Russia: A Historical Introduction from Kievan Rus' to the Present

This lucid account of Russian and Soviet history presents major trends and events from ancient Kievan Rus' to Vladimir Putin's presidency in the twenty-first century. Russia does not shy away from controversial topics, including the impact of the Mongol conquest, the paradoxes of Peter the Great, the "inevitability" of the 1917 Revolution, the Stalinist terror, and the Gorbachev reform effort. Tackling those topics and others, the new edition is updated to discuss the Russia-Georgia war of 2008, the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, the war in eastern Ukraine, and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Distinguished by its brevity and amply supplemented with useful images and suggested readings, this essential text provides balanced coverage of all periods of Russian history and incorporates economic, social, and cultural developments as well as politics and foreign policy.

John M. Thompson, a graduate of Columbia's Russian Institute, taught history at Indiana University for seventeen years and was a distinguished visiting professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Air War College. He is currently teaching Russian and world history at Midcoast Senior College in Maine.

Christopher J. Ward received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He teaches Russian and world history at Clayton State University in metropolitan Atlanta and is the author of Brezhnev's Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism.