Understanding Russia: A Cultural History

Get a comprehensive look at Russia’s fascinating cultural history with an award-winning historian and Russian specialist.

• By This Professor
• 01: A Russian Past, the Putin Future
• 02: Ivan the Terrible’s 500-Year Reign
• 03: The Russian Orthodox Church
• 04: Peter the Great and a European Empire
• 05: Russia’s Northern Window on Europe
• 06: Nobility, the Tsar, and the Peasant
• 07: The Authentic Russia: Popular Culture
• 08: Catherine the Great and the Enlightenment
• 09: Alexander Pushkin’s Russia
• 10: Alexander II, Nihilists, and Assassins
• 11: The Age of Realism in Russian Art
• 12: Russian Fin de Siècle and the Silver Age
• 13: Empire across Two Continents
• 14: The Rise and Fall of the Romanovs
• 15: Russian Radicals, War, and Revolution
• 16: The October 1917 Revolution
• 17: Lenin and the Soviet Cultural Invasion
• 18: The Roaring Twenties, Soviet Style
• 19: The Tyrant Is a Movie Buff: Stalinism
• 20: The Soviets’ Great Patriotic War
• 21: With Khrushchev, the Cultural Thaw
• 22: Soviet Byt: Shared Kitchen, Stove, and Bath
• 23: Intelligentsia, Dissidents, and Samizdat
• 24: Soviet Chaos and Russian Revenge