Russian History

The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II

Edvard Radzinsky. The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II.  Russian historian and author Radzinsky mines sources never before available to create a fascinating portrait of the last Tsar of Russia, and sets out a minute-by-minute...

Degaev Affair: Terror and Treason [Pipes]

The Degaev Affair: Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia. Richard Pipes. Sergei Degaev (1857-1921), a political terrorist in tsarist Russia, disappeared after participating in the assassination of the chief of Russia's security organization in 1883...

Spala, the Royal Residence

Spala, the Royal Residence (Spala, carska rezydencja). Svetlana Chestnykh, Karen L. Kettering, Michal Sloniewski. A group of historians from three countries joined forces to find and save traces of an almost unknown world of Imperial Russian hunting and...

Russian Monarchy: Representation and Rule [Wortman]

Russian Monarchy: Representation and Rule (Imperial Russia). Richard Wortman. Academic Studies Press, 2013. [Abridged edition.] 332 pages. 12 scholarly articles by Wortman organized by Monarchy and Law, Family and Nation, Monarch and Nation, Monarchy and...

Sunlight at Midnight [W. Bruce Lincoln]

Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. W. Bruce Lincoln. Blurb from the bookjacket: "The city of St. Petersburg has encompassed all that Russians are and all that they hope to become. Home to Peter and Catherine the Great, it...

The House of Special Purpose

The House of Special Purpose: An Intimate Portrait of the Last Days of the Russian Imperial Family. Compiled from the papers of Charles Sydney Gibbes (1876-1963). By J. C. Trewin (editor). An eyewitness description of the last years and final days of...

Russian Art at Hillwood

Russian Art at Hillwood. Katrina V. H. Taylor. The book is a concise and clearly-written presentationof the material found at Hillwood Museum. Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973), heiress to the Post Cereal fortune, owned many extraordinary and...

Pavlovsk Palace & Park

Anatoly M. Kuchumov (Author), A. Travlinsky (Translator), J. Hine (Translator). Pavlovsk Palace & Park. USSR (Leningrad): Aurora Art Publishers, 1975. 1st edition. Over 300 pages, profusely illustrated in color together with an historically...

Russian Imperial Style [Cerwinske, 1990]

Laura Cerwinske. Russian Imperial Style.  An elegant and beautifully illustrated, full-color paean to the lost world of 19th century Russia's aristocratic opulence melded with formal design. Cerwinske (1948-) focuses on eye-catching object d'art,...

Ten Days That Shook the World [ML #215, c. 1953].

John Reed. Ten Days That Shook the World. (The Modern Library, No. 215). Foreword by V.I. Lenin, introduction by Granville Hicks. Now classic account of the Russian revolution. Reed, immortalized on the silver screen by Warren Beatty in 1981 (Reds), was...

Escape from the Soviets [1934]

Tatiana Tchernavin. Escape from the Soviets. Tchernavin (1887-1971) wrote one of the earliest accounts of escaping the Soviet Gulag system, along with her husband Vladimir V. Tchernavin. Both were arrested in the early 1930s, and her husband was...

Nicholas & Alexandra: The Last Imperial Family of Russia [MM]

Nicholas & Alexandra: The Last Imperial Family of Tsarist Russia. This ambitious and comprehensive book was published to accompany a landmark exhibition - "Nicholas and Alexandra: The Last Imperial Family of Russia" - held in Wilmington,...

New Russia [1933]

Jerome Davis, editor. Introduction by Edward M. House. The New Russia: Between the First and Second Five Year Plans. NY: John Day, 1933. First edition. Bibliography, glossary. 265 pages. An attempt on the part of a group of sociologists and economists to...

Black Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolutions 1905-1917.

Harrison Salisbury. Black Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolutions 1905-1917. NY: Doubleday, 1978. 769 pages. Hardcover with deckle-edges. BOMC edition. A fast-paced narrative captures the rich drama of the most crucial political/historical event of the...

Rude & Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of 16th c. English Voyagers

Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers.  A tapestry of accounts by six English voyagers who visited Russia between 1553 and 1600, including Chancelor & Jenkinson, Randolph, Turberville, Fletcher,...

The Russian Worker

The Russian Worker. Victoria E. Bonnell (Editor). English translation edition of contemporary accounts of working-class life during the final decades of the Russian Empire. Written by workers and other close observers of their milieu, these five...

Empire of the Czar: Journey Through Russia

Marquis De Custine. Empire of the Czar. An excellent travelogue by the French aristocrat Marquis de Custine (1790-1857) who,  in the 1830's, traveled throughout Russia. He details the personalities and workings of society and the court at...

Russian Blood [Memoir]

CYBER MONDAY WEEK SPECIAL! Russian Blood. In the early 1980s, Alex Shoumatoff became curious about the history of his family. At that time, both his grandmothers were in their 90s. With a heightened sense of urgency, Shoumatoff collected their stories...

The Holy Place: Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow

The Holy Place: Architecture, Ideology, and History in Russia. K. Akinsha, G. Kozlov & S. Hochfield. CT (New Haven): Yale University Press, 2007. 60 illustrations. Hardcover, 224 pages.   The authors examine the extraordinary two-century...

White Road: A Russian Odyssey, 1919-1923

CYBER MONDAY WEEK SPECIAL! White Road: A Russian Odyssey, 1919-1923. Olga Illyn. A gripping and enthralling memoir of the onset of the Russian Revolution and the path of defeat for the White Army. Illyn was a young bride and her husband, a White Army...