Download or read book Russia in the Early Modern World written by Donald Ostrowski and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fundamental problem in studying early modern Russian history is determining Russia’s historical development in relationship to the rest of the world. The focus throughout this book is on the continuity of Russian policies during the early modern period (1450–1800) and that those policies coincided with those of other successful contemporary Eurasian polities. The continuities occurred in the midst of constant change, but neither one nor the other, continuities or changes alone, can account for Russia’s success. Instead, Russian rulers from Ivan III to Catherine II with their hub advisors managed to sustain a balance between the two. During the early modern period, these Russian rulers invited into the country foreign experts to facilitate the transfer of technology and know-how, mostly from Europe but also from Asia. In this respect, they were willing to look abroad for solutions to domestic problems. Russia looked westward for military weaponry and techniques at the same time it was expanding eastward into the Eurasian heartland. The ruling elite and by extension the entire ruling class worked in cooperation with the ruler to implement policies. The Church played an active role in supporting the government and in seeking to eliminate opposition to the government.
Download or read book The Russian Empire 1450 1801 written by Nancy Shields Kollmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Russian identity and historical experience has been largely shaped by Russia's imperial past: an empire that was founded in the early modern era and endures in large part today. The Russian Empire 1450-1801 surveys how the areas that made up the empire were conquered and how they were governed. It considers the Russian empire a 'Eurasian empire', characterized by a 'politics of difference': the rulers and their elites at the center defined the state's needs minimally - with control over defense, criminal law, taxation, and mobilization of resources - and otherwise tolerated local religions, languages, cultures, elites, and institutions. The center related to communities and religions vertically, according each a modicum of rights and autonomies, but didn't allow horizontal connections across nobilities, townsmen, or other groups potentially with common interests to coalesce. Thus, the Russian empire was multi-ethnic and multi-religious; Nancy Kollmann gives detailed attention to the major ethnic and religious groups, and surveys the government's strategies of governance - centralized bureaucracy, military reform, and a changed judicial system. The volume pays particular attention to the dissemination of a supranational ideology of political legitimacy in a variety of media - written sources and primarily public ritual, painting, and particularly architecture. Beginning with foundational features, such as geography, climate, demography, and geopolitical situation, The Russian Empire 1450-1801 explores the empire's primarily agrarian economy, serfdom, towns and trade, as well as the many religious groups - primarily Orthodoxy, Islam, and Buddhism. It tracks the emergence of an 'Imperial nobility' and a national self-consciousness that was, by the end of the eighteenth century, distinctly imperial, embracing the diversity of the empire's many peoples and cultures.
Download or read book How Russia Shaped the Modern World written by Steven G. Marks and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-25 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sweeping history tells the story of how Russian figures, ideas, and movements changed our world in dramatic but often unattributed ways. It points out that Russia gave the world new ways of writing novels, and launched trends in ballet, theatre and art that revolutionized cultural life.
Download or read book God Tsar and People written by Daniel B. Rowland and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God, Tsar, and People brings together in one volume essays written over a period of fifty years, using a wide variety of evidence—texts, icons, architecture, and ritual—to reveal how early modern Russians (1450–1700) imagined their rapidly changing political world. This volume presents a more nuanced picture of Russian political thought during the two centuries before Peter the Great came to power than is typically available. The state was expanding at a dizzying rate, and atop Russia's traditional political structure sat a ruler who supposedly reflected God's will. The problem facing Russians was that actual rulers seldom—or never—exhibited the required perfection. Daniel Rowland argues that this contradictory set of ideas was far less autocratic in both theory and practice than modern stereotypes would have us believe. In comparing and contrasting Russian history with that of Western European states, Rowland is also questioning the notion that Russia has always been, and always viewed itself as, an authoritarian country. God, Tsar, and People explores how the Russian state in this period kept its vast lands and diverse subjects united in a common view of a Christian polity, defending its long frontier against powerful enemies from the East and from the West.
