Preface / Ian Barnes

Introduction / Dominic Lieven

The coming of the Slavs and the origins of Russia

From the arrival of Christianity to the golden age of Kiev

The decline and fall of Kievan Rus

The Tatar invasions and the Mongol yoke

The rise of Muscovy

Ivan the Great

Ivan the Terrible

The time of troubles

The development of Christianity in Russia

The rise of the Romanovs

Petrine Russia: Centralization and westernization

Russia after Peter: The rule of the empresses

Catherine the Great

Russia as a great power, 1800

The Napoleonic Wars

Nicholas I and the Crimean War

The Alexanders: Reform and reaction

Russian foreign policy: China and Japan

Imperial expansion: Caucasus

Russia in Central Asia

Poles, Finns, and anti-Semitism

Intellectuals and revolutionaries in nineteenth-century Russia

Economic development and its effects

Political upheaval, 1905-1906

Kursk: A province

The First World War

The February Revolution and provisional government

From Red October to Brest-Litovsk: The consolidation of Bolshevik power

The Russian Civil War

The aftermath: From war Communism to NEP and the creation of a police state

Stalin's rise to power

The purges

Stalin's collectivization

Industrialization

Roads to war

The Winter War

The Great Patriotic War

Manchuria

Postwar Europe

Khrushchev: De-Stalinization, thaw, and reform

Operation Anadyr

Brezhnev and stagnation

Russia in Eastern Europe: Disintegrating empire

The Cold War: Defending the Soviet Union

Soviet intellectuals, dissent, and Samizdat culture

Interregnum: Andropov, early Perestroika, and Chernenko

Gorbachev: From reform to failure

The Yeltsin saga

Nationalities and the near abroad

Conflict in the Caucasus

Russia, NATO, and the new European order

The Putin era

Russia's shadow empire

Russian rulers.