Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia remains one of the most important players, at least potentially so, in world politics. It shares its 12,500-mile border with somer strategically important countries; it has made tremendous contributions to science, space exploration, music, and literature; it possesses the capacity, in the form of thermonuclear weapons, to destroy the world. This bibliography attempts to advance the understanding of Russia by listing, categorizing, and describing some 600 recent books concerning Russia, the Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet Russian Federation. All books included were published between 1991 and 1996 (inclusive), and concern some aspect of Russian or Soviet politics, government, history, or society.The book is divided into five parts. The first part lists reference works and books treating Russian history in its entirety. The other four parts of this bibliography group books by the incarnation of Russia they discuss: medieval Russia, Imperial Russia (beginning about 1700), the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation. Within each part, books are grouped into chapters on the basis of their primary focus: politics and government, economics and industry, society and culture, and foreign policy and military affairs. Annotations provide the focus of each book, the author's primary argument, sources used, bibliographic information, contents, special features, and any cross-references to other categories that the book considers. Contains an overview of recent scholarship and a chronology of events since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
