"Scholarly, intellectually stimulating, and readable. It is not only a very good guide through the record of Russian development, but it makes one go deeper by the way it raises interesting questions."--Frederick C. Barghoorn

Generally recognized as the standard one-volume history of Russia, this monumental work describes Russia's growth from the times of the nomadic tribes to the Cold War and examines the social, religious, and cultural as well as the political and economic aspects of Russian civilization. Professor Vernadsky reviews the origins of the Russian state, Kievan Russia, the Mongol period, the tsardom of Moscow in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Russian empire from Peter the Great to Nicholas II. The last third of the book discusses the revolution of 1917 and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a world power.