Publisher's Synopsis
This unique guide to Russia provides three authoritative sources with comprehensive and historical information: the Library of Congress Country Profile, the Russia Country Study written by the experts at the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress with a professional analysis of Russian politics, history, economic, social, military, and national security systems and institutions, and the up-to-date CIA Factbook on Russia. The Country Study and Country Profile is an exceptional review of Russia and its history. Books in the Country Studies series describe and analyze "political, economic, social, and national security systems and institutions, and examin[e] the interrelationships of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural factors. The authors seek to provide a basic understanding of the observed society, striving for a dynamic rather than a static portrayal. Particular attention is devoted to the people who make up the society, their origins, dominant beliefs and values, their common interests and the issues on which they are divided, the nature and extent of their involvement with national institutions, and their attitudes toward each other and toward their social system and political order." The Study provides superb information about the history of Russia and the Soviet Union through 1996. Some of the contents: Chronology of Important Events * Introduction * Chapter 1 - Historical Setting: Early History to 1917 (Zenon E. Kohut and David M. Goldfrank) * Early History * The Inhabitants of the East European Plain * The East Slavs and the Varangians * The Golden Age of Kiev * The Rise of Regional Centers * The Mongol Invasion * Muscovy * The Rise of Muscovy * The Evolution of the Russian Aristocracy * Ivan IV * The Time of Troubles * The Romanovs * Expansion and Westernization * Early Imperial Russia * Peter the Great and the Russian Empire * The Era of Palace Revolutions * Imperial Expansion and Maturation: Catherine II * Ruling the Empire * War and Peace, 1796-1825 * Reaction under Nicholas I * Transformation of Russia in the Nineteenth Century * Economic Developments * Reforms and Their Limits, 1855-92 * Foreign Affairs after the Crimean War * The Rise of Revolutionary Movements * Witte and Accelerated Industrialization * Radical Political Parties Develop * Imperialism in Asia and the Russo-Japanese War * The Last Years of the Autocracy * Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1905-07 * The Stolypin and Kokovtsov Governments * Active Balkan Policy, 1906-13 * Russia at War, 1914-16 * The Fatal Weakening of Tsarism * Chapter 2- Historical Setting: 1917 to 1991 (Thomas Skallerup and James P. Nichol) * Revolutions and Civil War * The February Revolution * The Period of Dual Power * The Bolshevik Revolution * Civil War and War Communism * The Era of the New Economic Policy * Lenin's Leadership * Stalin's Rise to Power * Foreign Policy, 1921-28 * Society and Culture in the 1920s * Transformation and Terror * Industrialization and Collectivization * The Purges * Mobilization of Society * Foreign Policy, 1928-39 * The War Years * Prelude to War * The Great Patriotic War * Reconstruction and Cold War * Reconstruction Years * Onset of the Cold War * The Death of Stalin * The Khrushchev Era * Collective Leadership and the Rise of Khrushchev * Foreign Policy under Khrushchev * Khrushchev's Reforms and Fall * The Brezhnev Era * Collective Leadership and the Rise of Brezhnev * Foreign Policy of a Superpower * The Economy under Brezhnev * Culture and the Arts in the 1960s and 1970s * The Death of Brezhnev * The Leadership Transition Period * The Andropov Interregnum * The Chernenko Interregnum * The Gorbachev Era * Gorbachev's First Year * New Thinking: Foreign Policy under Gorbachev
