Bibliography of Russian history (1613–1917)

This is a select bibliography of post-World War II English language books (including translations) and journal articles about the history of Russia and its empire from 1613 until 1917. It specifically excludes topics related to the Russian Revolution (see Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War for information on these subjects). The sections "General surveys" and "Biographies" contain books; other sections contain both books and journal articles.

Works listed here are cited in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly sources. Each is published by an academic or major press, written by a recognized expert, or substantially reviewed in scholarly journals; borderline cases are omitted. A selection of primary sources are included. Many of the books below carry their own bibliographies; see Further reading for longer ones, and External links for historical sites and museums.

Citations follow APA style. Book have citations to academic journal or mainstream published reviews when available. For books only partly about the subject, give relevant chapter or section titles where useful and available. Translators of the original-language edition are included when possible. In cases where a title or name has appeared with more than one English spelling, use the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.

General works

Period works

Anisimov, E. V. (2004). Five empresses: Court life in eighteenth-century Russia. Praeger. Baron, S. (1988). The Jews under tsars and Soviets. Schocken Books. Beer, D. (2016). The house of the dead: Siberian exile under the tsars. Vintage. Dowler, W. (2010). Russia in 1913. Northern Illinois University Press. Erickson, M., & Erickson, L. (Eds.). (2005). Russia: War, peace and diplomacy: Essays in honour of John Erickson. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Fuller, W. C., Jr. (1992). Strategy and power in Russia, 1600–1914. Free Press. Hellie, R. (2005). The structure of Russian imperial history. History and Theory, 44(4), 88–112. Hosking, G. (1997). Russia: People and empire, 1552–1917. Harvard University Press. Hughes, L. (2008). The Romanovs: Ruling Russia, 1613–1917. Bloomsbury. Khodarkovsky, M. (1999). Of Christianity, enlightenment, and colonialism: Russia in the North Caucasus, 1500–1800. The Journal of Modern History, 71(2), 394–430. Kleimola, A. M. (1979). Up through servitude: The changing condition of the Muscovite elite in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Russian History, 6(2), 210–229. LeDonne, J. P. (1991). Absolutism and ruling class: The formation of the Russian political order, 1700–1825. Oxford University Press. Lieven, D. (1989). Russia's rulers under the old regime. Yale University Press. Lincoln, W. B. (1997). Between heaven and hell: The story of a thousand years of artistic life in Russia. Viking. Lincoln, W. B. (1981). The Romanovs: Autocrats of all the Russias. Doubleday. Lincoln, W. B. (2001). Sunlight at midnight: St Petersburg and the rise of modern Russia. Oxford University Press. Mironov, B. N., & Eklof, B. (2000). The social history of imperial Russia, 1700–1917 (2 vols.). Westview Press. Monahan, E. (2016). The merchants of Siberia: Trade in early modern Eurasia. Cornell University Press. Montefiore, S. (2017). The Romanovs: 1613–1918. Vintage. Seton-Watson, H. (1967). The Russian Empire, 1801–1917 (Oxford History of Modern Europe). Oxford University Press. Weeks, T. R. (1996). Nation and state in late imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the western frontier, 1863–1914. Northern Illinois University Press. Williams, B. (2021). Late tsarist Russia, 1881–1913 (Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe). Routledge.

Topical works Alexander, J. T. (1969). Autocratic politics in a national crisis: The imperial Russian government and Pugachev's revolt, 1773–1775. Indiana University Press. Anisimov, E. V. (1993). The reforms of Peter the Great: Progress through coercion in Russia. Routledge. Ascher, A. (2001). Stolypin: The search for stability in late imperial Russia. Stanford University Press. Beer, D. (2013). Decembrists, rebels, and martyrs in Siberian exile: The "Zerentui conspiracy" of 1828 and the fashioning of a revolutionary genealogy. Slavic Review, 72(3), 528–551. Crummey, R. O. (1983). Aristocrats and servitors: The boyar elite, 1613–89. Princeton University Press. Daly, J. W. (1997). Autocracy under siege: Security police and opposition in Russia, 1866–1905. Northern Illinois University Press. Daly, J. W. (2004). The watchful state, 1906–17: Security police and opposition in Russia. Northern Illinois University Press. Dunning, C. S. L. (2001). Russia's first civil war: The Time of Troubles and the founding of the Romanov dynasty. Penn State University Press. Eklof, B., Bushnell, J., & Zakharova, L. (Eds.). (1994). Russia's great reforms, 1855–1881. Indiana University Press. Emmons, T. (2014). The formation of political parties and the first national elections in Russia. Harvard University Press. Fuller, W. C., Jr. (2006). The foe within: Fantasies of treason and the end of imperial Russia. Cornell University Press. Gatrell, P. (1994). Government, industry and rearmament in Russia, 1900–1914: The last argument of tsarism (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies No. 92). Cambridge University Press. Hughes, L. (1997). Russia in the age of Peter the Great. Yale University Press. Kates, G. (2001). Monsieur d'Eon is a woman: A tale of political intrigue and sexual masquerade. Basic Books. Kelly, L. (2006). Diplomacy and murder in Tehran: Alexander Griboyedov and imperial Russia's mission to the shah of Persia. I. B. Tauris. Kleimola, A. (1979). Up through servitude: The changing condition of the Muscovite elite in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Russian History, 6(2), 210–229. LeDonne, J. P. (1984). Ruling Russia: Politics and administration in the age of absolutism, 1762–96. Princeton University Press. Levin, E. (2014). A child of Christian blood: Murder and conspiracy in tsarist Russia: The Beilis blood libel. Knopf Doubleday/Schocken Books. Lewitter, L. (1958). Peter the Great, Poland, and the westernization of Russia. Journal of the History of Ideas, 19(4), 493–506. Lincoln, W. B. (1990). The great reforms: Autocracy, bureaucracy, and the politics of change in imperial Russia. Northern Illinois University Press. Lincoln, W. B. (1982). In the vanguard of reform: Russia's enlightened bureaucrats. Northern Illinois University Press. Lincoln, W. B. (1983). In war's dark shadow: The Russians before the Great War. Northern Illinois University Press. McDonald, E., & McDonald, D. (2011). Fanny Lear: Love and scandal in tsarist Russia. Indiana University Press. Madariaga, I. de. (1981). Russia in the age of Catherine the Great. Yale University Press. Manning, R. (1982). The crisis of the old order in Russia: Gentry and government. Princeton University Press. Mazour, A. G. (1937). The first Russian revolution, 1825: The Decembrist movement, its origins, development, and significance. University of California Press. Merridale, C. (2013). Red fortress: The secret heart of Russia's history. Penguin. Perrie, M. (2002). Pretenders and popular monarchism in early modern Russia: The false tsars of the Time of Troubles. Cambridge University Press. Pflaum, R. (1968). The emperor's talisman: The life of the Duc de Morny. Meredith Press. Ransel, D. L. (1975). The politics of Catherinian Russia: The Panin party. Yale University Press. Saul, N. E. (1970). Russia and the Mediterranean, 1797–1807. University of Chicago Press. Sumner, B. H. (1962). Russia and the Balkans, 1870–1880. Archon Books. Tairova-Yakovleva, T. (2020). Ivan Mazepa and the Russian Empire (J. Surer, Trans.; Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research Monograph Series, Vol. 11). McGill-Queen's University Press. Venturi, F. (1960). Roots of revolution: A history of the populist and socialist movements in nineteenth century Russia (F. Haskell, Trans.). Alfred A. Knopf. Vitale, S. (1997). Pushkin's button. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Walicki, A. (1975). The Slavophile controversy: History of a conservative utopia in nineteenth-century Russian thought (H. Andrews-Rusiecka, Trans.). Oxford University Press.

