Books like Muslim Resistance to the Tsar — picked by fans

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.

The Golden Age of Russian literature—think Pushkin, Lermontov, and other famous novelists and poets—was at the vanguard of the Russian elite’s meeting with the Caucasus. In what has become a “classic,” Susan Layton brilliantly shows how Russian writers imagined the Caucasus as an ambiguous place—both dangerous and welcoming—populated by “noble savages,” sympathetic freedom fighters, and brutal marauders.

To many Russian aristocrats ensconced in St. Petersburg and Moscow, this was a canvas on which to implement Russia’s own “civilizing mission” to prove to a skeptical Europe that the tsarist realm belonged in the pantheon of European civilization.

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.

Recommending a two-volume tome may seem odd at first sight.

But this is a truly majestic work (no pun intended). Ingeniously, Richard Wortman attributes a distinctive “scenario of power” to every Russian emperor from the 1700s to the downfall of the Romanovs in 1917, with some rulers promoting a national myth and others framing their reign as a bond of love with their subjects.

The account is deeply captivating and honest, showing every emperor and empress with all their quirks and human weaknesses, but also helping us understand their enigmatic appeal.

While the other books I recommend explore the Russian Empire “from below”, through the eyes of the people, this one is top down, focusing on how the empire and its rulers saw themselves.

The read is worth every page.        

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.

Paganini was an extraordinary violinist because of his exceptionally flexible thumb. Why was his thumb so “bendy”? Genetics. His genes provided an opportunity, and he learned how to exploit it.

Each of us is genetically unique. Our challenge is to understand our genes, which can be positive or negative. The Violinist’s Thumb is a nice introduction to the importance of DNA and the impact of genes in history. Inbreeding in the European royals led to hemophilia and ultimately contributed to the fall of the Czar and the Russian Empire. Genes have played a major role in history, art, and science.

It is a fun book with a novel perspective. 

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.

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.

There were a few books that were able to carry me off into an entirely new cultural environment without reducing my interest in its multi-faceted characters and the seemingly trivial biographical stories. For me, Maxim Gorki, the artist, is a monolith in literature, and this book is a marvel.

The protagonist, young Gorki, has escaped the narrow and backward childhood in rural, almost medieval, Russia and tries to study at a university. It is his insatiable will to learn, to understand, which makes him so special. But every move towards university, towards more knowledge, turns out to be in vain. It leaves him a bit sad, but not hopeless.

He can always return to his reassuring doubt, a lonely doubt. Like the author in his later life—the book was published in 1924—the protagonist is lonely, ever lonelier. He escapes and returns from the pulsation of life itself, of its unknown… show more.