Contents

(and malcontents)

Chapter 1: Medieval Russia

Before 1682 A.D.

	Before the Russians
	The Kievan Principality
	A Christian Russia
	The Decline of Kiev
	The Mongol Conquest
	Alexander Nevsky and the Golden Horde
	Lithuania
	The Rise of Muscovy
	Ivan the Great
	Ivan the Terrible
	The Time of Troubles
	Russia Under the Early Romanovs

Chapter 2: Imperial Russia

1682 to 1917

	Peter the Great
	Interregnum
	Catherine the Great
	Russian America
	Napoleon and Alexander
	"Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationalism"
	The Liberation of the Serfs
	Alexander III
	Nicholas II and the Birth of Marxism-Leninism
	The 1905 Revolution
	World War I

Chapter 3: Soviet Russia

1917 to 1985

	The February Revolution and the Provisional Government
	The Bolsheviks Take Over
	The Russian Civil War
	The Russo-Polish War and the Comintern
	The New Economic Policy
	The Struggle to Succeed Lenin
	The Nightmare of Stalinism Begins
	Prelude to World War II
	Operation Barbarossa
	Stalingrad: The Turning Point
	The Battle of Kursk
	Crushing the Third Reich
	Aftermath
	The Cold War Begins
	Recompression at Home
	The Khrushchev Years
	Brezhnev Takes Charge
	Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Doctrine & Détente
	Gerontocracy Triumphant

Chapter 4: Commonwealth Russia

1985 to 1999

	Gorbachev's Experiment
	The Union of Fewer and Fewer Republics
	After the Implosion
	Belarus: Back in the USSR
	Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: The Western Pacesetters
	Moldovia: The State with an Identity Crisis
	Ukraine: An Awakening Giant?
	Hard Times for the Russian Bear