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A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd i 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd ii 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA MICHAEL KORT Boston University i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd iii 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM A Brief History of Russia Copyright © 2008 by Michael Kort The author has made every effort to clear permissions for material excerpted in this book. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kort, Michael, 1944– A brief history of Russia / Michael Kort. p. cm.—(Brief history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-7112-8 ISBN-10: 0-8160-7112-8 1. Russia—History. 2. Soviet Union—History. I. Title. DK40.K687 2007 947—dc22 2007032723 The author and Facts On File have made every effort to contact copyright holders. The publisher will be glad to rectify, in future editions, any errors or omissions brought to their notice. We thank the following presses for permission to reproduce the material listed. Oxford University Press, London, for permission to reprint portions of Mikhail Speransky’s 1802 memorandum to Alexander I from The Russia Empire, 1801–1917 (1967) by Hugh Seton-Watson. Copyright © 1967 by Oxford University Press. Oxford University Press, London, for permission to reprint material from A History of Russia (second edition, 1969) by Nicholas Riasanovsky. Copyright © 1963, 1969 by Oxford University Press. University of California Press, Berkeley, for permission to reprint portions of the edict of July 3, 1826, from Nicholas I and Offi cial Nationality, 1825–1855 (1967) by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky. Copyright © 1959 by The Regents of the University of California. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., for permission to reprint portions of “The State of Russia under the Present Czar” by John Perry from Seven Britons in Imperial Russia, 1698–1812 (1952) edited by Peter Putnam. Copyright © 1952 by Princeton University Press. Dutton, a division of Penguin Group (USA), New York, for permission to reprint portions of “Tale of the Destruction of Riazan” and “Zadonshchina” from Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales (revised and enlarged edition), edited by Serge A. Zenkovsky, translated by Serge A. Zenkovsky, copyright © 1973, 1974 by Serge A. Zenkovsky; renewed © 1991 by Betty Jean Zenkovsky. M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, N.Y., for permission to reprint portions of The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath (sixth edition, 2006) by Michael Kort. Copyright © 2006 by Michael Kort. Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can fi nd Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfi le.com Text design by Joan M. McEvoy Cover design by Semadar Megged Maps by Sholto Ainslie Printed in the United States of America MP Hermitage 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper and contains 30 percent postconsumer recycled content. i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd iv 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM For Carol, and our fi rst 40 years together i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd v 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd vi 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM Contents List of Illustrations ix List of Maps x Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii 1 Before the Russians, Kievan Rus, and Muscovite Russia (Tenth Century B.C.E.–1462 C.E.) 1 2 Independence and Unification: The Last Rurikids to the First Romanovs (1462–1694) 24 3 Imperial Russia: The Eras of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great (1694–1801) 46 4 The Nineteenth-Century Crisis: The Mystic and the Knout (1801–1855) 72 5 Reform, Reaction, and Revolution (1855–1917) 95 6 The Golden and Silver Ages: Russian Cultural Achievement from Pushkin to World War I (1820–1917) 125 7 Soviet Russia: Utopian Dreams and Dystopian Realities (1917–1953) 152 8 Soviet Russia: Reform, Decline, and Collapse (1953–1991) 194 9 Post–Soviet Russia: Yeltsin and Putin (1991–2008) 230 10 Conclusion: The Russian Riddle 247 Appendixes 1 Basic Facts about Russia 255 2 Chronology 260 3 Bibliography 274 4 Suggested Reading 279 Index 289 i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd viii 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM List of illustrations The taiga of Siberia xvi Volga River in winter xvii Lake Baikal xix Typical winter scene in the European part of Russia xxi St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev 10 St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod 