Description
Book SynopsisThis companion comprises 28 essays by international scholars offering an analytical overview of the development of Russian history from the earliest Slavs through to the present day.
Trade Review"As a companion for a journey across Russian history, this book is entertaining, clever and varied, brilliant at its best, and able to speak simultaneously and with authority to all kinds of students, general readers and specialists. Yet it has an eclectic air about it." (
Slavonic and East European Review, 2 April 2011)
"Read from cover to cover, A Companion to Russian History will be of enormous value to those who teach survey courses in Russian history, to graduate students preparing for comprehensive exams in Russian history, or simply anyone who wants to get current with trends in the field." (The Russian Review, 2010)
"...Recommended as an up-to-date and well written guide to many important issues in Russian history, likely to be useful to everyone from senior school pupils to scholars seeking guidance in unfamiliar fields." (Reviews in History, April 2010)
Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors x
1 Russian Historiography after the Fall 1
Abbott Gleason
Part I Rus′: The Early East Slavic World 15
2 From “Proto-Slavs” to Proto-State 17
P. M. Barford
3 The First East Slavic State 34
Janet Martin
4 Rus′ and the Byzantine Empire 51
George Majeska
5 The Mongols and Rus′: Eight Paradigms 66
Donald Ostrowski
Part II To Muscovy and Beyond 87
6 Muscovite Political Culture 89
Nancy Shields Kollmann
7 Slavery and Serfdom in Russia 105
Richard Hellie
8 Russian Art from the Middle Ages to Modernism 121
Ilia A. Dorontchenkov
(translated by Abbott Gleason)
9 The Church Schism and Old Belief 145
Nadieszda Kizenko
Part III The Russian Empire 163
10 Petrine Russia 165
Lindsey Hughes
11 The Westernization of the Elite, 1725–1800 180
Gary Marker
12 The “Great Reforms” of the 1860s 196
Daniel Field
13 Industrialization and Capitalism 210
Thomas C. Owen
14 The Question of Civil Society in Late Imperial Russia 225
Christopher Ely
15 Russia: Minorities and Empire 243
Robert Geraci
16 The Intelligentsia and its Critics 261
Gary Saul Morson
17 Russian Modernism 279
Andrew Wachtel
18 Russia’s Popular Culture in History and Theory 295
Louise McReynolds
19 The Russian Experience of the First World War 311
Melissa Stockdale
Part IV The Soviet Union 335
20 From the First World War to Civil War, 1914–1923 337
Mark von Hagen
21 The Woman Question in Russia: Contradictions and Ambivalence 353
Elizabeth A. Wood
22 Stalinism and the 1930s 368
Lynne Viola
23 The Soviet Union in the Second World War 386
Nikita Lomagin
(translated by Melissa Stockdale and Abbott Gleason)
24 The Cold War 414
David C. Engerman
25 Old Thinking and New: Khrushchev and Gorbachev 429
Robert English
26 The End of the Soviet Union 451
Robert V. Daniels
Part V Whither Russia? 471
27 Russia’s Post-Soviet Upheaval 473
Bruce Parrott
28 Russian History and the Future of Russia 490
William E. Odom
Index 505
