A History of Russia

George Vernadsky

Yale University Press, Jan 1, 1969 - History - 531 pages

"Scholarly, intellectually stimulating, and readable. It is not only a very good guide through the record of Russian development, but it makes one go deeper by the way it raises interesting questions."--Frederick C. Barghoorn

Generally recognized as the standard one-volume history of Russia, this monumental work describes Russia's growth from the times of the nomadic tribes to the Cold War and examines the social, religious, and cultural as well as the political and economic aspects of Russian civilization. Professor Vernadsky reviews the origins of the Russian state, Kievan Russia, the Mongol period, the tsardom of Moscow in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Russian empire from Peter the Great to Nicholas II. The last third of the book discusses the revolution of 1917 and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a world power.

Contents

• AUTHORS NOTE: 1
• CENTURY: 85
• THE TSARDOM OF MOSCOW IN THE 17TH: 113
• SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: 171
• THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN THE FIRST: 191
• IO THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN THE SECOND: 218
• INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT FROM THE MID: 241
• THE REVOLUTION OF 1905 AND: 261
• THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY AND: 321
• THE SOVIET UNION IN THE 1930s: 371
• RUSSIAN CULTURE UNDER THE SOVIETS: 394
• RUSSIA IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR: 418
• RUSSIA AND THE WORLD IN THE: 453
• DATA ON THE SOVIET UNION: 485
• INDEX: 505
• THE FIRST MUSCOVITE DYNASTY HOUSE: 523

About the author

Professor Emeritus George Vernadsky of Yale University was a Russian emigre who settled in the United States and became one of the foremost historians on the subject of his native land. His life, he said, fell into three periods. The first was his youth in Moscow, taking his degree from the University of Moscow, teaching Russian history at the University of Petrograd (1914--17) in the stimulating intellectual atmosphere of the former St. Petersburg, and finally, studying and teaching in the Urals and Crimea, where, he said, even the revolution did not unduly disturb the universities. His second period was seven years in exile, spent teaching in Constantinople, Athens, Prague, and Paris. In 1927, invited to Yale, he came to the United States and remained in New Haven, first as a research associate in history and then as professor of Russian history, for the rest of his academic career. Gradually he produced a monumental body of work on Russian history. "While the transition from one span of my life to another was more or less painful,"he said, "the more I think of the course of my life, the more I find that in many respects I should be grateful to Fate for this tortuous path, since it gave me the variety and richness of experience, and since in each of the three paths I was fortunate to meet so many kind and congenial friends." Vernadsky's major work is the five-volume A History of Russia (1943--69). Planned as a collaboration between Vernadsky and Michael Karpovich of Harvard University, it was originally intended to run to nine volumes, but Karpovich's death in 1959 ended the possibility of his doing the later sections, and no further volumes appeared. Nevertheless, for the period it covers---to the time of the Renaissance and Reformation in Europe---it is the definitive work. Vernadsky's shorter A History of Russia (1961) brings the history of Russia up to the nuclear age.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A History of Russia; Volume 43 of A Yale paperback; Volume 43 of Yale paperbound
• Author: George Vernadsky
• Edition: unabridged
• Publisher: Yale University Press, 1969
• ISBN: 0300002475, 9780300002478
• Length: 531 pages
• Subjects: History / Russia & the Former Soviet Union