Product Description

From the formation of the Russian state in the 14th century to the political power struggles of the 1990s and the uncertainties of the new millennium, this new history offers a fresh and systematic account of Russian history across six tumultuous centuries. With greater access to previously unobtainable material, and with the gradual depoliticization of what was once an intellectual Cold War battleground, historians are now able to tell the story of Russia more dispassionately and with greater precision than was formerly possible. Drawing on the best contemporary scholarship, and informed throughout by the latest archival research into previously classified sources, thirteen international experts here reassess and reinterpret the history of one of the world's great powers. What emerges is a powerful sense of national destiny - of repeated themes, unchanging conditions, and cycles of circumstance. Throughout Russian history, all-powerful autocrats like Ivan the Terrible or Stalin have maintained their authority through brutality; but their omnipotence was always under threat, circumscribed by geography, compromised by bureaucratic incompetence, pervasive corruption, and resistance from below. A curious combination - a veneer of omnipotence, a void of operational power - has periodically dissolved into 'times of trouble', as in 1598, 1917, and 1991, when the impotence of the regime became transparent to all. Russian rulers have also had to contend with the same immense physical challenges - a hugely dispersed population, a perennial dearth of means and men to govern, a primitive infrastructure. Plagued by natural disasters, hamstrung by structural problems, the Russian economy - whether pre-revolutionary capitalist, Soviet socialist, or post-Soviet semi-capitalist - has had enormous and disruptive difficulties adapting to the competitive world of international markets. Another immutable, elemental fact has been Russia's multinational composition, which continues to generate discontent and disorder. Yet Russia is a great survivor, as the years from 1995 show, charaterized by economic recovery, institution-building, and a new mood of self-assertion in world politics. For too long Russian history has been dominated by myths and counter-myths, concocted by those seeking either to legitimize the existing order or to destroy it. This book - containing many little-known illustrations - represents an important attempt to rethink Russian history and to provide a new understanding of Russia's complex but ever-fascinating historical development. A compelling story in its own right, it is also essential reading for anyone with a private or professional interest in Russia and its place in the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #136370 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 556 pages

About the Author
Gregory Freeze is Professor of History at Brandeis University. He has also been a research associate of the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University since 1972 and is chief editor and director of the Russian Archive series, which publishes new inventories of recently declassified archival collections. He has spent over 12 years conducting research in the central and provincial archives of the former Soviet Union.

Customer Reviews

Excellent, in depth history of Russia
This is a comprehensive book covering several hundred years of Russian history. Although the book is divided into 'bite sized chunks', make no mistake; this is no lightweight read. Gregory Freeze has an obvious grasp of the enigma that is Russia and has the skill to present his knowledge in a way that makes complex history fun to read instead of a chore.
The revised edition takes into account the information that has become available since the fall of Communism in the USSR. This makes it all the more interesting as it helps dispel some of the myths propogated by the West during the cold war. I would recommend this book to anyone with a fascination for Russia but particularly for the undergraduate studying the topic.

A patchy but enlightening history of Russia
Whilst this book is undoubtedly immensely informative I give it only four stars because it is not without some frustrations for the reader new to this area of history. The first point is that rather than being a unified narrative it is a collection of essays, chronologically arranged, by academics who are specialists in their eras and fields. This leads to some overlap, a sense that some eras or reigns are dealt with less thoroughly than others, and shifts in perspective that would probably not arise in a history written for popular consumption. So for instance, the first chapter deals in great detail with the dynastic squabbles of the appenage principates of Kievan Rus. However, the next chapter or essay, on the emergence of Muscovy, shifts to a socio-economic perspective that gives only maddening hints as to the shenanigans of some of the more colourful rulers of the period, particularly Ivan IV (the Terrible). Other frustrations were the story of the Eastward expansion, which must have been an epic adventure, but which is largely untold, and the characters of the subjugate peoples, such as the Cossacks.

My other frustration is that the book very clearly increases in detail as we move towards the present day. Thus, slightly more than half the text is devoted to the twentieth century, and slightly more than a quarter to the nineteenth. Thus the treatment of the medieval and early imperial eras is far sketchier than I had hoped. A good quarter of the book is devoted to the events of the Revolution and the Civil War that were portrayed so vividly and with such thoroughness in Figes A People's Tragedy: Russian Revolution, 1891-1924. As such this book reads not so much like a history of Russia, but more as a historical analysis of how Russia arrived at where she is today, or at least to 2001, which is where this volume brings us to.

Having said all that there is no denying that this book is highly informative and that I have learned much from reading it. I think the most striking point for me is that the present post-soviet era is the first time that the bulk of the ordinary Russian people have known any kind of freedom to come and go. The institution of serfdom tied all but a tiny percentage of the population to the land, their village or town, in a way that the English shrugged off with the labour shortages that followed the Black Death. Half-hearted attempts at emancipation by Alexander II and Nicholas I in the mid 19th Century only made matters far worse, making the revolution and its cataclysmic violence pretty much inevitable. The surreal contradictions and dehumanising restriction on all kinds of freedom of the Soviet era are well known. The freedom Russians have today must still taste rather bitter in their mouths, with massive unemployment and a third of its population struggling on below subsistence wages. Only time will tell if this freedom can be turned into hope, and ultimately some kind of general prosperity.

In due course I will be looking out for another history of Russia, one that will hopefully deal with the chronology a little more evenly. I will also be looking for a book or two to bring me up to date with Putin's Russia of today, because the other important thing I have learned is that her depiction by the Western media is woefully simplistic. I will confess to being one of those who have found, until now, the idea of a resurgent Russia somewhat ominous. Her interventions in the border republics, her blustering at NATO expansion and at the proposed US missile interceptor sitings in Poland and the Czech Republic are all too suggestive of a sleeping giant, biding its time until it can embark on renewed policies of expansion and hegemonisation. Such implications are all too eagerly fostered by the Western media. What the West has failed to understand though is just what a total economic basket case Russia became in the Yeltsin years. Her interventions abroad are minuscule because her army, while still worryingly large on paper, is operationally broke and broken. The revival of nuclear posturing over the ABM sitings reawakens cold war anxieties, but are a result of her ageing nuclear arsenal being all she has left to bargain with. Then there is much concern at present over the possibility of Russia blackmailing the West over future energy supplies. This indeed might become an issue for the future, but what Western media fail to make clear is that, with a completely shattered manufacturing infrastructure, and no effective systems of investment to revive it, gas and oil are all Russia has to sell at present. Right now, she needs us rather more than we need her. Also of concern are the character of Putin and the somewhat stunted form of democracy practised under his leadership. His manipulations are too well evidenced to be denied, and the poker-face he presents to the outside world is not greatly endearing. But again our media do not make clear what an extraordinary job Putin has done in salvaging the Russian state from the deepest collapse that any in the developed world has ever suffered. In certain respects he is the most effective politician of his age. It just might be that that right now Russia needs a strong man, with a good plan, and genuine intentions more than she needs a procession of well meaning, impeccably elected political naives. I am not apologising for Putin, but this book has made me aware that he is struggling with a vastly more complex situation than our media seems to want to understand or portray, and he is evidently doing so rather successfully according to a broad set of measurable indicators.

In all it really is a five star book. I just don't think it does exactly what it claims to do on the tin.