5 INTRODUCTION
  Chapter One
7 EARLIEST HISTORY Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Aeneolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age. The slave-owning states of the Transcaueasus, Central Asia and the Northern Black Sea littoral. End of the period of antiquity
  Chapter Two
  THE ANCIENT RUSSIAN STATE The East Slavs. Formation of the ancient Russian state. Rus and Byzantium. The conversion of Russia to Christianity. The social and political structure of the ancient Russian state. The struggle between the classes of ancient Russia. Feudal disunity in the ancient Russian state, eleventh and twelfth centuries. Novgorod. Vladimir-Suzdal. Galicia-Volhynia. The culture of ancient Rus
23 The economy of Europe and Anterior Asia, based on slave-labour, suffered a serious decline about the middle of the first millennium of our era. Slave-owning states, that in the past had been big and powerful, were collapsing.
42 Russian culture from the tenth to the thirteenth century developed along its own original lines and had reached a high level as early as the eleventh century.
  Chapter Three
  THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE. FEUDAL DISUNITY. THE UNIFICATION OF THE RUSSIAN LANDS IN THE FOURTEENTH AND FD7TEENTH CENTURIES Mongolian conquests. The peoples of Central Asia and Transcaucasus under the Mongols. Timur and his empire. The establishment of the Tatar yoke in Rus. The struggle of the Baltic and Russian peoples against the Swedish and Teutonic Knights. The Battle on the Ice, 1242. The feudal disunity of Rus. The rise of Moscow. The socio-economic development of Rus in the fourteenth century. The Battle of Kulikovo, 1380, and its historic significance. The Principality of Moscow in the first half of the fifteenth century. The feudal war of the second quarter of the fifteenth century and the victory of the Grand Prince. Russian culture in the thirteenth to the fifteenth century
53 The beginning of the thirteenth century is an important dividing line in world history. It is the line that marks the beginning of the Mongol conquests that embraced the whole of Asia and a number of European countries, including Rus, and had consequences on a global scale.
69 The incursions of Batu’s hordes caused a serious setback in the cultural field. The Tatar-Mongol invasion was described in many literary works as a catastrophe arising out of the intervention of supernatural forces, as something unprecedented and incomprehensible.
  Chapter Four
  THE CENTRALISED RUSSIAN STATE. RUSSIA IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE FIFTEENTH AND THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY The social and economic development of Rus. Completion of the unification of Russian lands and the abolition of the Tatar yoke. Ivan III. Formation of the autocracy. Vastly III. Rule of the boyars. The Moscow revolt, 1547. Ivan the Terrible. Reforms of the fifties. Formation of the Russian monarchy with representation of the social estates. Destruction of the Khanate of Kazan. Livonian War. Oprichnina. Economic crisis of the seventies and eighties and its consequences. Reign of Tsar Fyodor. Boris Godunov. Russian culture in the second half of the fifteenth and the sixteenth century
76 The history of Russia at the end of the fifteenth century and during the sixteenth — an age of great achievements and terrible sanguinary tragedies, a stormy and extremely contradictory age — has always come in for particular attention from researchers in the USSR and in other countries.
87 The reign of the Grand Duke Ivan III was an important stage in the formation of the unified Russian state.
109 The development of Russian culture in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was closely bound up with the process of the unification of Russia in a single state.
  Chapter Five
  FEUDAL RUSSIA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY The peasant war and Polish-Swedish intervention in the early seventeenth century. The economic and social development of Russia. Condition of the peoples of Siberia, the Volga area, Central Asia and the Transcaucasus. Evolution of the political system and the church reforms. Sharpening of social contradictions. Urban revolts, 1648–62. War against Poland and Sweden, and reunion of the Ukraine east of the Dnieper with Russia. Increased feudal oppression. The peasant war under the leadership ofStepan Razin. The church schism and the participation of the masses. Russian culture in the seventeenth century
118 The seventeenth century heralded a new epoch in world history. The revolution in the Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century and, especially, the English bourgeois revolution in the mid-seventeenth century resulted in the most advanced countries of Europe turning to the bourgeois mode of development.
143 Russian seventeenth-century culture is marked by the clash of contradictory elements—the remnants of the old and elements of the new.
  Chapter Six
  EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE FORMATION OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY Beginning of the reign of Peter the Great. The Northern War. The Eastern policy. Peter the Great and reforms in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Years of palace revolutions. Biron’s ascendancy. Russia in the mid-eighteenth century. Culture in the first half of the eighteenth century
150 Most of the European countries, Russia among them, had become consolidated as absolute feudal monarchies by the beginning of the eighteenth century.
166 Peter the Great died in January 1725 as the result of a chill caught when helping to save some drowning sailors at Lahta, near St. Petersburg.
173 The closing years of the reign of Empress Elizabeth were years of great difficulty. The peasant disturbances that had never ceased since the twenties grew more serious in the fifties.
