Fans pick 100 books like Russian Literature and Empire

This highly readable and concise book underscores the role of the Terek Cossacks in pushing southward the boundaries of Russia into the North Caucasus from the eighteenth century. We get a sense of the economic, geographic, and socio-political factors that shaped life on a frontier where the line between “us” and “them” was not always clear.

I love the fascinating tidbits Barrett sprinkles around important analytical discussions, such as the fact that most Cossacks in the North Caucasus were armed by silversmiths and metalworkers from the very mountain communities they were supposed to be guarding against.

This is the go-to book to understand how the Chechens, Dagestanis, and their neighbors held off the mighty Russian armies for several decades in the 1800s.

Gammer’s military history isn’t always a page-turner, but it is chock-full of clear explanations for the long success of Shamil, the warlord who defied successive Romanovs and united the fragmented peoples of the North Caucasus into a resilient resistance movement that tarnished far and wide the image of tsarist Russia as an imperial juggernaut.

This compelling book applies Edward Said’s well-known framework of Orientalism to explain the contradictions of Russia’s imperial project among diverse North Caucasians as well as Georgians. Jersild gives one of the clearest examples of the elasticity of the concept of Orientalism when applied to a Russia that wasn’t confident in its own European identity.

Just as fascinating is his explanation of how and why Georgian intellectuals, in their turn, used Orientalist discourse to contrast themselves against Muslims in Russian eyes and thus secure their own position within the empire.

This short and beautifully written book follows the fascinating life of a junior officer in the tsarist army in the Caucasus, Semën Atarshchikov, son of a Chechen father and Kumyk mother.

The reader is taken on a winding journey as the protagonist switches sides between the mountaineers and Russians several times. The crux of the argument is that a person with real connections to both Russian and Muslim communities could align with one side against the other temporarily, but overcoming the divisions permanently was difficult. In this case, it proved impossible: Atarshchikov became not a privileged intermediary but a victim of colonial violence.

This is a comprehensive account of what happened to Nicholas, Alexandra, and their family from the fall of the monarchy to their last days in Ekaterinburg. It covers fully all the details of their confinement, their brutal murder, the discovery of the Romanov grave outside Ekaterinburg in 1989, and the controversy over the bones, using many previously unpublished Russian archival documents. If you think you know what happened, then read this because there are some surprising revelations.

The Volga is key to understanding Russian history.

The river helped the empire to spread and rule, it carried dangers and diseases, protected and divided people. As a frequent site of battle, it also helped to shape collective memory. Janet Hartley’s history of the Volga captures these dimensions beautifully.

Containing a wealth of detail and written in elegant and accessible language, her book delivers new insights on a broad range of topics, from religious policy and piracy to the Volga in poetry and painting.

It is a great introduction to Russian empire-building, while, at the same time, offers even historians of Russia new insights in almost every chapter.

Take a long river cruise – down the Danube or Mississippi – and enjoy.

Gogol is one of the weirdest and most fascinating of Russian writers, whose eccentric comic masterpieces continue to entertain and puzzle us. His identity as a Ukrainian who became a Russian classic and the way this is or isn’t reflected in his works has long been debated.

Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity makes sense of these two contending national components of Gogol’s writing and career. Ilchuk demonstrates the remarkable ways his “hybrid” national identity played out: in his often bizarre language, an uncanny Russian pervaded by Ukrainianisms (made more or less evident in successive, ideologically-motivated editings); in his works’ narrative structure, plot, and theme; and in the author’s odd behavior in society as a colonial “other.”

The book helped me understand the ins and outs of post-colonial theory, which the author presents in a clear and effective way.  It also unexpectedly illuminated for me aspects of Russian imperial identity that… show more.

I enjoy dipping in and out of books that bring to the fore, for the first time, collective stories of diverse Irish women. Two stand out for me in 2024. Angela Byrne’s very readable Anarchy and authority focuses on the Irish in Russia from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.

I love how she is so creative with seemingly mundane or silent sources, like a list of visitors to the mountain town of Spa (in modern-day Belgium), using it to illuminate relationships and weave together very different lives. But Byrne is also honest about the historian’s challenges and her frustrations when the archives refuse to confirm in writing her hunches about what happened.

I am currently fascinated by the extraordinary women’s histories in Clodagh Finn and John Morgan’s The Irish in the Resistance: The Untold Stories of the Ordinary Heroes who Resisted Hitler. Neither of these books… show more.

Empress Catherine the Great immediately comes to mind when referring to women who ruled Russia. In Tsarina, however, author Alpsten focuses on Catherine Alexeyevna, the wife of Peter the Great, who rose to power in the early 18th century. Born into devastating poverty, Catherine is a woman who holds her cards close and plays them judiciously. She seduces Peter, revels in the riches and debauchery of the Russian court, and emerges not only as his wife, but a linchpin to Russia's future when Peter dies. This is an extraordinary tale of a powerful and intelligent woman often ignored in history.

This is a remarkable book that defies categorization. Establishing a concept of property that existed between private property and the property of the state, Pravilova imaginatively unites a seemingly unrelated collection of topics: forests, rivers, icons, copyright, archaeological treasures, and much more besides. She offers a profoundly new way of thinking about property and about Russians’ attitudes towards ownership. Deeply rooted in the particularities of Russia, the book also raises issues of universal significance.