A comprehensive introduction to Russian history from the earliest East Slavic settlements to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in 1917, this course incorporates original documents, literary works, and artistic productions including music and painting, to investigate the major cultural, intellectual, and political events that have shaped the country’s past and continue to influence its present. Among the  important themes covered in this class are: Russia’s relationship to the nations of Western Europe; economic backwardness and the process of modernization; state authority and the role of the individual in Russian society; and ethnicity and nationalism in the Empire’s borderlands among other subjects.