Reviews for Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917

The average rating for Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-04-13 00:00:00 John Baker A solid, lengthy cultural history of Russia. Hosking's thesis is that Peter the Great's Westernizing forced a breach between people and empire, that has yet to heal. His reach is broad, covering the autocracy, administration, intelligentsia, and peasantry over the period from Ivan IV through the Bolshevik Revolution. My only gripe is that Hosking wraps too quickly, breezing through 1917, where he could be hammering his thesis home. Note: the Kindle edition is a complete mess. Don't read it. It's crammed full of typos, like a rushed OCR scan that was never proofread. "Lives" is rendered as "Uves" throughout, Roman numerals are an ASCII mess, and some sentences are reduced to gibberish.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-10-02 00:00:00 Tony Milazzo An enjoyable introduction to Russian imperial history. His thesis that Russian empire-building obstructed Russian nation-building is one that I find quite convincing.