How Russia Got Big: A Territorial History
How Russia Got Big accounts for Russia's changing physical scope over some seven centuries.

Even people who know little about Russia know that it is big. This concise book tells the story of how it became so. Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in the early 14th century, Paul W. Werth recounts the construction of the world's largest country-from Muscovy and the Russian Empire through the USSR to today's Russian Federation-as well as its territorial retrenchment and even collapse on several occasions. Integrating geography, diplomacy, war, and imperial politics, the book ranges across three continents and recounts diverse interactions with neighboring polities and peoples. Werth likewise contemplates different ways of conceptualizing territorial possession and related understandings of sovereignty, authority, and belonging. The result, illustrated with 29 original maps, is a grand story from a bird's-eye view that reveals deeper rhythms to Russia's territorial history involving alternations of enlargement and crisis-ones that continue in our own day.
1146536987
How Russia Got Big: A Territorial History
How Russia Got Big accounts for Russia's changing physical scope over some seven centuries.

Even people who know little about Russia know that it is big. This concise book tells the story of how it became so. Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in the early 14th century, Paul W. Werth recounts the construction of the world's largest country-from Muscovy and the Russian Empire through the USSR to today's Russian Federation-as well as its territorial retrenchment and even collapse on several occasions. Integrating geography, diplomacy, war, and imperial politics, the book ranges across three continents and recounts diverse interactions with neighboring polities and peoples. Werth likewise contemplates different ways of conceptualizing territorial possession and related understandings of sovereignty, authority, and belonging. The result, illustrated with 29 original maps, is a grand story from a bird's-eye view that reveals deeper rhythms to Russia's territorial history involving alternations of enlargement and crisis-ones that continue in our own day.
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How Russia Got Big: A Territorial History

How Russia Got Big: A Territorial History

by Paul W. Werth
How Russia Got Big: A Territorial History

How Russia Got Big: A Territorial History

by Paul W. Werth

eBook

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Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on August 21, 2025

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Overview

How Russia Got Big accounts for Russia's changing physical scope over some seven centuries.

Even people who know little about Russia know that it is big. This concise book tells the story of how it became so. Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in the early 14th century, Paul W. Werth recounts the construction of the world's largest country-from Muscovy and the Russian Empire through the USSR to today's Russian Federation-as well as its territorial retrenchment and even collapse on several occasions. Integrating geography, diplomacy, war, and imperial politics, the book ranges across three continents and recounts diverse interactions with neighboring polities and peoples. Werth likewise contemplates different ways of conceptualizing territorial possession and related understandings of sovereignty, authority, and belonging. The result, illustrated with 29 original maps, is a grand story from a bird's-eye view that reveals deeper rhythms to Russia's territorial history involving alternations of enlargement and crisis-ones that continue in our own day.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781350284036
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 08/21/2025
Series: Russian Shorts
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 184
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

Paul W. Werth is Professor of History and Department Chair at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. Since 2009, he has been serving as Editor of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, a leading international journal. His books include At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia's Volga-Kama Region (2002), Orthodoxy, Non-Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy: Sketches on the History of Religious Diversity in the Russian Empire (2012) [in Russian], and The Tsar's Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia (2014).

Table of Contents

List of Maps
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: Enlargement&Crisis
1. Muscovite Enlargement, 1300-1611
2. Russia Gets Really Big, 1611-1812
3. A (Mostly) Asian Century, 1812-1919
4. Still One-Sixth, 1919-1942
5. From Victory to Collapse, 1942-1991
6. The Pattern Continues, 1991-2024
7. Expansion-Why and How?
PART II: Complications
8. Russia Beyond
9. Russia Within
Epilogue: The End of Enlargement?
Bibliography
Index
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