Reagan and Gorbachev at Geneva summit

  17. Yeltsin after the defeat of the coup in August 1991

  18. Putin and Medvedev (May day, 2008)

  FURTHER READING

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDES

  American Historical Association, Guide to Historical Literature (2nd edn., New York, 1961, and 3rd edn., New York, 1995), comprehensive guides to bibliography and specialized literature, the 2nd edn. containing the classical titles, the latter emphasizing the literature of the recent decades.

  GENERAL HISTORIES

  R. Auty and D. Obolensky (eds.), An Introduction to Russian History (Cambridge, 1976), valuable collection of essays, broad in scope and rich in bibliography.

  M. T. Florinsky, Russia: A History and Interpretation (2 vols., New York, 1953), detailed account to 1917, drawing heavily on pre-revolutionary scholarship.

  G. Hosking, Russia and the Russians (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), broad survey of Russian history from its origins to the present.

  ———and R. Service (eds.), Reinterpreting Russia (London, 1999), essays that examine important issues over several centuries.

  V. O. Kliuchevskii, History of Russia (5 vols., New York, 1911–31), classic pre-revolutionary history to 1825.

  P. I. Liashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia to the 1917 Revolution (New York, 1949), informative, rich history from Soviet perspective.

  N. V. Riasanovsky and M. Steinberg, A History of Russia (7th edn., New York, 2005), standard textbook survey.

  I. FROM KIEV TO MUSCOVY: THE BEGINNINGS TO 1700

  GENERAL HISTORIES AND MONOGRAPHS

  J. Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia (New York, 1969), economic and social history from the era of Kiev Rus to the abolition of serfdom in 1861.

  R. O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1304–1613 (London, 1987), informed and highly readable interpretative survey.

  R. S. Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 1450–1725 (Chicago, IL, 1982), thorough study of law and practice of slavery.

  D. H. Kaiser, The Growth of the Law in Medieval Russia (Princeton, NJ, 1980), on the evolution of triadic, state-initiated legal institutions and concepts by Ivan III’s time.

  J. L. H. Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar (Oxford, 1985), detailed history of army until 1874 conscription reform.

  N. S. Kollmann, By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca, NY, 1999), on the meaning of ‘honour’ and ‘dishonour’ in Muscovite law and society.

  E. Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900–1700 (Ithaca, NY, 1989), study of ecclesiastical sources on such matters as marriage, sexual crimes, sexual deviance.

  J. Martin, Medieval Russia, 980–1584 (Cambridge, 1995), comprehensive survey drawing upon most recent scholarship with new interpretations and analysis.

  M. Perrie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia, i: From Early Rus to 1689 (Cambridge, 2006), authoritative essays on institutions, society, and culture in pre-Petrine Russia.

  A. E. Presniakov, The Tsardom of Muscovy (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1978), classic pre-revolutionary account.

  G. Vernadsky, A History of Russia (5 vols., New Haven, CT, 1943–69), survey from prehistory to 1682 and reflecting the perspective of the Eurasian school.

  1. THE BEGINNINGS TO 1450

  S. Cross and O. P. Sherbowitz-Werzor (eds. and trans.), The Primary Russian Chronicle: Laurentian Text (3rd edn., Cambridge, 1973), basic source for early history.

  F. L. I. Fennell, The Emergence of Moscow, 1304–1359 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1968), detailed examination of Moscow’s growing political importance, emphasizing inter-princely conflicts, Mongol influence, and relations with neighbouring principalities.

  ———The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200–1304 (London, 1983), detailed political narrative.

  C. J. Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde (London, 1987), reinterpretation of Mongol impact, counterbalancing destructive aspects with evidence of close, pragmatic Mongol-Rus relationships.

  J. Martin, Treasury of the Land of Darkness (Cambridge, 1986), on international fur trade from the ninth to fifteenth centuries.

  B. A. Rybakov, Kievan Rus (Moscow, 1989), Marxist interpretation by leading Soviet historian.

  Ya. N. Shchapov, State and Church in Early Russia (New Rochelle, NY, 1993), collection of essays on the institutional structure of the Church and its relations with the princes of Kievan Rus.

  2. MUSCOVITE RUSSIA, 1450–1598

  G. Alef, Rulers and Nobles in Fifteenth-Century Muscovy (London, 1983), essays on the institutions, symbols of autocracy.

  P. Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia (Oxford, 1992), on the change in élite religious life.

  R. O. Crummey Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Élite in Russia, 1613–1689 (Princeton, NJ, 1983), social history of the Muscovite aristocracy.

  H. W. Dewey (comp., trans., ed.), Muscovite Judicial Texts, 1488–1556 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1966), texts of the law codes of 1497 and 1550 and other key documents.

  J. L. I. Fennell, Ivan the Great of Moscow (London, 1963), political biography.

  E. L. Keenan, Jr., The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha: The Seventeenth-Century Genesis of the ‘Correspondence’ Attributed to Prince A. M. Kurbskii and Tsar Ivan IV (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), controversial challenge to the authenticity of a set of crucial sixteenth-century sources.

