Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (1998) is now the standard work on Peter the Great.

Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (2002) does the same for Catherine the Great.

Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, Russia’s Age of Serfdom, 1649–1861 (2008).

Dominic Lieven, Russia against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807–1814 (2009), not only the best book on its subject, but also an excellent summary of Imperial Russia’s military organization.

Janet Hartley, Alexander I (1994) is a good biography and assessment.

Chapter 4

Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (2000) makes an illuminating comparison between Russia and other major empires.

Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (2001) is the best account of the development of the non-Russian peoples and their relationship with the imperial state.

Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire (1997) endeavours to do the same for the Russians.

Chapter 5

Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Sakharova (eds.), Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855–1881 (1994).

Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Emperor of all the Russias (1993).

Hans Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution, 1881–1917 (1983).

Nicholas Rzhevsky (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture (1998).

Peter Gatrell, The Tsarist Economy, 1850–1917 (1986).

S. A. Smith, The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (2002) offers well what its title suggests.

The second half of Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (1996) provides a good longer narrative of 1917–24.

John L. H. Keep, The Russian Revolution: A Study in Mass Mobilization (1976) does well what its subtitle promises.

Chapter 6

For a general history of the Soviet Union, see Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union (1992); Ronald Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR and the Successor States (1998); Stephen Lovell, The Soviet Union: A Very Short Introduction (2009).

Robert Service, Lenin: A Political Biography (3 vols, 1985–95) is the best biography of Lenin. Those who want a shorter account will find Adam Ulam, Lenin and the Bolsheviks (1969) still very useful.

Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (2009) is the best-informed account of Stalin’s terror.

Jörg Baberowski, Der rote Terror: die Geschichte des Stalinismus (2003).

Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (1994); and Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (1999).

Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945 (1964): lively reportage by a journalist on the Soviet home front.

John Barber and Mark Harrison, The Soviet Home Front, 1941–1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II (1991).

Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red Army, 1939–45 (2005), and her Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia (2000) both throw light on the personal ordeal of ordinary Russians, civilian and military.

Chapter 7

The postwar USSR has yet to receive full scholarly treatment, but John Keep, Last of the Empires: A History of the Soviet Union, 1945–1991 (1995), and Stephen Lovell, The Shadow of War: Russia and the USSR, 1941 to the Present (2010) are two excellent general studies.

On the most important leaders, see William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (2003), and Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (2003).

John Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (1995).