Fall of the Romanovs

King, G., & Wilson, P. (2005). The fate of the Romanovs. Wiley. Rappaport, H. (2008). Ekaterinburg: The last days of the Romanovs. St Martin's Press. Steinberg, M. D., & Khrustalëv, V. M. (1997). The fall of the Romanovs. Yale University Press.

Economics Gatrell, P., & Lewis, R. (1992). Russian and Soviet economic history. The Economic History Review, 45(4), 743–754. Gregg, A. G., & Rogers, D. (2022). Introduction: The imperial Russian corporation in and beyond economic history. The Russian Review, 81(3), 407–420. Kahan, A. (1985). Plow, the hammer, and the knout: An economic history of eighteenth-century Russia. University of Chicago Press. Kahan, A. (1989). Russian economic history: The nineteenth century. University of Chicago Press. Marzec, W., & Turunen, R. (2018). Socialisms in the tsarist borderlands: Poland and Finland in a contrastive comparison, 1830–1907. Contributions to the History of Concepts, 13(1), 22–50. Monahan, E. (2016). The merchants of Siberia: Trade in early modern Eurasia. Cornell University Press.

Empire

Akelev, E. V., & Gornostaev, A. V. (2023). Millions of living dead: Fugitives, the Polish border, and 18th-century Russian society. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 24(2), 269–297. Baumann, R. F. (1987). Subject nationalities in the military service of imperial Russia: The case of the Bashkirs. Slavic Review, 46(3/4), 489–502. Becker, S. (2004). Russia's protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924. Routledge. Bilenky, S. (2018). Imperial urbanism in the borderlands: Kyiv, 1800–1905 (Illustrated ed.). University of Toronto Press. Bobroff, R. P. (2006). Roads to glory: Late imperial Russia and the Turkish Straits. I. B. Tauris. Dukes, P. (2015). A history of the Urals: Russia's crucible from early empire to the post-Soviet era. Bloomsbury Academic. Figes, O. (2010). Crimea. Metropolitan Books. Fisher, A. W. (1970). The Russian annexation of the Crimea, 1772–1783. Cambridge University Press. Friesen, A. E. (2020). Colonizing Russia's promised land: Orthodoxy and community on the Siberian steppe. University of Toronto Press. Gammer, M. (1994). Muslim resistance to the tsar: Shamil and the conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan. Routledge. Geyer, D. (1987). Russian imperialism: The interaction of domestic and foreign policy, 1860–1914. Yale University Press. Heuman, S. (1998). Kistiakovsky: The struggle for national and constitutional rights in the last years of tsarism (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies). Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Hosking, G. (1997). Russia: People and empire, 1552–1917. Harvard University Press. Kappeler, A. (2001). The Russian Empire: A multiethnic history (A. Clayton, Trans.). Longman. Keller, S. (2020). Russia and Central Asia: Coexistence, conquest, convergence. University of Toronto Press. Khalid, A. (2021). Central Asia: A new history from the imperial conquests to the present. Princeton University Press. Khodarkovsky, M. (1992). Where two worlds met: The Russian state and the Kalmyk nomads, 1600–1771. Cornell University Press. Khodarkovsky, M. (2002). Russia's steppe frontier: The making of a colonial empire, 1500–1800. Indiana University Press. Kirmse, S. B. (2020). The lawful empire: Legal change and cultural diversity in late tsarist Russia. Cambridge University Press. Knight, N. (2000). Grigor'ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian orientalism in the service of empire?. Slavic Review, 59(1), 74–100.