Russia and The Russians: A History

Geoffrey Hosking. Russia and The Russians: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. xiii, 718 pp. Chronology. Notes. Index. Maps. $19.95, paper.

Geoffrey Hosking is unquestionably one of the leading Western historians of Russia, and in the English language few have equalled much less surpassed the quantity or quality of his works. He is that rare individual who can do both large overviews and specific in-depth studies. In my opinion, Hosking is at his best in the former, and the present volume is a prime example. It is a masterful narrative of Russia's history from its beginnings to almost the present. Moreover, as a British-trained specialist without strong ties to either the "political" or the "social-revisionist" camps of American historiography, he is able to avoid their tiresome internecine debates.

The present volume is divided into six sections: 1) Kievan and Muscovite Russia; 2) the seventeenth century, including Peter the Great; 3) the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth; 4) the reigns of Alexander II and Alexander III; 5) from the reign of Nicholas II to the end of World War II; and 6) from the beginnings of the Cold War to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The market for narrative undergraduate text books in Russian history has experienced a flood of late, in part at least to close the book on the Soviet experiment and to provide reasons for its "untimely" collapse. In addition to the widely used comprehensive classic of Nicholas Riasanovsky, we now have excellent volumes by Walter Moss and Catherine Evtuhov et al. for the entire period, as well as shorter works focusing on the Soviet era by Peter Kenez, Richard Sakwa, and M.K. Dziewanowski, among many others.

Nevertheless, Hosking's book stands out for its narrative elegance, range of topics, and balance among the arts, politics, and society. Perhaps most surprising, the author is able to describe vividly Russia's tragedies and frustrations while still painting a positive picture overall. Indeed, his astute insights into the Russian mind and spirit inspire a remarkable empathy in the Western reader, something rarely accomplished even by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his fellow neo-Slavophiles, much less the distinctly more critical Western scholarship of a Martin Malia or a Richard Pipes. To be sure, in contrast to the latter, Hosking is a Russophile with a keen appreciation for Russia's messianism and its cultural uniqueness (which he describes with great sensitivity and knowledge).

As with any overview, one can quarrel with the author's emphases. For instance, I would have liked more in general on nineteenth-century intellectual history, and believe that Hosking specifically overstates the significance of Bakunin while underestimating the roles of Herzen and Chernyshevsky; perhaps Hosking allows the Russians off too easily on the questions of xenophobic and anti-Semitism; and the latter Soviet period is skimmed over a bit uncritically. But on most key questions-such as the controversial relationship between the Leninist and Stalinist positions-he seems to me to be right on mark, while neither belabouring the issue, nor treating it ideologically.

All in all, this is very nearly the ideal text for an undergraduate survey class in Russian history. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

[Author Affiliation]

N.G.O. Pereira, Dalhousie University