RUSSIA
A HISTORY
RUSSIA A HISTORY
Third Edition
EDITED BY
GREGORY L. FREEZE
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6DP
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© Oxford University Press, 1997, 2002, and 2009
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
This edition first published 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Russia : a history / edited by Gregory L. Freeze.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–956041–7 (pbk.)
1. Russia–History. 2. Soviet Union–History. 3. Russia (Federation)–History–1991
I. Freeze, Gregory L., 1945
DK40.R848 2009
947–dc22 2009026415
Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Clays Ltd., St Ives Plc
ISBN 978–0–19–956041–7
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
CONTENTS
List of Maps
List of Plates
Preface
List of Contributors
Glossary of Terms, Abbreviations, and Acronyms
Note on Transliteration and Dates
1. FROM KIEV TO MUSCOVY: THE BEGINNINGS TO 1450
Janet Martin
2. MUSCOVITE RUSSIA 1450–1598
Nancy Shields Kollmann
3. FROM MUSCOVY TOWARDS ST PETERSBURG 1598–1689
Hans-Joachim Torke
4. THE PETRINE ERA AND AFTER 1689–1740
John T. Alexander
5. THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT 1740–1801
Gary Marker
6. PRE-REFORM RUSSIA 1801–1855
David L. Ransel
7. REFORM AND COUNTER REFORM 1855–1890
Gregory L. Freeze
8. REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA 1890–1914
Reginald E. Zelnik
9. RUSSIA IN WAR AND REVOLUTION 1914–1921
Daniel T. Orlovsky
10. THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY (NEP) AND THE REVOLUTIONARY EXPERIMENT 1921–1929
WIlliam B. Husband
11. BUILDING STALINISM 1929–1941
Lewis Siegelbaum
12. THE GREAT FATHERLAND WAR AND LATE STALINISM 1941–1953
William C. Fuller, Jr
13. FROM STALINISM TO STAGNATION: 1953–1985
Gregory L. Freeze
14. A MODERN ‘TIME OF TROUBLES’: FROM REFORM TO DISINTEGRATION 1985–1999
Gregory L. Freeze
15. REBUILDING RUSSIA
Gregory L. Freeze
Maps
Chronology
Further Reading
Photographic acknowledgements
Index
LIST OF MAPS
The Approach to Borodino
Territorial expansion and growth of the Russian Empire, 1260–1904
Kievan Russia, 1054–1238
Russia c.1396 and the rise of Moscow, 1300–1584
Europe at the time of Peter the Great
The provinces of European Russia
Russia, its Empire, and its neighbours in the 20th century
The Great Patriotic War
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1950
The USSR in 1991
LIST OF PLATES
1. 1169: Novgorod icon about victory in the struggle for Kievan succession
2. Kizhi wooden church from the fourteenth century
3. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich 1645–76
4. 17th century: Engraving of peasants
5. Peter the Great
6. Catherine the Great
7. Religious procession in the 1870s, (Ilya Repin painting)
8. Nicholas II and family
9. Peasant elders c.1910
10. Petrograd demonstration in 1917
11. Antireligious campaign
12. Sculpture by Vera Mukhina, ‘The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman’
13. Doctoring photographs
14. Ukrainian collective farmers handing a corn wreath to Nikita Khrushchev, 19 September 1963
15. Party Congress: Brezhnev, Podgnorny, Andropov, Kosygin
16. Reagan and Gorbachev at Geneva summit
17. Yeltsin after the defeat of the coup in August 1991
18. Putin and Medvedev (May day, 2008)
PREFACE
Russia, it is fair to say, does not automatically evoke feelings of empathy and goodwill in the West: the media, politicians, and even many scholars regard Russia with a mixture of condescension, antipathy, and fear. Not that Russia, or at least its rulers, has not done much to deserve the hostility; territorial expansion and brutal violation of human rights—by both the old and new regimes—provide ample fodder for those predisposed to characterize Russia as a threat to Western civilization. But the pervasive antipathy is often dismissive of the favourable dimensions of the Russian experience; a Russophobic tone too often becomes the default, reinforcing ill-informed stereotypes of omnipotent authoritarianism, backwardness, and alcoholism. These stereotypes have deep historic roots, dating back to the sixteenth-century travellers’ accounts, but only came to dominate popular images of Russia in the modern period, which were shaped by anti-Russian diatribes in the mass media of the nineteenth century and, far more profoundly, by the ideological battles of the twentieth century and the Cold War. Historical scholarship on Russia has done, until recently, too little to correct these politicized stereotypes and produce a more balanced, better informed picture. Scholarly studies of Russia, in fact, appeared rather belatedly, most of them after the Second World War, and long bore the taint and distortions of the Cold War.
This volume takes advantage of two major developments in the field—one conceptual, the other empirical. Conceptually, Russian historians have turned from a narrow focus on political history and given, increasingly, more attention to society, economy, and culture. The result is a more sophisticated appreciation for the importance for the other spheres, not merely as ‘reflecting what the state demands’, but in shaping the course of Russian history. This means ascribing more agency to historical actors and appreciating the role of culture, especially religion, in shaping popular culture and political behaviour. Empirically, recent scholarship takes advantage of the ‘archival revolution’ that followed the break-up of the USSR, which enabled unprecedented access to archival sources, especially for the twentieth century. The archival revolution of 1991 was neither sudden (it had antecedents in the previous decade) nor complete (much, in particular the police archives, offers at best nominal access). Nevertheless, serious scholarship on Russian history in the twentieth century has become possible; scholars are no longer forced to rely on party directives, Pravda, and the selective memory in ‘memoirs’. The result has been an extraordinary, ongoing profusion of scholarship, much of it concentrated on the Soviet period, and this new research has significantly enhanced and often recast our understanding of key issues, processes, and outcomes.