RUS 266G: Introduction to Russian Culture

This comprehensive three-volume set covers Russian history from the early Rus' through the twentieth century. Volume 1: From early Rus' to 1689. Volume 2. Imperial Russia, 1689-1917. Volume 3. The Twentieth Century.

Providing a comprehensive discussion of Russia's people, politics, economics, religion and social systems, the Encyclopedia of Russian History complements the study of comparative politics, world history, geography, literature, arts and culture and world cultures. With approximately 1,600 entries and 500 illustrations, this four-volume set spans the time from the earliest beginnings of the Russian nation to the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.

This book is also available in print.
Synthesizing several decades of scholarship by historians East and West, Barbara Evans Clements traces the major developments in the history of women in Russia and their impact on the history of the nation. Sketching lived experiences across the centuries, she demonstrates the key roles that women played in shaping Russia's political, economic, social, and cultural development for over a millennium.

Beginning in the eighteenth century with the building of St. Petersburg—a "window on the West"—and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself—its character, spiritual essence, and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works—by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall—with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons, and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world. Figes's characters range high and low: the revered Tolstoy, who left his deathbed to search for the Kingdom of God, as well as the serf girl Praskovya, who became Russian opera's first superstar and shocked society by becoming her owner's wife. Like the European-schooled countess Natasha performing an impromptu folk dance in Tolstoy's War and Peace, the spirit of "Russianness" is revealed by Figes as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictory—a powerful force that unified a vast country and proved more lasting than any Russian ruler or state.

The complex and often turbulent history of Russia over the course of 2,000 years is brought to life in a series of 176 maps by one of the most prolific and successful historian authors today.

Russia on the Eve of Modernity is a pioneering exploration of a world that has been largely destroyed by revolutionary upheavals and obscured in historical memory by scholarly focus on elites. Drawing on traditional religious texts, ethnographic materials and contemporary accounts, this book brings to light the ideas and perceptions of the ordinary Russian people of the towns and countryside who continued to live in a pre-modern, non-Western culture that showed great resilience to the very end of the Romanov Empire.

Although new histories of Russia, often reflecting the author's cultural slant, appear regularly, there is a dearth of books that explain the Russian perspective. This work takes the opposite approach by acquainting readers with some of the foremost ideas in Russian cultural history. This book contains twelve color photographs and sixteen black and white photographs.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of Russia's tragic and glorious history: prehistoric Russia's nomadic invaders; the rise of Muscovy with its colorful panopoly of rulers from Ivan Moneybags to Ivan the Terrible; the despotism of the Romanovs; the Russian Revolution and the rise and fall of the Soviet state; all the way to the present.