How Russia Got Big (a Territorial History)

By (author) Werth, Paul W.
Short description/annotation:
An exploration of two crucial questions for the history of Eurasia and the wider world: What territory did Russia occupy at different stages of its history—and why?
Description:

How Russia Got Big accounts for Russia''s changing physical scope over some seven centuries.

Even people who know little about Russia know that it is big. This concise book tells the story of how it became so. Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in the early 14th century, Paul W. Werth recounts the construction of the world''s largest country—from Muscovy and the Russian Empire through the USSR to today’s Russian Federation—as well as its territorial retrenchment and even collapse on several occasions. Integrating geography, diplomacy, war, and imperial politics, the book ranges across three continents and recounts diverse interactions with neighboring polities and peoples. Werth likewise contemplates different ways of conceptualizing territorial possession and related understandings of sovereignty, authority, and belonging. The result, illustrated with 29 original maps, is a grand story from a bird''s-eye view that reveals deeper rhythms to Russia’s territorial history involving alternations of enlargement and crisis—ones that continue in our own day.

Table of contents:

List of Maps
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: Enlargement & Crisis
1. Muscovite Enlargement, 1300-1611
2. Russia Gets Really Big, 1611-1812
3. A (Mostly) Asian Century, 1812-1919
4. Still One-Sixth, 1919-1942
5. From Victory to Collapse, 1942-1991
6. The Pattern Continues, 1991-2024
7. Expansion—Why and How?
PART II: Complications
8. Russia Beyond
9. Russia Within
Epilogue: The End of Enlargement?
Bibliography
Index

Review quote:
A compelling overview of a critically important topic by a major scholar in the field. This book is must reading for anyone interested in the deep historical context of the Ukrainian war and problems of territory in Russia, past and present
Biographical note:
Paul W. Werth is Professor of History and Department Chair at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. Since 2009, he has been serving as Editor of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, a leading international journal. His books include At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region (2002), Orthodoxy, Non-Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy: Sketches on the History of Religious Diversity in the Russian Empire (2012) [in Russian], and The Tsar''s Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia (2014).
Promotional headline:
An exploration of two crucial questions for the history of Eurasia and the wider world: What territory did Russia occupy at different stages of its history—and why?
Description for collection:

Russian Shorts is a series of thought-provoking books published in a slim, beautifully designed format. The Shorts books provide concise examinations of key concepts, personalities, and moments in Russian historical and cultural studies, encompassing its vast diversity from the origins of the Kievan state to Putin''s Russia. Each book is written in a nontechnical manner, covers a side of Russian history and culture that has not been well-understood, and is meant to stimulate debate. All books are peer-reviewed and meet the highest standards of scholarship.

Series Editors:

Polly Jones, Professor of Russian at University College, Oxford, UK

Stephen M. Norris, Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Russian History and Director of the Havighurs