Russia. A History

US announces plan to deploy National Missile Defence system in Poland and Czech Republic (January); Putin speech at Munich conference, with vehement criticism of the United States for expansionism and attempt to establish global supremacy (10 February); police disrupt planned rally of anti-Putin groups in Moscow (April); former president Boris Yeltsin dies (April); Putin proposes joint missile defence system to resolve dispute over US plans for NMD installations in Poland and Czech Republic (June); Russia sends expedition to Arctic to expand territorial claims and plants flag on seabed at North Pole (August); Russia resumes, after 15 years, long-range patrols of Russian strategic bombers (August); Russia formally suspends participation in 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty limiting heavy military armaments (November); Duma elections gives pro-government party, United Russia, a two-thirds majority in the Duma, with the Communist Party—once the largest party—reduced to just 12% of the vote (10 December); Putin declares support for Dmitrii Medvedev, first deputy prime minister, to succeed him as president (10 December); Time chooses Putin as ‘person of the year’ (19 December) 2008 Stabilization fund divided into ‘Reserve Fund’ (liquid assets to cushion budget from fluctuations in commodity, especially energy, prices) and National Well-being Fund for investment in blue-chip companies (February); Dmitrii Medvedev elected president of Russia with 71% of the vote (March); Medvedev inaugurated as president, Putin named prime minister (May); Georgian forces launch attack on breakaway region South Ossetia, but routed in counter-attack by Russian forces (August); Putin accuses United States of ‘orchestrating’ the Georgian military offensive (28 August); the financial crisis in United States triggers a sharp fall in Russian stock market and price on energy (September-October); death of Patriarch Aleksii II (5 December); constitutional amendment extends the next presidential term to six years and the next Duma term to five years (29 December)

2009

Russia suspends natural gas delivery to Ukraine in dispute over arrears, unpaid fines, and rates, causing disruption in transit deliveries to Europe and eliciting widespread criticism for ‘energy blackmail’ (January); installation of new patriarch, Kirill I (1 February)

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