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“From Russia with Love”
- Russian History from the Kiev State to the Russian Revolution
Course Outline
“[Russia] is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”
- Winston S. Churchill, speech broadcast on 1.10.1939.
 This one-year course covers the history of Russia from its earliest beginnings to the fall of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and the Revolution which overthrew the monarchy in the turbulent times of World War I. Apart from a straightforward outline, emphasis will be given to the factors which have made Russia the enigma of contradictions that it remains to this day: having a window on Europe, but not itself a European power; having a foot in Europe, but Asianised as well; militarily both strong and weak; a monarchy living in sumptuous opulence on top of grinding poverty; ever reforming but ever in need of reform; struggling to be a modern state in the face of conservatism and backwardness; and through it all the mysterious – and mystical – phenomenon of the Orthodox Church.
Term 1: Russian Beginnings to the Early Tsars
Session 1: Geography and Early People Movements
Session 2: Norman Penetration and the Kiev State
Session 3: Adoption of Orthodox Christianity
Session 4: The Mongol Invasions: Genghis Khan
Session 5: The Mongol Invasions: Batu
Session 6: Emergence of Muscovy
Session 7: Early Tsars and the Third Rome
Session 8: Ivan IV, “the Terrible”
Session 9: The Time of Troubles
Term 2: The Zenith of Tsarism
Session 1: Rise of the Romanov Dynasty
Session 2: Schism in the Orthodox Church
Session 3: Window on Europe: Peter the Great
Session 4: Peter the Great: Reforms, St Petersburg
Session 5: From Peter to Elizabeth
Session 6: Catherine the Great: Early Life, and her coup d’étât
Session 7: Catherine the Great: Reforms, the Pugachev Uprising
Session 8: Catherine the Great: Assessment
Session 9: Into the C19th; Tsar Paul, Alexander I
Winter Break
Term 3: Indian Summer of Tsarism
Session 1: Alexander versus Napoleon
Session 2: Alexander I: later years; Religious Conversion?
Session 3: Nicholas I: First Smoulderings of Revolution
Session 4: Nicholas I: The Gendarme of Europe
Session 5: Alexander II: Liberation of the Serfs
Session 6: Alexander II: Reforms and Assassination
Session 7: Religious Movements; The Challenge of Modernisation
Session 8: Alexander III: Toward a Police State
Session 9: Nicholas II: The Happy Years
Term 4: Indecision, Farce, and Revolution
Session 1: Nicholas II: 1905 - the year of upheaval
Session 2: Nicholas II: The Stolypin Administration
Session 3: Nicholas II: A haemophiliac Tsarevich
Session 4: Nicholas II: World War I
Session 5: Kerensky and Lenin
Session 6: Nicholas II: the Fall of Monarchy
Session 7: The First Revolution: Kerensky
Session 8: The Second Revolution: Lenin
Session 9: Tsarkoe Selo to Ipatiev: Murder of the Imperial Family
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