The Empire of Russia: From the Remotest Periods to the Present Time

Written in the feverish atmosphere of the 1850s, when Russia stood at the center of global attention during the Crimean War, John S.C. Abbott undertook a ambitious task: to render fourteen centuries of Russian history into a narrative vivid enough to grip the ordinary reader. Beginning with the savage tribal bands that ravaged ancient Europe, Abbott traces the emergence of a nation from chaos, following the improbable rise of a primitive people ruled by wandering chieftains until they became the masters of an empire stretching from Poland to the Pacific. The book marches through the ages of legendary rulers: Ivan the Terrible, whose cruelty and cunning forged a unified state; Peter the Great, who dragged a backward nation into European modernity; Catherine the Great, the German princess who became Empress of all the Russias. Abbott writes with the moralizing flair of a 19th-century pulpit, viewing history as a drama of civilizational ascent. For readers who find academic tomes impenetrable, this is Russia rendered as epic: bloody, grandiose, and utterly absorbing.