Download or read book By Honor Bound written by Nancy Shields Kollmann and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Russians from all ranks of society were bound together by a culture of honor. Here one of the foremost scholars of early modern Russia explores the intricate and highly stylized codes that made up this culture. Nancy Shields Kollmann describes how these codes were manipulated to construct identity and enforce social norms—and also to defend against insults, to pursue vendettas, and to unsettle communities. She offers evidence for a new view of the relationship of state and society in the Russian empire, and her richly comparative approach enhances knowledge of statebuilding in premodern Europe. By presenting Muscovite state and society in the context of medieval and early modern Europe, she exposes similarities that blur long-standing distinctions between Russian and European history.Through the prism of honor, Kollmann examines the interaction of the Russian state and its people in regulating social relations and defining an individual's rank. She finds vital information in a collection of transcripts of legal suits brought by elites and peasants alike to avenge insult to honor. The cases make clear the conservative role honor played in society as well as the ability of men and women to employ this body of ideas to address their relations with one another and with the state. Kollmann demonstrates that the grand princes—and later the tsars—tolerated a surprising degree of local autonomy throughout their rapidly expanding realm. Her work marks a stark contrast with traditional Russian historiography, which exaggerates the power of the state and downplays the volition of society.
Download or read book Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia written by Nancy Kollmann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magisterial account of criminal law in early modern Russia in a wider European and Eurasian context.
Download or read book Succession to the Throne in Early Modern Russia written by Paul Bushkovitch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revisionist history explores how the tsar's power was transferred in Russia over three centuries, as cultural practices and customs evolved.
Download or read book Old Worlds written by John Michael Archer and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aligns ancient and early modern European travel narratives and historical surveys of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and Russia with texts that contributed to English ideas about those regions: Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Love's Labour's Lost, Milton's Paradise Lost and Muscovia, and Dryden's Aureng-Zebe.
Download or read book Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia written by Maureen Perrie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-04-11 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first western account of the role of pretenders and impostors in early seventeenth-century Russia.
Download or read book International Orders in the Early Modern World written by Shogo Suzuki and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the historical interactions of the West and non-Western world, and investigates whether or not the exclusive adoption of Western-oriented ‘international norms’ is the prerequisite for the construction of international order. This book sets out to challenge the Eurocentric foundations of modern International Relations scholarship by examining international relations in the early modern era, when European primacy had yet to develop in many parts of the globe. Through a series of regional case studies on East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, and Russia written by leading specialists of their field, this book explores patterns of cross-cultural exchange and civilizational encounters, placing particular emphasis upon historical contexts. The chapters of this book document and analyse a series of regional international orders that were primarily defined by local interests, agendas and institutions, with European interlopers often playing a secondary role. These perspectives emphasize the central role of non-European agency in shaping global history, and stand in stark contrast to conventional narratives revolving around the ‘Rise of the West’, which tend to be based upon a stylized contrast between a dynamic ‘West’ and a passive and static ‘East’. Focusing on a crucial period of global history that has been neglected in the field of International Relations, International Orders in the Early Modern World will be interest to students and scholars of international relations, international relations theory, international history, early modern history and sociology.
Download or read book A History of Modern Russia written by Robert Service and published by ePenguin. This book was released on 2003-09-04 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive overview of twentieth-century Russian history that treats the years from 1917 to 2000 as a single period and analyses the peculiar mixture of political, economic and social ingredients that made up the Soviet compound. It takes the reader from the age of communist rule to the changes that occurred in 1991 and the more uncertain world of Yeltsin and Putin.
Download or read book Russia written by Philip Longworth and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2006-11-28 with total page 886 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the centuries, Russia has swung sharply between successful expansionism, catastrophic collapse, and spectacular recovery. This illuminating history traces these dramatic cycles of boom and bust from the late Neolithic age to Ivan the Terrible, and from the height of Communism to the truncated Russia of today. Philip Longworth explores the dynamics of Russia's past through time and space, from the nameless adventurers who first penetrated this vast, inhospitable terrain to a cast of dynamic characters that includes Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, and Stalin. His narrative takes in the magnificent, historic cities of Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg; it stretches to Alaska in the east, to the Black Sea and the Ottoman Empire to the south, to the Baltic in the west and to Archangel and the Artic Ocean to the north. Who are the Russians and what is the source of their imperialistic culture? Why was Russia so driven to colonize and conquer? From Kievan Rus'---the first-ever Russian state, which collapsed with the invasion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century---to ruthless Muscovy, the Russian Empire of the eighteenth century and finally the Soviet period, this groundbreaking study analyses the growth and dissolution of each vast empire as it gives way to the next. Refreshing in its insight and drawing on a vast range of scholarship, this book also explicitly addresses the question of what the future holds for Russia and her neighbors, and asks whether her sphere of influence is growing.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Russia Volume 1 From Early Rus to 1689 written by Maureen Perrie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative history of Russia from early Rus' to the reign of Peter the Great.