  M. Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire 1500–1800 (Bloomington, Ind., 2002), survey of Russian expansion into the southern and south-eastern steppe.

  V. O. Kliuchevskii, A History of Russia, 5 vols. (London, 1911–13), classic account by pre-revolutionary scholar, emphasizing colonization, endogamous forces of development.

  N. S. Kollmann, Kinship and Politics (Stanford, Calif., 1987), shows family and clan at the heart of Muscovite power hierarchy and political conflict.

  I. de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (New Haven, CT, 2005), readable, scholarly account of the infamous sixteenth-century tsar.

  S. F. Platonov, Ivan the Terrible (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1974), translation of splendid pre-revolutionary biography.

  A. E. Presnaikov, The Tsardom of Muscovy (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1978), excellent introduction to the early history of autocracy and its institutions.

  R. G. Skrynnikov, Ivan the Terrible (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1981), detailed political narrative by leading Soviet historian.

  I. Thyrêt, Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia (DeKalb, Ill., 2001), monograph showing how female piety served to empower royal women in Muscovite society.

  3. FROM MUSCOVY TOWARDS ST PETERSBURG, 1598–1689

  C. Bussow, The Disturbed State of the Russian Realm (Montreal, 1994), translation of important contemporary account.

  R. O. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors (Princeton, NJ, 1983), social and political history of aristocracy in seventeenth-century Russia.

  C. S. L. Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War (University Park, Pa., 2001), detailed account of the Time of Troubles.

  R. S. Hellie, The Economy and Material Culture of Russia, 1600–1725 (Chicago, I
L, 1999), valuable compendium of information on economic development in early modern Russia.

  ———Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago, IL, 1971), parallel studies of enserfment and landed military élite.

  ———(ed. and trans.), Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649 (vol. i, Irvine, Calif., 1988), parallel Russian and English texts of critical, formative law code.

  L. Hughes, Sophia: Regent of Russia, 1657–1704 (New Haven, CT, 1990), on the origins of the Petrine reform era.

  V. M. Kivelson, Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford, Calif., 1996), original study of the provincial dimension to Muscovite politics.

  ———Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and its Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Ithaca, NY, 2006), on Muscovite maps as a reflection of contemporary representation of imagination of the realm.

  P. Longworth, Alexis, Tsar of All the Russias (London, 1984), broad survey of mid- seventeenth-century Muscovy.

  G. Michels, At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Stanford, Calif., 1999), a critical, innovative study showing the relatively limited scale of the schism in seventeenth-century Muscovy.

  M. Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia: The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles (Cambridge, 1995), analysis of the pretender phenomenon.

  S. F. Platonov, The Time of Troubles (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1970), sweeping pre-revolutionary analysis, emphasizing the interaction of dynastic, social, and national crises.

  ———Boris Godunov (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1973), classic liberal account.

  R. G. Skrynnikov, The Time of Troubles (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1988), detailed, nationalistic account.

  C. Stevens, Soldiers in the Steppe (De Kalb, Ill., 1995), on military reform and social development in Muscovy.

  II. IMPERIAL RUSSIA, 1689–1917

  GENERAL HISTORIES AND MONOGRAPHS

  P. Avrich, Russian Rebels, 1600–1800 (New York, 1976), on four great popular insurrections.

  D. R. Brower and E. J. Lazzerini (eds.), Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917 (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), stimulating collection of essays on the interaction between Imperial Russia and its non-Russian borderlands.

  J. Burbank and D. L. Ransel (eds.), Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire (Bloomington, Ind., 1998), collection of innovative new studies with an emphasis on the cultural dimension.

  R. O. Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist (Madison, WI, 1970), pioneering case study of dissenting Old Believers.

  B. Engel, Women in Russia, 1700–2000 (Cambridge, 2004), up-to-date summary incorporating recent scholarship.

  W. Fuller, Jr., Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600–1914 (New York, 1992), fascinating analysis of military strategy and policy.

  P. Gatrell, The Tsarist Economy, 1850–1917 (New York, 1986), general survey.

  R. P. Geraci and M. Khodarkovsky (eds.), Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, NY, 2001), on religious interaction between various Christian and non-Christian confessions.

  D. Geyer, Russian Imperialism (New Haven, CT, 1987), on interaction of foreign and domestic policy to 1914.

  B. Jelavich, A Century of Russian Foreign Policy, 1814–1914 (Philadelphia, PA, 1964), excellent survey.

  D. Longley The Longman Companion to Imperial Russia, 1689–1917 (Harlow, 2000), useful reference volume on Imperial Russia.

  D. Lieven (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia, ii: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917 (Cambridge, 2006), wide-ranging, thematic essays on institutions and processes of change in Imperial Russia.

