The geographical setting -- The origins to 1300 : Kiev and Sarai -- Kiev Rus -- The Mongols : the "Tatar yoke" -- 1300-1600 : Moscow and Novgorod : the emergence of empire and absolute rule -- The principality of Moscow -- Ivan IV -- The development of serfdom and the end of the dynasty -- 1600-1760 : Moscow and St. Petersburg : the genesis of the imperial state -- Crisis, recovery, and change -- Petrine Russia -- The "peasant state" : the peasantry and serfdom -- Peter's successors, 1725-62 : the age of palace revolutions -- 1760-1860 : Russia and Europe : apogee and decline of the autocratic state -- The servile-absolute system : domestic consolidation and decay -- Russia and the borders of the Europeans' world -- The peasant question -- 1860-1917 : Europe and Russia : stabilisation and collapse of the autocratic state -- From the "great reforms" to 1905 -- The transmutation of the countryside after 1861 -- Revolution from below : 1905-17 -- The flowering of civil and urban society : 1861-1917 -- The development of a revolutionary movement : 1861-1917 -- 1917-1953 : Russian empire and Soviet Union : from pariah to superpower -- "Building socialism" -- Party, society, and ideology : 1921-41 -- The coming of the "great fatherland war" -- Reconstruction, Cold War, and the death of Stalin : 1945-1953 -- 1953-1991 : the Soviet Union as world power : retreat from utopia -- The advance to "developed socialism" : 1953-85 -- International relations of a superpower -- Regime and society -- Perestroika and the end of the USSR : 1985-91 -- The Russian Federation after 1991 : free market and democracy? -- Identity, democracy, and the market -- The Yeltsin succession and the Putin years