Best intro books to Russian history

March 30, 2017 5:18 PM

What are the best, accessible books on Russian history?

I'd like to read some good generalist histories about Russia (all periods) and maybe a biography of Lenin. I'm an academic historian, but this reading is for fun and I'd prefer diving into what my fellow Mefites suggest to slogging through a bunch of syllabi and review essays.

There are two previous, related questions. languagehat's 2007 recommendations here look promising; the answers in this 2012 question do as well.

My guess is that the field has not developed all that much in the last ten years nor is it as hyperspecialized by time period as US or British History? I am more interested in the formation of the Russian Empire up through the establishment of the Soviet Union than more recent events.

posted by CtrlAltD to Society & Culture (9 answers total)

Best answer: I stand by my recommendations in that 2007 thread except that Berlin has been replaced as the go-to source for Herzen & Co. by Aileen M. Kelly’s biography of Herzen, The Discovery of Chance, which I reviewed last year. For a general history, I can recommend Gregory L. Freeze's Russia: A History, in which each chapter is by a different specialist; it has useful bibliographies and great illustrations. For the period leading up to WWI I've just started reading Dominic Lieven's The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I and Revolution but I can already tell it's brilliant and indispensable. Will add more if they come to mind.
posted by languagehat at 5:36 PM on March 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Most of my Russian history is medieval/Kievan Rus to the 19th and some 20th C. I have a small library packed away in boxes in the basement but the ones I remember:

• Robert K. Massie in general; Nicholas & Alexandra as a particular starting place.
• George Vernadsky: A History of Russia and others
• Samuel Hazzard's translation of The Russian Primary Chronicle

I'll also roundly second LH's recommendations from 2007 and some of the 2012 recommendations as well (e.g. Remnick's book is a standout in my experience).
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 6:22 PM on March 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I'm not by any stretch a Russian history expert, but I really liked Pipes' Russia Under the Old Regime.
posted by bertran at 7:03 PM on March 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Pushkin, stories. The Pugachov Rebellion. Pushkin has a way of describing the surrounds and society of 18th century Russia. I read a large book of his, published in the sixties a couple of summers ago. Novelists were rare in 18th century Russia, and their books were very descriptive of the time, spellbinding.
posted by Oyéah at 7:41 PM on March 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Simon Montefiore's The Romanovs is very accessible and covers several hundred years.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:55 PM on March 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: A couple other books for cultural background: Entertaining Tsarist Russia: Tales, Songs, Plays, Movies, Jokes, Ads, and Images from Russian Urban Life 1779-1917, edited by James Von Geldern and Louise McReynolds, and Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia, by Richard Stites. As a matter of fact, everything Stites ever wrote is worth reading.

> I'm not by any stretch a Russian history expert, but I really liked Pipes' Russia Under the Old Regime.

Yes, that's a good book (but bear in mind that Pipes doesn't really like Russia).

> Pushkin, stories. The Pugachov Rebellion. Pushkin has a way of describing the surrounds and society of 18th century Russia. I read a large book of his, published in the sixties a couple of summers ago. Novelists were rare in 18th century Russia, and their books were very descriptive of the time, spellbinding.

Pushkin was born in 1799, so he didn't really experience the 18th century, and he wasn't a novelist. That said, I certainly encourage everyone to read him.
posted by languagehat at 8:07 AM on March 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I haven't seen Paul Bushkovitch's A Concise History of Russia, but Dominic Lieven recommends it, and that's good enough for me.
posted by languagehat at 1:06 PM on March 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you all for your recommendations. This is just what I am looking for.
posted by CtrlAltD at 11:49 AM on April 4, 2017

and maybe a biography of Lenin

I haven't stumbled upon a book-length biography of Lenin worth recommending, but short biographies can be found at the start of Tucker's Lenin Anthology and in the chapter in Chamberlin entitled "Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin: Genius of Revolution." Also there is a recent book, which I have not read, by Lars Lih that might be worth checking out that is a revisionist interpretation of Lenin's thought.

If you are interested in biographies of other major figures of the Russian Revolution, I highly recommend Isaac Deutscher's biographies of Trotsky (a trilogy) and Stalin.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:12 PM on May 9, 2017