Bibliography of Russian history (1991–present)

This is a select bibliography of English language books (including translations) and journal articles about the history of Russia and its empire from 1991 to present. It specifically excludes topics related to the Dissolution of the Soviet Union; see Bibliography of the Post Stalinist Soviet Union for information on this subject. This bibliography is restricted to works about Russian history, and specifically excludes items such modern travel logs and guide books, popular culture, etc.

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 the Further reading section for other bibliographies, and the External links section for historical sites, academic 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, relevant chapter or section titles are provided when 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, the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.

Eastern European studies Fritz, V. (2007). State-building: A comparative study of Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia. Central European University Press.

General surveys Hoffman, D. E. (2002). The oligarchs: Wealth and power in the new Russia. PublicAffairs. Knight, A. (2000). The enduring legacy of the KGB in Russian politics. Problems of Post-Communism, 47(4), 3–15. Reddaway, P., & Glinski, D. (2001). The tragedy of Russia's reforms: Market bolshevism against democracy. United States Institute of Peace Press. Treisman, D. (2011). The return: Russia's journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev. Free Press.

Topical works The arts Shkandrij, M. (2001). Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the discourse of empire from Napoleonic to postcolonial times. McGill-Queen's Press.

Democracy, elections and opposition Colton, T. J., & Hale, H. E. (2009). The Putin vote: Presidential electorates in a hybrid regime. Slavic Review, 68(3), 473–503. Colton, T. J., & McFaul, M. (2003). Popular choice and managed democracy: The Russian elections of 1999 and 2000. Brookings Institution Press. Fish, M. S. (2005). Democracy derailed in Russia: The failure of open politics. Cambridge University Press. Golosov, G. V. (2011). The regional roots of electoral authoritarianism in Russia. Europe-Asia Studies, 63(4), 623–639. Greene, S. A., & Robertson, G. B. (2019). Putin v. the people: The perilous politics of a divided Russia. Yale University Press. Kulichkina, A., Righetti, N., & Waldherr, A. (2025). Protest and repression on social media: Pro-Navalny and pro-government mobilization dynamics and coordination patterns on Russian Twitter. New Media & Society, 27(9), 5433–5454. Peisakhin, L., Rozenas, A., & Sanovich, S. (2020). Mobilizing opposition voters under electoral authoritarianism: A field experiment in Russia. Research & Politics, 7(4). Robertson, G. B. (2011). The politics of protest in hybrid regimes: Managing dissent in post-communist Russia. Cambridge University Press. Romanov, D., Fominykh, I., & Ankudinov, I. (2023). Substituting the opposition under electoral authoritarianism: The case of the Russian regional parliamentary elections in 2021. Russian Politics, 8(4), 519–549. Ross, C. (2011). Regional elections and electoral authoritarianism in Russia. Europe-Asia Studies, 63(4), 641–661. Saikkonen, I. A.-L. (2017). Electoral mobilization and authoritarian elections: Evidence from post-Soviet Russia. Government and Opposition, 52(1), 51–74. Semenov, A. (2020). Electoral performance and mobilization of opposition parties in Russia. Russian Politics, 5(2), 236–254. Smyth, R. (2020). Elections, protest, and authoritarian regime stability: Russia 2008–2020. Cambridge University Press. Wilson, A. (2005). Virtual politics: Faking democracy in the post-Soviet world. Yale University Press.

Economics Åslund, A. (2007). Russia's capitalist revolution: Why market reform succeeded and democracy failed. Peterson Institute for International Economics. Åslund, A. (2019). Russia's crony capitalism: The path from market economy to kleptocracy. Yale University Press. Barnes, A. (2006). Owning Russia: The struggle over factories, farms, and power. Cornell University Press. Connolly, R. (2018). Russia's response to sanctions: How western economic statecraft is reshaping political economy in Russia. Cambridge University Press. Connolly, R. (2020). The Russian economy: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Dawisha, K. (2014). Putin's kleptocracy: Who owns Russia?. Simon & Schuster. Frye, T. (2017). Property rights and property wrongs: How power, institutions, and norms shape economic conflict in Russia. Cambridge University Press. Gaddy, C. G., & Ickes, B. W. (2013). Bear traps on Russia's road to modernization. Routledge. Guriev, S., & Rachinsky, A. (2005). The role of oligarchs in Russian capitalism. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(1), 131–150. Miller, C. (2018). Putinomics: Power and money in resurgent Russia. University of North Carolina Press. Yakovlev, A. (2006). The evolution of business–state interaction in Russia: From state capture to business capture? Europe-Asia Studies, 58(7), 1033–1056. Zloch-Christy, I. (2010). East-West financial relations: Current problems and future prospects (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies). Cambridge University Press.

Empire Grigas, A. (2016). Beyond Crimea: The new Russian empire. Yale University Press. Grinëv, A. V. (2020). Russian colonization of Alaska: Baranov's era, 1799–1818 (R. L. Bland, Trans.). University of Nebraska Press. Miller, C. (2021). We shall be masters: Russian pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin. Harvard University Press. Rigby, T. (1978). The Soviet regional leadership: The Brezhnev generation. Slavic Review, 37(1), 1–24.

