Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

In the 16th century, Muscovy improvised an authority structure which would enable it to cope with the challenges it faced both from the steppe and from European great powers. The resulting Russian Empire was remarkably successful: it became the largest territorial state on earth and outlasted most of its rivals. It offered its population basic physical security, modest but assured access to resources, and membership of stable communities. It also proved successful on the whole at integrating non-Russian peoples. On the other hand, the state’s overweening exercise of authority, its dependence on wilful and often corrupt agents, and the general weakness of law and institutions impeded economic development, enfeebled the link between elites and masses, and generated bitter resentments which sporadically burst forth in rebellion. Discontent was intensified in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the penetration of European ideas into ever broader strata of the population.

The First World War nearly destroyed Russia, but it revived for a time as the Soviet Union, and even after the latter’s collapse, it survives in reduced form. The authoritarian and personalized political structure which brought it success in the past is, however, ill-suited to the entirely different challenges Russia faces today, of adjusting to a global high-tech economy and an increasingly interdependent world in which nuclear weapons have made war between major powers virtually impossible.

Today, moreover, Russians are better educated than in the past, and they have incomparably more experience of life outside their own country, especially in Europe and North America. The age-old justification of authoritarianism – that the country faces powerful external threats – is no longer persuasive. The gap between rulers and ruled is widening once more. Russia is one of the world’s great survivors, and it will probably cope in its own way with these challenges. How it will do so is at the moment impossible to say.

Further reading

General

The themes of this book are treated at greater length in Geoffrey Hosking, Russia and the Russians, 2nd edn. (2011).

Philip Longworth, Russia’s Empires: Their Rise and Fall from Prehistory to Putin (2005) is a lively and up-to-date account of Russia’s various imperial reincarnations.

On the difficulty of building a Russian nation within a Russian empire, see Vera Tolz, Russia: Inventing a Nation (2001).

Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (2003) tells an important story about the collision of national projects on Russia’s western border.

Marshall Poe, The Russian Moment in World History

(2003) briefly presents an important thesis about Russia’s evolution as a state.

Chapter 1

Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (1996) is an excellent scholarly introduction to its subject.

Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980–1584 (1995).

Serge A. Zenkovsky (ed.), Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles and Tales (1974).

David Morgan, The Mongols (1986).

Robert O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1304–1613 (1987).

Chapter 2

Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier (1998) stresses the Mongol heritage in Muscovy.

Nancy Shields Kollmann, By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia (1999).

Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible (2005), a good recent scholarly biography.

Robert Frost, The Northern Wars, 1558–1721

(2000) offers the European background to Muscovy’s evolution into the Russian Empire.

Brian L. Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700 (2007) does the same for the steppe frontier.

Philip Longworth, The Cossacks (1969).

Chapter 3

John LeDonne, The Russian Empire and the World, 1700–1917: The Geopolitics of Expansion and Containment (1997) is not an easy read, but a valuable account of Imperial Russia’s geopolitical situation.

William Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600–1914 (1992), similar, with more emphasis on military matters.

Iver B. Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International Relations (1996).