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Last updated on November 06, 2025

Russia to 1917

Fall 2025 Syllabus Version 7.0

Course Information

Logistics

General Education Requirements

This course fulfills:

Content Overview

Course Objective

The Russian Empire was among the largest in world history, spanning the entire Eurasian continent. This course explores the factors that made Russia so powerful at its height, only to collapse in the world’s first socialist revolution – an event that shaped the twentieth century and reverberates through global politics still today. Coverage is comprehensive, beginning in the eighteenth century, but focusing on the latter half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth. Geographically, the course ranges far beyond the capitals of Moscow and St. Petersburg to consider questions of colonialism, ethnicity, and religious pluralism, from Poland to Siberia. Considerable attention will also be given to ideology, literature, serfdom, and underground revolutionary movements.

Organization of Course Content

The course is organized chronologically, beginning with a prologue on the premodern period, and ending with the Revolution. The focus is on the latter half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth, a turbulent period defined by halting reform and the road to world war. Thematically, the content tends to begin with politics at the imperial center, then shift to cultural and intellectual trends, and then branch out to geopolitics and the less studied borderlands.

Learning Outcomes

The principle learning outcomes of this course are twofold:

  1. Ability to deploy original analysis through the engagement of primary sources
  2. The articulation of that analysis through evidence-based writing

Both of these skills are developed in view of applying them beyond the academic field of history.

Course Requirements

Required Texts and Readings

Primary Textbook: Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Mark D. Steinberg, A History of Russia, Ninth edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Cost-saving options:

Recommended Reference: John Channon’s The Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia (1995) - inexpensive and available on physical reserve.

All other course readings will be available electronically.

Workload Expectations

Assignments

Study Guides
In-Class Participation
Midterm Essay
Final Paper
Analytical Writing Skills Sequence (Optional)

Three-part mini-assignment series to prepare for formal essays. Entirely optional but provides modest extra credit bonus to Midterm Essay category.

Extra Credit Opportunities

Grading Policy

Grade Distribution

Grading Scale

Standard Canvas cutoffs with one exception: only the highest two overall grades eligible for A+; others in A+ range collapsed to A.

Study Guides and Participation

If you complete most of the exercises (80% or higher), you will receive full credit (i.e., bumped up to 100%) in these categories; below 80% you will receive the raw score. If you have any questions or concerns about your participation grade, please discuss with the instructor during office hours only.

University Policies

This syllabus incorporates all policies from Pitt’s Center for Teaching and Learning:

Please read all linked policies carefully: they are part of this syllabus.

Course Schedule

Part I: Prologue - A Thousand Years of Eurasian History

Core Questions

What is Russia? When did the first “Russians” appear on the scene? Why on earth do Vikings and Mongols feature in a course about Russia?

Session 1 (Aug. 26): Course Overview

Topics:

Session 2 (Aug. 28): Origins

Lecture: “Vikings, Rus, and the so-called ‘Tatar Yoke’”

Readings:

Session 3 (Sep. 2): The Eurasian Backdrop

Lecture: “Ivan the Awesome’s Mongol Successor State”

Readings:

Part II: Peter, Catherine, and Westernization

Core Questions

How revolutionary was the reign of Peter the Great? What precipitated Russia’s infatuation with Europe? Who were the other contending powers in the neighborhood before Russia emerged as a great power?

Session 4 (Sep. 4): Russia Enters the Modern Age

Lecture: “Out with the Old, In with the New – The Petrine Revolution”

Readings:

Session 5 (Sep. 9): Empire of the Empresses

Lecture: “Catherine the Great, Enlightened Despot”

Readings:

Session 6 (Sep. 11): Imperial Borderlands

Lecture: “Integrating an Empire – Poles and Cossacks, Tatars and Georgians”

Readings:

Session 7 (Sep. 16): Manifest Destiny

Lecture: “From Sea to Shining Sea – Russia’s Wild, Wild East”

Reading:

Part III: The Empire Advances

Core Questions

How can we explain Russia’s emergence as a great power? Why was an allegedly “backwards” monarchy able to occupy Paris, capital of the most powerful land empire of the day?