  H. D. Löwe, Tsar and Jews (Chur, 1993), careful analysis of the Jewish question in the Russian Empire.

  M. L. Marrese, A Woman’s Kingdom: Noblewomen and the Control of Property in Russia, 1700–1861 (Ithaca, NY, 2002), analysis of the property rights of noble women as a reflection of women’s status and the aspirations of nobility.

  B. N. Mironov, The Social History of Imperial Russia, 2 vols. (Boulder, Colo., 2000), comprehensive, quantitative study of society and state in Imperial Russia.

  T. C. Owen, The Corporation under Russian Law, 1800–1917 (Cambridge, 1991), valuable study of the development of corporations in Imperial Russia.

  W. M. Pintner and D. K. Rowney (eds.), The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980), pioneering essays on bureaucracy and civil service.

  M. Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia: State and Society in the Old Regime (New York, 1983), broad synthetic study of Russia from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries.

  D. Ransel, Mothers of Misery (Princeton, NJ, 1988), original study of child abandonment and foundling care in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  A. M. Schrader, Languages of the Lash: Corporal Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, Ill., 2002), exploration of penal practice and reform as prism of social identities and status in Imperial Russia.

  H. Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801–1917 (Oxford, 1967), detailed account, with particular attention to institutional, diplomatic, and minority history.

  W. Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, NY, 2004), suggestive analysis of steppe colonization and its role in empire-building.

  A. Swift, Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist Russia (Berkeley, CA, 2002), exploration of a neglected but important sphere of popular culture.

  E. K. Wirtschafter, Social Identity in Imperial Russia (De Kalb, Ill., 1997), comprehensive study of the complex social categories, with rich bibliography.

  C. D. Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (De Kalb, Ill., 2001), pioneering study of female possession in law, religious life, psychiatry, and literature.

  R. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (2 vols., Princeton, NJ, 1995–2000) on the symbols, ceremonies and culture of rulership.

  4. THE PETRINE ERA AND AFTER, 1689–1740

  M. S. Anderson, Peter the Great (London, 1978), traditional biography, with emphasis on foreign policy.

  E. V. Anisimov, The Reforms of Peter the Great (Armonk, NY, 1993), revisionist interpretation.

  G. Barany, The Anglo-Russian Entente Cordiale of 1697–1698 (Boulder, Colo., 1986), on the ‘Grand Embassy’.

  P. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671–1725 (New York, 2001), political narrative, with strong emphasis on the antecedents and genesis of the Petrine reforms and rulership.

  J. Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago, IL, 1988), beautifully illustrated and broadly conceived.

  ———(ed.), Peter the Great Transforms Russia (3rd edn., Lexington, Ky., 1991), anthology of major interpretative essays.

  M. Curtiss, A Forgotten Empress (New York, 1974), the only book-length treatment on Anna in English.

  L. Hughes, Peter the Great (New Haven, CT, 2002), engaging scholarly biography.

  L. Hughes Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven, CT, 1998), the standard general synthesis of the Petrine era.

  A. Lentin (ed. and trans.), Peter the Great: His Law on the Imperial Succession in Russia (Oxford, 1995), translation of important defining political statement, ‘The Truth of the Monarch’s Will’.

  E. J. Phillips, The Founding of Russia’s Navy (Westport, Conn., 1995), new interpretation on the origins of the Russian navy.

  I. Pososhkov, The Book of Poverty and Wealth (Stanford, Calif., 1987), translation of important writing by a merchant in Petrine Russia.

  N. V. Riasanovsky The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought (New York, 1985), overview of rhetorical and historical representations of Peter.

  E. A. Zitser, The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter the Great (Ithaca, NY, 2004), explores the discursive revolution in
Petrine era.

  5. THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, 1740–1801

  J. T. Alexander, Catherine the Great (New York, 1989), modern scholarly biography.

  E. V. Anisimov, Empress Elizabeth (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1995), important study of key period of state-building.

  G. L. Freeze, The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1977), on transformation of the married parish clergy into a social and cultural caste.

  R. E. Jones, The Emancipation of the Russian Nobility, 1762–1785 (Princeton, NJ, 1973), examines the politics of terminating obligatory state service for the nobility.

  ———Provincial Development in Russia (New Brunswick, NJ, 1984), case study of provincial life and administration in Catherinean Russia.

  W. G. Jones, Nikolay Novikov (Cambridge, 1984), standard work on leading publisher and intellectual figure.

  J. D. Klier, Russia Gathers her Jews (De Kalb, Ill., 1986), on the formation of the Pale of Settlement.

  J. P. LeDonne, Ruling Russia (Princeton, NJ, 1984), controversial attempt to provide ‘class’ interpretation of state and policies.

  I. de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven, CT, 1981), comprehensive portrait of Russian state and society in the second half of the eighteenth century.

  G. Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700–1800 (Princeton, NJ, 1985), on the role of state and public in the development of print culture.

  M. Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia (New York, 1966), imaginative attempt to explain how Petrine servitors became the disaffected intelligentsia.