Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov (1785 1856) is generally acclaimed as one of tsarism's most successful and innovative administrators. After growing up in England, where his father was Russian ambassador, he returned to Russia and became an officer in the army during the Napoleonic wars. In 1823 Alexander I appointed Vorontsov to the post of governor general of New Russia the then "half-wild" southern Ukraine. His task was to encourage development and link the area more effectively with the economy and administration of the empire. Vorontsov was so successful that in 1845 Nicholas I promoted him to viceroy and extended his authority to include Caucasia, which he administered with the extraordinary mandate of "unlimited powers."

Imperial Odessa: Peoples, Spaces, Identities is a book about a cosmopolitan city written by a cosmopolitan scholar with a literary flair. Evrydiki Sifneos conceives Odessa as more of a fin-de siècle east Mediterranean port-metropolis than as a provincial port-city of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century due to two of its principal characteristics: its function as a hub of international trade and travel, and the multi-ethnic character of its inhabitants. The book unfolds around two interpenetrating axes. The first one introduces a new "peripatetic" approach that discovers the space of the city; and the other, the one that has given it its dynamic, is the socio-economic transformations that germinated within the political changes.

This easy-to-use reference explores the people and events that shaped Russian military history—and impacted Europe, Asia, and the world—over the past eight centuries. Russian military history is an often-overlooked field. Yet Russia is and has long been an important player in global politics, and its military exploits have been central to its role on the world stage. This study of Russia's military past provides insights into European and U.S. history, including the conduct of the two World Wars and the Cold War, and will help readers better appreciate the current geopolitical situation. This work covers major events and figures in Russian military history from the end of Mongol domination in the 14th century to the present day. More than 650 entries by scores of expert contributors detail events, individuals, organizations, and ideas that have influenced Russian warfare over 800 years. Two alphabetically arranged volumes explore such conflicts as the Russo-Polish Wars, the Great Northern War, the Russo-Turkish Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Cross references and further readings in each entry serve as jumping-off points for further exploration.

Modern Russia's turbulent relations with its Muslim frontiers date back centuries. Indeed the nineteenth century, when the Muslim Caucasus first came under Russian rule, witnessed many of the historical antecedents to today's violent confrontations. With this in mind, On The Religious Frontier examines the history of Muslim Azerbaijan under Christian Orthodox Russian imperial rule and the attempts of the Russian administrators of the Caucasus to integrate the region into the empire. Drawing on original archival research from across Azerbaijan and Russia, Firouzeh Mostashari considers the formation of a Russian colonial administration in the Muslim Caucasus; subsequent social, political and economic developments; and the local responses to conquest, military rule and Russification. From 1804 to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, On The Religious Frontier offers a fascinating and timely insight into both the period itself and the ways in which the seeds of recent conflict were sown in tsarist Russia. This is important reading for all scholars of the history and politics of the Caucasus, as well as those with an interest in imperial Russia and its relationship with minority groups.

A major new account of the Eurasian borderlands as 'shatter zones' which have generated some of the world's most significant conflicts.

The jurist and philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, and his lesser-known brother, Samuel, equally talented but as a naval architect, engineer and inventor, had a long love affair with Russia. Jeremy hoped to assist Empress Catherine II with her legislative projects. Samuel went to St Petersburg to seek his fortune in 1780 and came back with the rank of Brigadier-General and the idea, famously publicised by Jeremy, of the Inspection-House or Panopticon. The Bentham Brothers and Russia chronicles the brothers’ later involvement with the Russian Empire, when Jeremy focused his legislative hopes on Catherine’s grandson Emperor Alexander I (ruled 1801-25) and Samuel found a unique opportunity in 1806 to build a Panopticon in St Petersburg – the only panoptical building ever built by the Benthams themselves. Setting the Benthams’ projects within an in-depth portrayal of the Russian context, Roger Bartlett illuminates an important facet of their later careers and offers insight into their world view and way of thought. He also contributes towards the history of legal codification in Russia, which reached a significant peak in 1830, and towards the demythologising of the Panopticon, made notorious by Michel Foucault: the St Petersburg building, still relatively unknown, is described here in detail on the basis of archival sources. The Benthams’ interactions with Russia under Alexander I constituted a remarkable episode in Anglo-Russian relations; this book fills a significant gap in their history.

Georgian social democracy was the most successful social democratic movement in Russia. Despite its size, it produced many of the leading revolutionaries of 1917. In the first of two volumes, Jones writes the history of this movement, which represented one of the earliest examples of European social democracy at the turn of the 20th century.

The two Russo-Chechen wars (1994-96 and 1999-onwards) have brought the country and its people to the centre of world attention. This text argues that fully to grasp the significance and meaning of recent events one has to study them from a long historical perspective.

'One of the great love stories of history, in a league with Napoleon and Josephine, and Antony and Cleopatra ... Excellent, with dazzling mastery of detail and literary flair' Economist It was history's most successful political partnership - as sensual and fiery as it was creative and visionary. Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin - wildly flamboyant and sublimely talented - was the love of her life and her co-ruler. Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, defining the Russian empire to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving Potemkin free to love his beautiful nieces, and Catherine her young male favourites. But these 'twin souls' never stopped loving each other. Drawing on their intimate letters and vast research, Simon Sebag Montefiore's enthralling, widely acclaimed biography restores these imperial partners to their rightful place as titans of their age.

One of the goals of Russia’s Eastern policy was to turn Moldavia and Wallachia, the two Romanian principalities north of the Danube, from Ottoman vassals into a controllable buffer zone and a springboard for future military operations against Constantinople. Russia on the Danube describes the divergent interests and uneasy cooperation between the Russian officials and the Moldavian and Wallachian nobility in a key period between 1812 and 1834. Victor Taki’s meticulous examination of the plans and memoranda composed by Russian administrators and the Romanian elite underlines the crucial consequences of this encounter. The Moldavian and Wallachian nobility used the Russian-Ottoman rivalry in order to preserve and expand their traditional autonomy. The comprehensive institutional reforms born out of their interaction with the tsar’s officials consolidated territorial statehood on the lower Danube, providing the building blocks of a nation state. The main conclusion of the book is that although Russian policy was driven by self-interest, and despite the Russophobia among a great part of the Romanian intellectuals, this turbulent period significantly contributed to the emergence, several decades later, of modern Romania.