Russia Under the Old Regime

by Richard Pipes

Release Date: January, 1997

Edition: Paperback

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Best One-Volume History of Pre-Revolutionary Russia

I only read this book after I had been studying Russian and Russian history for many years, studied in Russia and married a Russian. It is beyond any doubt the best introduction to the subject that I have found in English. It removes a large amount of misconceptions that Americans have about Russian history, illuminates what deserves to be illuminated, avoids pet topics and romaticisms and manages to do all this without the condescending tone that most American writers take when writing about Russia. If you know nothing about Russia and want to learn, this is an excellent place to start.

Indispensible Guide to Understanding Prerevolutionary Russia

This work by Pipes is the place to start if you are interested in studying the history or literature of Pre-Revolutionary Russia. Pipes takes a traditionalist historical approach to discussing development of Russia from the Kievan Rus state through to the height of Imperial Tsarist Russia. His work is extremely illuminating, revealing the formation, evolution and interaction of the complex Russian social classes. He clearly sets forward what he believes to to be the unique factors which produced Russia's "differentness" and which contributed toward the production of the absolutist institution of the Tsarist autocracy. Pipes is particularly interesting on the subjects of serfdom (and why is was not a feudal construct) and the symbiotic, destructive relation between Russian society and topography. This is indeed the definitive work on Old Russia, and is required reading for an understanding of Tolstoy.