The Cambridge History of Russia: Volume I: From Early Rus’ to 1689. Ed. by Maureen Perrie. Cambridge University Press Cambridge [usw.] 2006. XXII. ISBN: 978-0-521-81227-6.The Cambridge History of Russia. - Volume II: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917. Ed. by Dominic Lieven. Cambridge University Press Cambridge [usw.] 2006. XVIII. ISBN: 978-0-521-81529-1.The Cambridge History of Russia. - Volume III: The Twentieth Century. Ed. by Ronald Grigor Suny. Cambridge University Press Cambridge [usw.] 2006. XXIV. ISBN: 978-0-521-81144-6.

The Cambridge History of Russia: Volume I: From Early Rus’ to 1689. Ed. by Maureen Perrie. Cambridge University Press Cambridge [usw.] 2006. XXII, 777 S., Abb., Ktn., Tab. ISBN: 978-0-521-81227-6.

The Cambridge History of Russia. Volume II: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917. Ed. by Dominic Lieven. Cambridge University Press Cambridge [usw.] 2006. XVIII, 765 S., Abb., Ktn. ISBN: 978-0-521-81529-1.

The Cambridge History of Russia. Volume III: The Twentieth Century. Ed. by Ronald Grigor Suny. Cambridge University Press Cambridge [usw.] 2006. XXIV, 842 S., Abb., Ktn. ISBN: 978-0-521-81144-6.

Noting the tendency of current unnamed “English language histories of Russia to be based on outdated and ill-informed studies,” Maureen Perrie, editor of the first volume of the new Cambridge History, promises instead “the most recent interpretations of serious scholars in order to provide an authoritative and reliable new account of pre-Petrine Russia.” By and large she succeeds: both novice and seasoned scholars will find, with few exceptions, solid, well-written, state-of-the-art scholarship here.

After a smart overview of the geographical environment by Denis J. B. Shaw, Jonathan Shepard surveys a wide range of archeological and written sources to make sense of the origin of Rus’ through the reign of Vladimir and Christianization. The chapter on Rus’ itself, 1015–1125, by Simon Franklin, is a model of clarity and organization, even if the depicted reality is ‘grubbier’ than its image. To Martin Dimnik falls the untidy fragmentation of the twelfth century, and almost unavoidably his account is dense and difficult. All three authors struggle to balance theory with obvious exception in Kiev’s dynastic system. Wisely Maureen Perrie assigns both the age of the Golden Horde (1240–1359) and the rise of Moscow (1359–1462) to Janet Martin, whose earlier Cambridge textbook serves her well as she struggles to provide the rationale for continuity between Kiev and Muscovy, largely on the basis of Church and dynasty. At this point the chronology is broken by V. L. Ianin’s essay on Novgorod, which ably documents just how alien, how uniquely non-Kievan the northern entrepot really was. An essay on the other Rus’, medieval Lithuania, would also have been welcome.

Don Ostrowski writes on Moscow 1462–1533, and predictably the influences of the steppe are everywhere apparent in an essay fully consonant with recent studies of Muscovy’s symbiotic relations with the hordes. Sergei Bogatyrev covers Ivan IV; his essay reveals both the complexity of his subject, and the diversity of scholarly opinion in the literature. A. P. Pavlov of St. Petersburg treats the reigns of Fedor and Boris Godunov; his essay is confusing because he employs social categories and political groupings which don’t correspond to those in other essays (a paragraph on “trading-quarter construction” (p. 274) is, for example, unintelligible).

At this point chronological coverage is again suspended for six topical articles. Richard Hellie (†) contributes a model essay on the peasant way of life and the origins of slavery and serfdom. Denis Shaw’s second essay is a brief survey of urban life, focused on social structure and trade. Michael Khodarkovsky writes a fine analysis of Muscovy’s relations with non-Christian peoples of the north, the Volga region, the Crimea, and Siberia. David B. Miller’s rich article on the Orthodox Church suffers from too much detail, too little synthesis. Richard Hellie’s second contribution explores the expanding role of written law, and therefore of the Muscovite state. And finally, Michael S. Flier offers a nice essay on political ideas and rituals, centered of course on Makarii and Ivan’s 1547 coronation (divergent views in the academy are apparent as curiously Flier downplays the role of Agapetus in Muscovite ideology while Hellie refers repeatedly to an “Agapetus state”).

