The Russian Moment In World History (ebook)

Argumento de The Russian Moment In World History (ebook)

"This slim volume offers a sweeping yet cogent and highly stimulating reinterpretation of the entire course of Russian history from the time of the earliest settlers in Russian lands to the collapse of the Soviet Union. While intended for general readers, the author's views are firmly grounded in recent scholarship."--Choice

"The thesis of this volume is that as late as the fifteenth century Russia was largely irrelevant to world history, that it became a noteworthy player in the sixteenth century, and that it remained so most of the time until 1991."--Richard Hellie, Journal of Modern History

"Students will find Poe an able provocateur of debate."--Booklist

"Condensing 1,400 years of history into 100 well-argued pages is a remarkable feat, one Poe accomplishes in terse but powerfully stated prose. . . . Poe effectively commits to his chosen path of navigation and distills his observations and vast knowledge into a clear and well-presented theory. The author deserves credit for taking on the gutsy task of re-educating that he sees as a misinformed public with humility intact, an achievement that is a testament to the purity of his intent."--Gabriella Gershenson, San Francisco Chronicle

"If half a millennium of Russian history is to be distilled into a hundred pages of text, one has to have a strong thesis. Poe does. . . If those who disagree can offer a counterargument as compact, vigorous, and accessible as Poe's, the rest of us will greatly benefit."--Foreign Affairs

"The task of compressing the whole history of Russia into a hundred easy-to-read pages would be a hard challenge for any serious historian, but the proposition of building and testing in the same space an innovative concept of what Russia is about might seem beyond possible. This neat book by Poe, which many readers would find difficult to put down before turning the last page, is the tangible proof that such a task can indeed by accomplished--and with astounding ease."--Pavel Baev, Journal of Peace Research

"This unique, interesting, and stimulating book shoehorns the whole of Russian history into a single long essay, one that is argued very forcefully and written with remarkable clarity and verve."--Reginald Zelnik, University of California, Berkeley, author of Law and Disorder on the Narova River

"This is a stimulating and timely essay, which, as intended, is provocative and potentially controversial at every turn."--Simon Franklin, Clare College, University of Cambridge, coauthor of The Emergence of Rus' 750-12000List of Maps ix
Preface xi
Chapter 1: What Russia Is and What It Is Not 1
Chapter 2: From Slavs to Rus' 10
Chapter 3: From Rus' to Russia 28
Chapter 4: The Challenge of Early Modernity 38
Chapter 5: The Origins of the Russian Moment 46
Chapter 6: The Progress of the Russian Moment 58
Chapter 7: From Early Modernity to Modernity 71
Chapter 8: The End of the Russian Moment 86
Chapter 9: Coda: What Might Have Been 91
Chronology 105
Bibliographic Note 111
Index 115