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Description
This lucid account of Russian and Soviet history presents major trends and events from ancient Kievan Rus’ to Vladimir Putin’s renewed presidency of the twenty-first century. Russia and the Soviet Union 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, Thompson’s seventh edition is updated to discuss the flawed parliamentary elections to the Russian Duma in December 2011 as well as the election of Vladimir Putin to a second non-consecutive term as president of Russia in March 2012. Recent sociopolitical changes are reflected in a thoroughly rewritten Chapter 15 on the “New” Russia and a new Chapter 16 discussing Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev. 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.
About the Author
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.
Praise from Prior Editions:
Comprehensive, balanced, up to date, engaging, and deftly written, Russia and the Soviet Union is the best brief history of Russia available today. The book is perfectly suited for use in introductory courses on Russian history and for general readers seeking to make sense of Russia over the centuries. Thompson has packed a lifetime of thoughtful reflection, teaching, and distinguished research into this volume.
-Donald J. Raleigh, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Through a fresh format and effective revisions, John Thompson has rendered still more succinct what was already a very neat, comprehensive and highly readable text. With updated biographies ('Further Reading') in several chapters and some new illustrations, as well as an additional chapter on Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia and the Soviet Union in its sixth edition remains a superlative text for both students of Russian history and the casual reader.
-Vicki Hendrickson Grove, University of Colorado, Boulder
Russia and the Soviet Union is a superb one-semester text for a course in Russian history from origins to the near-present. Thompson does a judicious job of introducing key debates and does not hesitate to express his own considered opinion where warranted. The balanced coverage of medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods is extremely important for introductory courses, as is the newly revised section of Russia under Putin. Overall, this is a readable, exciting, stimulating book which always has students asking for more.
-David W. McFadden, Fairfield University
1. Ancient Russia and the Kievan State
2. Russia Divided and Conquered, 1054–1462
3. Moscow and “the Gathering of the Russian Lands,” 1328–1533
4. Ivan the Terrible and the Time of Troubles, 1533–1618
5. The Molding of Russian Society, 1613–1689
6. Peter the Great and Westernization, 1689–1725
7. Change and Continuity, 1725–1801
8. Power, Backwardness, and Creativity, 1801–1855
9. Reform, Reaction, and Modernization, 1855–1904
10. Revolution, Reform, and War, 1904–1917
11. Revolution, Civil War, and the Founding of Soviet Society, 1917–1928
12. The Second Revolution, the Stalinist System, and World War II, 1928–1946
13. The Soviet Union as a Superpower: Change, Stagnation, and “Cold War,” 1946–1984
14. The Gorbachev “Revolution” and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1983–1991
15. The “New” Russia in the Post-Soviet Era 1991–2000
16. The Putin Era: Progress and Problems, 2000-2012
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