  Chapter Seven
  FEUDAL RUSSIA IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Russia’s economy at the close of the eighteenth century. “Enlightened absolutism”—sixties to eighties. Catherine II. Turkish war, 1768–74, and the first partition of Poland. Peasant war, 1773–75. Reaction—seventies to early nineties. Turkish war, 1787–91. French Revolution, 1789–94, and Russian autocracy. Second and third partitions of Poland. Social thought and culture in the second half of the eighteenth century
176 The leading European countries completed their transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production in the last few decades of the eighteenth century.
181 Increased feudal oppression in the second half of the eighteenth century led to a further sharpening of the class struggle, which reached its peak in the peasant war led by Pugachov.
182 Catherine II, in response to the popular rebellion, took immediate measures to give greater power to the autocratic government, especially to local authorities.
  Chapter Eight
  THE COLLAPSE OF SERFDOM—THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY The break-up of serfdom and the development of capitalism. The home and foreign policy of Paul I and Alexander I. The Patriotic War of 1812. The Decembrist movement. The home policy of Nicholas I. The mass movement in the thirties and forties. The revolutionary democrats Belinsky and Herzen. Russian culture in the first half of the nineteenth century. The foreign policy of Nicholas I. The Crimean War
194 The French bourgeois revolution at the end of the eighteenth century ushered in a new period in world history, the age of the triumph of capitalism and the appearance of the proletariat as the driving force behind historical development.
206 Historians often referred to the thirty years’ reign of Nicholas I (1825–55) that began with the defeat of the Decembrists as “the apogee of
214 The culture of the peoples of Russia developed in the first half of the nineteenth century in a sharp struggle against serfdom, class privileges and the despotic rule of the bureaucracy.
226 The last great event in the history of Russia in the pre-reform period was the Crimean War.
  Chapter Nine
  RUSSIA AFTER THE PEASANT REFORM. THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY The people’s struggle for emancipation and the collaps’e of serfdom. Reforms of the sixties and seventies. The development of capitalism. The revolutionary movement after the reform. The Narodniks. Reaction of the nobility in the eighties and early nineties. Development of the workingclass movement and the birth of the Russian Social-Democratic movement. Russian culture and the culture of the peoples of Russia
232 The upward trend of capitalism reached its peak in the second half of the nineteenth century, by which time it had become the world socio-economic system;
233 The Crimean War was the prologue to some of the most important events in Russian history. These events began with the collapse of the system of serfdom; the Peasant Reform of 1861 was the first big step towards converting the feudal, serf-owning monarchy into a bourgeois monarchy.
234 The “liberals” and the “serf-owners” represented the interests of different sections of one and the same class — the nobility.
239 On February 19, 1861, Tsar Alexander II signed the Act on “peasants emerging from serf dependence” and the Manifesto on the abolition of serfdom; the two documents were published on March 5, 1861.
246 Twenty-five years after the Peasant Reform, in some two-fifths of the gubernias of European Russia (mainly the older Central Russian gubernias) the landowners were still running their estates on the “labour-service” system,
251 The late sixties and early seventies of the nineteenth century constituted a period of the gathering of forces of the young democratic intelligentsia which had suffered a heavy blow from the reactionaries after Karakozov’s attempt on the life of Alexander II in 1866.
262 The collapse of serfdom and the development of capitalism, the imposing growth of the revolutionary movement and the increasing activity of the masses and the break-down of the old way of life connected with these changes were determining factors in the development of the culture of the Russian people and other peoples inhabiting Russia.
  Chapter Ten
  RUSSIA IN THE EPOCH OF IMPERIALISM The main changes in the economic and social system of the country; tsarism, its home and foreign policy at the turn of the twentieth century. The beginning of the proletarian stage in the emancipation movement and the growing revolutionary crisis in the early twentieth century. The Russo-Japanese War and the first Russian revolution. The Stolypin reaction. The new revolutionary upsurge. Russia on the eve of the First World War. Science, education and culture in the early twentieth century
281 Capitalism entered its highest and last stage, the stage of imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century.
285 Alexander III died in the autumn of 1894 after a reign of 13 years. His favourite minister, Witte, who paid hypocritical respect to the memory of his late master, had to invent the conception of two minds,
290 The mid-nineties, a period of serious social and economic changes in Russian life associated with the consolidation of imperialism, were marked by fresh manifestations of the revolutionary emancipation movement.
297 During the night of January 26 and 27, 1904, Japanese destroyers made a sudden attack on a Russian squadron at anchor off Port Arthur.
308 The Second Duma was dissolved on June 3, 1907. This was effected by means of a despicable act of provocation plotted by the gendarmerie headquarters in St. Petersburg.
320 The culture of the Russian people and the other peoples inhabiting the Russian Empire developed under extremely complicated social and political conditions in the early years of the twentieth century.
  Chapter Eleven
340 RUSSIA IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR. THE FEBRUARY BOURGEOIS-DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION Diplomacy on the eve of the war. War operations. Economic ruin. The growing revolutionary crisis. The fall of tsarism and the seizure of power by the bourgeoisie
356 CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE
359 GEOGRAPHIC INDEX
367 NAME INDEX
* * *
 

Notes