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Loading... A Short History of Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles to the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (edition 2004)by Chester S. L. Dunning
Work InformationA Short History of Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles to the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty by Chester S. L. Dunning
   All Things Russia (157) No current Talk conversations about this book.  Shrike58 | Oct 5, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
The Time of Troubles was a period of great upheaval in Russian history. It began when the ancient ruling dynasty died out in 1598 and Boris Godunov defeated rival boyars to become the tsar. For more than a decade thereafter, Russia was plagued by dynastic struggle, devastating famine, widespread uprisings, and invasion by Polish and Swedish armies. The Time of Troubles finally ended in 1613 with the establishment of the Romanovs as the ruling dynasty. Russia's state crisis had been so severe that it nearly destroyed the country and seriously delayed its emergence as a great power. Ever since then the Time of Troubles has occupied a unique place in Russia's collective memory. Russia's First Civil War is the first major post-Marxist reassessment of the Time of Troubles and the first detailed study of that tragic era in English. Historians have long misinterpreted popular uprisings during the Times of Troubles as the first social revolution of the Russian masses against serfdom. Dunning overturns this view and demonstrates that at the heart of the "Troubles" was a long and extremely violent civil war that divided Russian society vertically instead of horizontally. He shows that serfs did not actively participate in the civil war and that the abolition of serfdom was never a rebel goal. Instead, most rebels were petty gentry, professional soldiers, townsmen, and cossacks who were united in fierce opposition to tsars they believed to be illegitimate usurpers. Based upon exhaustive research, Russia's First Civil War is a masterful mix of social and military history, firmly placing the Time of Troubles in the context of the waves of wars and rebellions that swept through early modern Europe and Asia. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)947.045History and Geography Europe Russia and eastern Europe [and formerly Finland] Russian & Slavic History by Period Ivan III - Ivan V 1462-1689 Time of Troubles, 1605-1613LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4)
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There are a number of things that I really like about this book. I like the way that Dunning is prepared to engage in a macrohistoric perspective and to compare the Russian experience in the early modern period with that of other states, particularly in the West. By the time I was done I felt that while this experience had it's own peculiar flavor, it wasn't that far removed from the French Wars of Religion or the Thirty Years War as an analytic unit.
I also like the way that Dunning respects his subject, in that he was prepared to take the Tsar Dimitri seriously, and to take the people who fought in his name seriously, rather than as being some sort of cosmic joke. That Dunning finds there to be a popular consciousness as to what the realm of the Tsar should be is what makes this a civil war for him.
Also, while one could feel a little overwhelmed by the level of detail that Dunning brings to his study, the fall of the Russian Empire 1.0 and the rise of the Romanovs certainly deserves the blow-by-blow treatment.
As for what gives me pause, Dunning is somewhat tendentious in terms of telling the reader what the Time of Troubles was not. That this was not a simple dynastic conflict. That this was not a proto-socialist uprising. That this was not merely a scam perpetrated by the Polish crown when Moscow had overextended itself. This is not to mention that if I had a dollar for every time Dunning uses the term "Russia's first civil war" in the course of the work I could probably finance my book-buying habit for the next year. At the very least I don't see "dynastic war" and "civil war" as being mutually exclusive conditions while Dunning seems to, which makes him seem as though he's trying a little too hard to make his points. (