Russias Empires, Valerie A. Kivelson
Russias Empires, Valerie A. Kivelson
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Russia's Empires

Author: Valerie A. Kivelson, Ronald Grigor Suny

Narrator: Daniel Henning

Unabridged: 19 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/25/2022


Synopsis

Russia's Empires analyzes how and why Russia expanded to become the largest country on the globe and how it repeatedly fell under the sway of strong, authoritarian leaders.

Authors Valerie A. Kivelson and Ronald Grigor Suny examine how imperial practices shaped choices and limited alternatives. Using the concept of empire, they look at the ways in which ordinary people imagined their position within a non-democratic polity—whether the Muscovite tsardom or the Soviet Union—and what concessions the rulers had to make, or appear to make, in order to establish their authority and preserve their rule.

Russia's Empires tackles the long history of the region, following the vicissitudes of empire—the absence, the coalescence, and the setbacks of imperial aspirations—across the centuries. The framework of empire allows the authors to address pressing questions of how various forms of non-democratic governance managed to succeed and survive, or, alternatively, what caused them to collapse and disappear. Studying Russia's extensive history in an imperial guise encourages students to pay attention to forms of inclusion, displays of reciprocity, and manifestations of ideology that might otherwise go unnoted, overlooked under the bleak record of coercion and oppression that so often characterizes ideas about Russia.

About Valerie A. Kivelson

Valerie A. Kivelson is Thomas N. Tentler Collegiate Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is the author of several books, including Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia and Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia. She is the editor of Witchcraft Casebook: Magic in Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, 15th-21st Centuries [Russian History/Histoire russe vol. 40, nos. 3-4], and coeditor, with Joan Neuberger, of Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Effie on December 24, 2019

Valerie Kivelson and Ronald Suny, in Russia’s Empires, were primarily concerned with the varied forms of empire throughout the Russian realm in space and in time, and so they argued that an empire was "a structure of governance that manifests some or all of the following four characteristics: First,......more

Goodreads review by Grant on November 16, 2017

A basic Russian history text from a different point of view. Rather than trying to explain all of Russian history, Kivelson and Suny focus on the development of empire and imperialism, allowing them to bring in the histories of many peoples often left out of the story of Russia, but leaving out many......more

Goodreads review by Ashley on December 12, 2018

Assigned for two Russian history courses, from Kievan Rus to the Putin era. A very informative and thought-provoking read about the continuance of the concept of empire throughout Russian civilization.......more

Goodreads review by Paul on October 10, 2023

This volume is a mixed bag. It's coverage of the Soviet period is full of revisionist propaganda. It even ascribes good motives for the most heinous crimes of that period. It holds Lenin to be the saint and Stalin the devil. This outmoded viewpoint has been shown to be false as ALL tools of Soviet t......more

Goodreads review by Orel on December 24, 2016

This is a thought-provoking book written by two prominent scholars of two sub-disciplines within Russian history: Valerie Kivelson representing Imperial Russia, and Ronald Suny representing the Soviet Union and the periphery in particular. In this synthetic work, the authors show how Russia, from Ki......more