Session 8 (Sep. 18): War and Peace

Lecture: “Napoleon Threat and Great Power Status”

Reading:

Session 9 (Sep. 23): Murmurings of Dissent

Lecture: “The Emergence of the Intelligentsia”

Reading:

Session 10 (Sep. 25): Political Oppression, Literary Efflorescence

Lecture: “The ‘Remarkable Decade’: Culture and Intellectual Debates of the 1820s-1840s”

Readings:

Part IV: Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality

Core Questions

What did it mean to be a “multiconfessional” empire? How was Russia divided by religion, ethnicity, class? Who could be a noble, and what did it mean to be part of the nobility? How did Russia manage to control such a vast territory, and how tangible was the Russian administrative presence in the periphery?

Session 11 (Sep. 30): Governing the Eurasian Sprawl

Lecture: “The Multiconfessional Empire”

Readings:

Session 12 (Oct. 2): Indigestible Hinterland to the West

Lecture: “The Problem of Poland”

Reading:

October 7: Midterm Exam

In-class Handwritten Essay

October 9: No class

Session 13 (Oct. 14): Indigestible Hinterland to the East

Lecture: “Insurgency in the Caucasus”

Reading:

Session 14 (Oct. 16): The Meaning of ‘Progress’

Lecture: “Slavophiles vs. Westernizers”

Reading:

Part V: The Great Reforms

Core Questions

Why did Alexander II implement the so-called “Great Reforms”? Out of the goodness of his heart? Were they hollow reforms, or did they go too far? What were some of the unintended consequences? What was the nature of reform in subsequent decades?

Session 15 (Oct. 21): Making Peasants Backwards

Lecture: “Emancipation (?) of the Peasants”

Reading:

Session 16 (Oct. 23): Governing Diversity

Lecture: “The Pale of Settlement and Nationalities Policies”

Readings:

Part VI: Lurching toward Modernity

Core Questions

What was the nature of autocratic government? Was Russia a colonial empire?

Session 17 (Oct. 28): Revenge of the Intelligentsia

Lecture: “To the People – Populists and other Radicals”

Reading:

Other: Deadline to revise and resubmit midterm essay (resubmit on same Canvas assignment)

Session 18 (Oct. 30): Autocracy

Lecture: “Retrenchment of the Romanov Monarchy”

Reading:

Session 19 (Nov. 4): Fin de Siècle Culture and Society

Lecture: “Industrialization”

Readings:

Session 20 (Nov. 6): Peasants in the City

Lecture: “An Emergent Public Sphere”

Readings:

Session 21 (Nov. 11): Russia’s Orient

Lecture: “Central Asia under Colonial Rule”

Readings:

Part VII: Revolution Unending

Core Questions

How did one of the vastest Eurasian land empires in history collapse so totally? Would the Revolution have happened, were it not for World War I? Is it more useful to conceptualize war and revolution separately, or part of a single phenomenon? How many revolutions were there, and how many coups? Why did the Red Army win the Russian Civil War?

Session 22 (Nov. 13): The Beginning of the End

Lecture: “1905 and the De-Sacralized Duma Monarchy”

Readings:

Session 23 (Nov. 19): War and Revolution

Lecture: “Military Coup into February Revolution”

Readings:

Session 24 (Nov. 20): Revolution and War

Lecture: “Peasant Republics, Bolshevik Putsch”

Readings:

Session 25 (Dec. 2): Total Collapse into Soviet Empire

Lecture: “Civil War, Ukrainian Insurgency, Federated Centralism”

Readings:

Session 26 (Dec. 4): Soviet Union

Lecture: “The Party-State”

I reserve the right to amend and update this syllabus throughout the semester.