ABSTRACT
This book brings together some of the large volume of work on the period published over the last 30 years, to show an overall picture of Russia under the last two tsars — before the war brought down, not only the Russian empire but also those of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. It turns the attention from the old emphases on workers, revolutionaries, and a reactionary government, to a more diverse and nuanced picture of a country which was both a major European great power, facing the challenges of modernization and industrialization, and also a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional empire stretching across both Europe and Asia. The new tsar looked back, not to the early nineteenth century but to Muscovy, to the early seventeenth century before the reforms of Peter the Great had first put Russia firmly on a Westernizing path. This involved the unlimited power of a divinely sanctioned monarch, ruling in unity with his loyal people.