Energy Balmaceda, M. M. (2008). Energy dependency, politics and corruption in the former Soviet Union: Russia's power, oligarchs' profits, and Ukraine's missing energy policy, 1995–2006. Routledge. Balmaceda, M. M. (2021). Russian energy chains: The remaking of technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union (Woodrow Wilson Center Series). Columbia University Press. Boussena, S., & Locatelli, C. (2013). Energy institutional and organisational changes in EU and Russia: Revisiting gas relations. Energy Policy, 55, 180–189. Grigas, A. (2017). The new geopolitics of natural gas. Harvard University Press. Gustafson, T. (2012). Wheel of fortune: The battle for oil and power in Russia. Harvard University Press. Harsem, Ø., & Claes, D. H. (2013). The interdependence of European–Russian energy relations. Energy Policy, 59, 784–791. Krickovic, A. (2015). When interdependence produces conflict: EU–Russia energy relations as a security dilemma. Contemporary Security Policy, 36(1), 3–26. Le Coq, C., & Paltseva, E. (2012). Assessing gas transit risks: Russia vs. the EU. Energy Policy, 42, 642–650. Lee, Y. (2017). Interdependence, issue importance, and the 2009 Russia-Ukraine gas conflict. Energy Policy, 102, 199–209. Mikulska, A., & Finley, M. (2024). Asymmetric interdependence and wielding the energy weapon: Russia and the EU post Russian invasion of Ukraine. Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports, 11(2), 39–44. Romanova, T. (2021). Russia's political discourse on the EU's energy transition (2014–2019) and its effect on EU-Russia energy relations. Energy Policy, 154, Article 112309. Rutland, P. (2008). Putin's economic record: Is the oil boom sustainable? Europe-Asia Studies, 60(6), 1051–1072. Siddi, M. (2020). Theorising conflict and cooperation in EU-Russia energy relations: Ideas, identities and material factors in the Nord Stream 2 debate. East European Politics, 36(4), 544–563.

Environment Gustafson, T. (2021). Klimat: Russia in the age of climate change. Harvard University Press.

Gender and family Blakkisrud, H., & Kolstø, P. (Eds.). (2025). Political legitimacy and traditional values in Putin's Russia. Edinburgh University Press. Engel, B. A. (2021). Marriage, household, and home in modern Russia from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin (The Bloomsbury History of Modern Russia Series). Bloomsbury Academic. Friedman, R. (2020). Modernity, domesticity and temporality in Russia: Time at home. Bloomsbury. Ilic, M. (Ed.). (2017). The Palgrave handbook of women and gender in twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan. Kaminer, J. (2022). Haunted dreams: Fantasies of adolescence in post-Soviet culture (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies). Northern Illinois University Press. Kolstø, P. (2025). Family, sex, and faith. Cornell University Press. Riabov, O., & Riabova, T. (2014). The remasculinization of Russia? Problems of Post-Communism, 61(2), 23–35. Silvan, K. (2022). From state to society: The Komsomol in Yeltsin's Russia. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 23(2), 289–314. Sperling, V. (2014). Sex, politics, and Putin: Political legitimacy in Russia. Oxford University Press. Stoeckl, K. (2023). Traditional values, family, homeschooling: The role of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in transnational moral conservative networks and their efforts at reshaping human rights. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 21(1), 224–242. Tomiak, J. (1992). Education in the Baltic States, Ukraine, Belarus' and Russia. Comparative Education, 28(1), 33–44.

LGBTQ Coleman, E. J., & Sandfort, T. (2014). Sexuality and gender in postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia. Routledge. Edenborg, E. (2017). Politics of visibility and belonging: From Russia's "homosexual propaganda" laws to the Ukraine war. Routledge. Edenborg, E. (2023). Anti-gender politics as discourse coalitions: Russia's domestic and international promotion of "traditional values". Problems of Post-Communism, 70(2), 175–184. Persson, E. (2015). Banning "homosexual propaganda": Belonging and visibility in contemporary Russian media. Sexuality & Culture, 19(2), 256–274. Verpoest, L. (2017). The end of rhetorics: LGBT policies in Russia and the European Union. Studia Diplomatica, 68(4), 3–20. Wilkinson, C. (2014). Putting "traditional values" into practice: The rise and contestation of anti-homopropaganda laws in Russia. Journal of Human Rights, 13(3), 363–379.

Government and domestic politics Baker, P., & Glasser, S. (2005). Kremlin rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the end of revolution. Scribner. Frye, T. (2021). Weak strongman: The limits of power in Putin's Russia. Princeton University Press. Frye, T., Gehlbach, S., Marquardt, K. L., & Reuter, O. J. (2016). Is Putin's popularity real? Post-Soviet Affairs, 33(1), 1–15. Gel'man, V. (2015). Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing post-Soviet regime changes. University of Pittsburgh Press. Gel'man, V. (2022). The politics of bad governance in contemporary Russia. University of Michigan Press. Gill, G. (2015). Building an authoritarian polity: Russia in post-Soviet times. Cambridge University Press. Guriev, S., & Treisman, D. (2019). Informational autocrats. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(4), 100–127. Hale, H. E. (2015). Patronal politics: Eurasian regime dynamics in comparative perspective. Cambridge University Press. Judah, B. (2013). Fragile empire: How Russia fell in and out of love with Vladimir Putin. Yale University Press. Laruelle, M. (2020). Making sense of Russia's illiberalism. Journal of Democracy, 31(3), 115–129.