11 Moscow’s Kremlin 20 The Bell Tower of Ivan the Great 30 Ivan the Terrible 33 St. Basil’s Cathedral 34 The Kazan Kremlin 36 The Bronze Horseman in St. Petersburg 53 The Winter Palace 60 Catherine the Great 63 Monument to Nicholas I 83 Crimean War battle 93 Peasants in a fi eld c. 1870 101 Nevsky Prospect, St. Petersburg’s main avenue c. 1901 116 October Manifesto celebration, 1905 119 Russian aviator Mikhail Effi mov 121 Duma in session 122 Aleksandr Pushkin 128 Nikolai Gogol 131 Leo Tolstoy 140 Vaslav Nijinsky 149 Vladimir Lenin 156 Anti-kulak propaganda 173 Rostov-on-Don combine factory, 1930s 176 Women factory lathe operation, c. 1940 178 Gulag labor camp 180 Joseph Stalin at the Teheran Conference in 1943 187 World War II memorial in Volgograd 189 Nikita Khrushchev 199 Sputnik model 202 Leonid Brezhnev 213 ix i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd ix 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan 221 Destroyed Chernobyl nuclear reactor 223 Boris Yeltsin condemning the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev 228 Heavy automobile traffic, Moscow 233 Nevsky Prospect in modern St. Petersburg 237 Vladimir Putin 241 Pipelines for transporting oil 244 Russian dolls known as matrioshkas 248 A Kremlin tower and traffic: the old and the new in Moscow 251 List of Maps Kievan Rus in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries 7 Moscow/Russian Expansion, 1300 to 1533 19 Russia in 1914 110 Soviet Union after World War II 191 Russian Federation 231 Ethnolinguistic Groups in the Caucasus Region 238 x Acknowledgments am indebted to Claudia Schaab of Facts On File for convincing me Ito write this book and then carrying out the multiple tasks associ- ated with being its editor with great skill, patience, and effi ciency. My friend and colleague Robert Wexelblatt, as he has done before, read and critiqued large parts of this book and was never too busy to discuss writing issues during lengthy phone conversations at any hour of the day or night. Kathleen Martin kindly critiqued the chapter on Russian literature and culture and offered valuable suggestions and insights that signifi cantly improved it. My wonderful daughters, Eleza and Tamara, now adults, made sure their father “chilled out” a little as he intently worked to meet his deadlines. Finally and foremost, my wife, Carol, read, edited, and critiqued the entire manuscript and then again went over everything and anything connected with it at a moment’s notice, regardless of other demands on her time and energy. It has become something of a cliché in acknowledgments such as these, but I really could not have written this book without her input and help. xi i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd xi 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM i-xxiv_BH-Russia_fm.indd xii 5/7/08 4:03:06 PM Introduction ussia’s history is an epic saga of strength, suffering, and, ultimately, Rof survival. It is a tumultuous drama acted out on a vast and violent stage millions of square miles in area, where enormous casts of ordinary people were repeatedly conscripted for extraordinary histori- cal scenes that gave credence to the claim that truth is stranger than fi ction. It is a litany of extremes: extreme weather, extreme contrasts, extreme twists of fate, extreme changes of fortune, and extreme solu- tions for extreme problems, all of which imposed cruel sacrifi ces on a people who even in good times lived with hardship and in bad times endured the intolerable. And like the heavens on the shoulders of Atlas, Russia’s history is a huge and heavy burden that weighs down today on a great country as it tries to overcome its past and create a society in which its people can live freely and prosper. The Physical Setting The Russian Federation, as Russia is known today, is the largest country in the world. Although considerably downsized from the days of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, when the area under czarist and subsequently Soviet control exceeded 8.5 million square miles, Russia still encompasses an area of 6.5 million square miles. That is about one- ninth of the world’s total land area, including Antarctica. Extending more than 6,000 miles from west to east, from the Baltic Sea and the center of Europe across all of Asia to the shores of the Pacifi c Ocean, Russia is at once the largest country on two continents. Russia is uniquely Eurasian. Two other countries, Turkey and Kazakhstan, have territory in both Europe and Asia. Yet both are cul- turally Asian and almost entirely Asian by geography, with only a sliver of territory in Europe.
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