Download or read book The Russian Moment in World History written by Marshall T. Poe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Russian history one big inevitable failure? The Soviet Union's demise and Russia's ensuing troubles have led many to wonder. But this is to look through a skewed prism indeed. In this provocative and elegantly written short history of Russia, Marshall Poe takes us well beyond the Soviet haze deep into the nation's fascinating--not at all inevitable, and in key respects remarkably successful--past. Tracing Russia's course from its beginnings to the present day, Poe shows that Russia was the only non-Western power to defend itself against Western imperialism for centuries. It did so by building a powerful state that molded society to its military needs. Thus arose the only non-Western path to modern society--a unique path neither "European" nor "Asian" but, most aptly, "Russian." From the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Russia prevailed despite unparalleled onslaughts by powerful Western armies. However, while Europe nurtured limited government, capitalism, and scientific and cultural revolution, early Russian society cultivated autocracy and command economics. Both Europe and Russia eventually created modern infrastructures, but the European model proved more productive and powerful. The post-World War I communist era can be seen as a natural continuation of Russia's autocratic past that, despite its tragic turns, kept Russia globally competitive for decades. The Russian moment in world history thus began with its first confrontations with Europe in the fifteenth century, and ended in 1991 with the Soviet collapse. Written with verve and great insight, The Russian Moment in World History will be widely read and vigorously debated by those who seek a clear and unequivocal understanding of the complex history that has made Russia what it is today.
Download or read book Russia Before The Radiant Future written by Michael Confino and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the major historians of prerevolutionary Russia has collected in this volume some of his most important essays. Written over a number of years, these pioneering works have been revised and updated and are complemented by others being published for the first time. Thematically, they cover major subjects in Imperial Russian history and in historical writing, such as ideas and their role in historical change; the intelligentsia, the nobility, and peasant society; and historiography. The twelve essays raise cardinal questions about current scholarship on Russian history before the upheavals of 1917 and offer original interpretations that are of interest to the educated layman as well as the professional historian.
Download or read book The Enterprisers written by Igor Fedyukin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creation of the new, secular, technically-oriented schools based on the imported Western European blueprints is traditionally presented as the key element in Peter I's transformation of Russia. The tsar, we are told, needed schools to train officers and engineers for his new army and the navy,and so he personally designed these new institutions and forced them upon his unwilling subjects. In this view, schools are seen as top-down creations by the forceful state as a result of military and technological pressures. In reality, while Peter I championed "learning" in a broad sense, he hadremarkably little to say about institutionalized schooling. Nor were his general and admirals keen on promoting schooling: for them, practical apprenticeship still remained the preferred method of training.As Fedyukin argues, however, the trajectories of institutional innovation were determined by the efforts of "administrative entrepreneurs" - individuals and groups who built new schools, as well as other institutions, to advance their own agendas. It is from the efforts of such enterprisers that the"Petrine revolution" was born. By drawing on a wealth of unpublished archival sources, Fedyukin is able to explore the "micropolitics" of educational innovation in the period from the early years of Peter I's reign up to the accession of Catherine II. This book maps out the actions of"administrative entrepreneurs" and provides an entirely new way of thinking about Peter I and early modern state in Russia.
Download or read book Russia written by Yegor Gaidar and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important Russian economist and politician takes a long view of economic history and Russia's development. It is not so easy to take the long view of socioeconomic history when you are participating in a revolution. For that reason, Russian economist Yegor Gaidar put aside an early version of this work to take up a series of government positions—as Minister of Finance and as Boris Yeltsin's acting Prime Minister—in the early 1990s. In government, Gaidar shepherded Russia through its transition to a market economy after years of socialism. Once out of government, Gaidar turned again to his consideration of Russia's economic history and long-term economic and political challenges. This book, revised and updated shortly before his death in 2009, is the result. Gaidar's account of long-term socioeconomic trends puts his country in historical context and outlines problems faced by Russia (and other developing economies) that more developed countries have already encountered: aging population, migration, evolution of the system of social protection, changes in the armed forces, and balancing stability and flexibility in democratic institutions. This is not a memoir, but, Gaidar points out, neither is it “written from the position of a man who spent his entire life in a research institute.” Gaidar's “long view” is inevitably informed and enriched by his experience in government at a watershed moment in history.
