Table of Contents

List of Illustrations     ix
List of Maps     x
Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction     xiii
Before the Russians, Kievan Rus, and Muscovite Russia (Tenth Century B.C.E.-1462 C.E.)     1
Independence and Unification: The Last Rurikids to the First Romanovs (1462-1694)     24
Imperial Russia: The Eras of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great (1694-1801)     46
The Nineteenth-Century Crisis: The Mystic and the Knout (1801-1855)     72
Reform, Reaction, and Revolution (1855-1917)     95
The Golden and Silver Ages: Russian Cultural Achievement from Pushkin to World War I (1820-1917)     125
Soviet Russia: Utopian Dreams and Dystopian Realities (1917-1953)     152
Soviet Russia: Reform, Decline, and Collapse (1953-1991)     194
Post-Soviet Russia: Yeltsin and Putin (1991-2008)     230
Conclusion: The Russian Riddle     247
Appendixes
Basic Facts about Russia     255
Chronology     260
Bibliography     274
Suggested Reading     279
Index     289