The final section of the book is introduced by Maureen Perrie’s own essay on the Smuta which, following recent scholarship, was not a class war, did not end the boyar aristocracy, and was not a dispute over the type of monarchy. The remaining nine topical essays treat Muscovy under the first Romanovs. The first contribution by Marshal Poe, on the central government, is an outstanding analysis of the transformation of the political system and the rise of the prikazy. Brian Davies is assigned two difficult essays, on local government, which is little studied (Denis Shaw also has an essay on town government), and on Muscovy’s diplomatic and military history 1613–1689. Khodarkovsky contributes a second and exceptionally clear essay on the incorporation of non-Russian elites, and the Christianization and enserfment of their peoples. Hellie’s third essay, on the economy, underplays Muscovy’s first industrial revolution and gunpowder revolution, slighting the work of Paul Bushkovitch and Joseph Fuhrmann. Nancy Shields Kollmann writes on law and society, focusing the Ulozhenie. One detects scholarly disagreement on how centralized or fragmented was 17th century Muscovy. It’s also clear from several essays on governance that we need standardized translations for namestnik and voevoda. Robert O. Crummey pours a lifetime of learning into a sparkling contribution on the Church and Raskol. The volume concludes with Lindsey Hughes’ (†) essay on native and Western trends in culture, intellectual life and the arts. Thus Perrie keeps her promise to provide the most authoritative scholarship available, even if there remain a few inconsistencies and tensions between individual contributions. The combined topical bibliography requires 58 pages.

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In his introduction to the volume on Imperial Russia, Dominic Lieven recognizes both the richness of scholarship on some topics, and the unfashionableness of others (“there are no standard histories of Russian foreign policy or of the empire’s fiscal and financial systems”). Thus an authoritative history is problematic not only because of scholarly imbalance, but chiefly because Russia had become “a very diverse and complex society.” Where Maureen Perrie’s first volume aspires to a new synthesis; the second attempts to sample diverse approaches, while indulging its editor’s penchant for the theme of empire, and for micro-history.

“Imperial Russia”, covering “the period between Russia’s proclamation as an empire under Peter I and the fall of the Romanov dynasty and empire in March 1917,” shows most decisively the hand of its editor and his “own […] myopic obsessions – empire and periphery – as the key to understanding the whole period.” Thus there are no chronological chapters on the Romanovs’ reigns and no genealogical tables. Three initial chapters treat not Peter and his successors, but a broadly comparative view of Russia as empire and periphery (Dominic Lieven), tsarist nationalities policy (Theodore R. Weeks), and identity in “three different configurations for the imperial vision” (Mark Bassin). All three essays agree that a major change in imperial policy occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century, when respectively they detect the emergence of “an ethnic Russian” empire, “Russification,” and a “national empire.” Three non-Russian nationalities, Ukrainians and Poles (Timothy Snyder), Jews (Benjamin Nathans), and the peoples professing Islam (Vladimir Bobrovnikov) receive separate treatment (the latter essay is clumsily translated). Completing and complementing these core chapters on empire is an entire section on Russian foreign policy (with fine chronological surveys by Paul Bushkovitch, Hugh Ragsdale, and David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye), and essays on the Russian army and the late imperial navy (William Fuller, Jr., and Nikolai Afonin). Considerations of space may have dictated the omission of essays on the Caucasus and Siberia, both the subject of much recent literature. Given the frequent citation of Geoffrey Hosking, however, it’s a pity that his excellent maps of Russian expansion were not borrowed as homage to his work and as a service to the reader.

Among the more numerous contributions required but not directly linked to the volume’s central thrust, several stand out as yeoman attempts to survey a topic throughout the imperial period. Gary Hamburg’s sweeping essay on political thought represents the volume’s primary treatment of the much-studied intelligentsia, but commendable also for its attention to conservative thinkers in government, from Peter the Great’s aides Shafirov and Prokopovich to Shishkov and Pobedonostsev. Likewise Gregory Freeze’s essay on the Orthodox Church is a model contribution, lucid, broad, and penetrating – the capstone to a productive career. Barbara Alpern Engel’s essay on women and the family is masterful. Complementary is Michelle Lamarche Marrese’s consideration of gender and the law. The two essays on Russian culture were assigned to Lindsey Hughes (eighteenth century) and to Rosamund Bartlett (nineteenth). Covering all the arts is a daunting assignment and both contributions have merit, although Bartlett’s seems artificial in its attempt to force post-Crimean culture into a nationalist and imperial mold. Other authors with Herculean assignments find other solutions. Boris Ananich, assigned the Russian economy and banking, simply emphasizes the period after the Great Reforms, although Peter Waldron, on state finances, is far more balanced chronologically. Jörg Baberowski’s nice essay on law and the judicial system justifiably emphasizes the more recent period. Zhand P. Shakibi, who covers the organs of the central government, dismisses the eighteenth century in three thin pages before discussing Alexander I’s ministerial government. Janet Hartley presents a far more balanced if overly brief portrait of provincial administration, as competent on Catherine’s municipal and provincial reform as it is on the zemstva (she does, however, slight the municipal reforms of the 1860s).

Essays on the individual social strata also cover the entire period. Dominic Lieven’s own second essay, coverage of the elites, is predictably heavily comparative, while Elaine Kimmerling Wirtschafter does justice to the middling orders. Finally, grossly underrepresented are the massive peasantries: David Moon’s admirable essay is first-rate, his task eased by his recent publication of a monographic overview. Historians have decried the lack of scholarship on the Russian urban experience for decades. Catherine Evtukov’s portrait of Nizhnii Novgorod gives fine coverage to an atypical city, but it fails to redress a neglected topic. Only one good essay seems ephemeral, Alexander Martin’s account of the legacy of 1812, which despite its merits, seems out of place here.

