Course in Russian History: The Time of Catherine the Great

Vasily O. Kliuchevsky (1841–1911) was the most eminent Russian historian of his day—a pathbreaking scholar, a spellbinding lecturer, an engaging stylist, and a great synthesizer whose works have stood the test of time. He was a long-time professor of Russian history at Moscow University before his death. His lectures, published as A Course in Russian History, have exerted a powerful influence on Russia’s conception of its national history, not only before 1917 but in the Soviet period and to the present day. This is the first reliable translation of the section of the Course on Catherine the Great., >Marshall S. Shatz is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He is the author of Soviet Dissent in Historical Perspective (1980) and Jan Waclaw Machajski: A Radical Critic of the Russian Intelligentsia and Socialism (1989). He has also edited and translated a number of works on Russian intellectual history, including (with Judith E. Zimmerman) Vekhi (Landmarks), published by M.E. Sharpe in 1994.

• Chapter 1 The Russian State in the Mid-Eighteenth Century: Elizabeth and Peter III; Chapter 2 The Coup d’État of June 28, 1762; Chapter 3 Catherine II: Upbringing and Character; Chapter 4 Foreign Policy; Chapter 5 Domestic Policy; Chapter 6 The Commission of 1767; Chapter 7 Reform of Provincial Government; Chapter 8 Serfdom; Chapter 9 The Gentry and the Impact of Western Culture;