The volume concludes with four essays on the waning decades of Imperial Russia. Larissa Zakharova summarizes the Great Reforms in ways familiar to many readers. The development of a Russian working class, and the rise of socialism is treated by the late Reginald E. Zelnik. The growing conflict between the late tsarist police state and the revolutionaries, including the revolution of 1905, is described by Jonathan W. Daly and finally, Eric Lohr is assigned an essay on World War One and the outbreak of revolution. Thus the editor has shaped the volume to fit his own priorities, without losing sight of the coverage and balance expected in a Cambridge History. The collective bibliography covers 40 pages.

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The twentieth-century volume shows the least intrusive editorial hand, with serious implications for the reader. Although Professor Suny well knows “the history of Russia would be incomplete without the accompanying and contributing history of the non-Russian peoples,” space allocated to them is actually quite modest. More problematic is the issue of historiographic voice on many 20th century topics: his volume opens with Suny’s own lengthy essay on how the “‘West’ wrote its history of the USSR.” Its core focus, unsurprisingly, is on how revisionist social historians (their ideological roots are casually omitted) came by the 1980s to relegate conservative, Cold-War, political scientists and historians to the ranks of the “beleaguered and marginalized.” Furthermore for all its merits and inclusivity, this agenda-setting introduction’s focus on the American academy, while understandable, provides a poor portal to a volume with eight British contributors (German scholarship is virtually invisible). Nor is it clear why none of the younger victorious social historians cited in Suny’s essay appear as authors in the book itself.

The first half of the volume appears to be conventionally structured, consisting of twelve essays providing chronological coverage of the century. The first, Mark D. Steinberg’s on 1900–1917, is fully consistent with the introduction, in that it chronicles the revisionists’ theme of dissatisfied intellectuals, peasants, workers, women and nationalities as they rebelliously reject their state-assigned roles. In Mark von Hagen’s essay on World War One, however, popular rebellion languishes: Revisionists, if less ideological, might take note of the middle-class zemstvo movement during the war, as they too rejected their assigned roles as surely as did the oppressed soldiers or peasantry. Revisionism returns in S. A. Smith’s account of 1917, where one learns that traditional “politics was a theatre of shadows with the real battles for power going on in society.” It also guides Donald J. Raleigh’s account of the civil war, focused on diffuse mass discontent. Having settled into the comfortable bottom-up patterns of social history, the reader abruptly encounters Alan Ball’s treatment of NEP and David R. Shearer’s article on Stalinism, where old-fashioned top-down history returns with focus on disputes within the leadership, and decrees issued by the vozhd’. To be sure peasants resist collectivization, but they react, they do not mobilize or shape policy themselves. By the time the reader reaches the essay on WWII (John Barber and Mark Harrison), the revisionism and social history heralded in Suny’s introduction is a distant memory: now social mobility simply means that Stalin’s war-time colleagues rose to become the new Party elite. The section on Stalin concludes not with a survey of his infamous post-war policies, but with a general and somewhat repetitive overview by Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk on the circle of leaders around him, from the 20s until his death.

Of the remaining chronological essays, it can be said that Suny has chosen outstanding authors wisely: William Taubman on Khrushchev, Stephen B. Hanson on Brezhnev, Archie Brown on Gorbachev, and Michael McFaul on the Russian Federation since 1991 – all cover complex topics with economy and clarity.

The second half of the book consists of topical essays. Peter Gatrell surveys the sequence of economic visions which shaped national policy, and their effects. The transformation of the peasantry and the creation of a skilled industrial working class are described by Esther Kingston-Mann and by Lewis H. Siegelbaum respectively. The significant advances made by women, half of the population, are noted ably in a single essay by Barbara Alpern Engel. Non-Russians, more than half of the population of Russia and of the Soviet Union, are treated in just two essays, a general survey by Jeremy Smith, and somewhat repetitiously by Serhy Yekelchyk’s contribution on the Western borderlands and peoples. There’s no essay on education, but David Holloway contributes an interesting survey of advancements in science and technology (“The Soviet Union presented itself as the true heir to the Enlightenment project of applying reason to human affairs”). The huge topic of culture, literature, and the arts, is allocated two essays, by James von Geldern and Josephine Woll. Likewise foreign policy receives two essays, by Jonathan Haslam and Ted Hope. Lars T. Lih provides a kind of epilogue to the volume with a thoughtful essay on the changing Marxist Social-Democratic vision from the age of the revolutionary movements to the Khrushchev era.

The third volume of the “Cambridge History”, because of heated historical debates, required firmer editorial control than it receives. It also shows the least imagination, and the greatest imbalance between the editor’s stated agenda and the actual content of the volume. Its contributors collectively compiled a 60 page bibliography.

Max J. Okenfuss, St. Louis