Samuel H. Baron

American historians of Russia have always been an intrepid lot. Their research trips were spent not in Cambridge or Paris, Rome or Berlin, but in Soviet dormitories with official monitors. They were seeking access to a historical record that was purposefully shrouded in secrecy, boxed up and locked away in closed archives. Their efforts, indeed their curiosity itself, sometimes raised suspicion at home as well as in a Soviet Union that did not want to be known even while it felt misunderstood. This lively volume brings together the reflections of twenty leading specialists on Russian history representing four generations. They relate their experiences as historians and researchers in Russia from the first academic exchanges in the 1950s through the Cold War years, detente, glasnost, and the first post-Soviet decade. Their often moving, acutely observed stories of Russian academic life record dramatic change both in the historical profession and in the society that they have devoted their careers to understanding.

American historians of Russia have always been an intrepid lot. Their research trips were spent not in Cambridge or Paris, Rome or Berlin, but in Soviet dormitories with official monitors. They were seeking access to a historical record that was purposefully shrouded in secrecy, boxed up and locked away in closed archives. Their efforts, indeed their curiosity itself, sometimes raised suspicion at home as well as in a Soviet Union that did not want to be known even while it felt misunderstood. This lively volume brings together the reflections of twenty leading specialists on Russian history representing four generations. They relate their experiences as historians and researchers in Russia from the first academic exchanges in the 1950s through the Cold War years, detente, glasnost, and the first post-Soviet decade. Their often moving, acutely observed stories of Russian academic life record dramatic change both in the historical profession and in the society that they have devoted their careers to understanding.

This is the first complete story, long hidden by the Soviet Union, of the attack by government forces on striking workers in 1962, resulting in 21 dead and hundreds of others wounded or imprisoned. Only with the advent of glasnost in the 1980s did the tight lid of secrecy placed on the entire episode by the Soviets begin slowly to lift.

This is the first complete story, long hidden by the Soviet Union, of the attack by government forces on striking workers in 1962, resulting in 21 dead and hundreds of others wounded or imprisoned. Only with the advent of glasnost in the 1980s did the tight lid of secrecy placed on the entire episode by the Soviets begin slowly to lift.

The main themes of this volume are the explorations and geographical discoveries, and the economic circumstances that lay behind the establishment of commercial relations between Muscovite Russia and Elizabethan England. It also includes four hitherto unpublished studies, together with additional notes to other articles. In the opening pieces Samuel Baron pursues his researches into socio-economic history, with particular reference to the development of commerce and mercantilism in Russia during the 16th-and 17th-centuries. The following section then deals with the discovery of the sea route round the north of Norway, looking on the one hand at the position of seafaring in Russia and the role the Russians themselves may have played in these explorations, for instance in the discovery of Spitsbergen, and on the other at the English quest for a northeastern passage to China. Other articles examine the spread in the West of geographical knowledge about Muscovy, as revealed by the development of cartography, and finally focus on the work of Herberstein and its importance as a stimulus for the English expedition of 1583 that led to the opening of direct Anglo-Russian relations. Les explorations et les découvertes géographiques, ainsi que les circonstances économiques à la base de la création des rapports commerciaux entre la Russie moscovite et l’Angleterre élisabéthaine forment les thèmes principaux de ce volume. Quatre études jusqu ici inédites sont aussi inclues, ainsi que des notes supplémentaires. Samuel Baron débute cet ouvrage en poursuivant ses recherches sur l’histoire socio-économique et se réfère en particulier au développement du mercantilisme en Russie durant les 16e et 17e siècles. La section suivante traite de la découverte de la voie maritime passant au Nord de la Norvège; y sont examinés d’une part, le rôle des Russes quant à ces explorations, comme celle, par exemple, qui mena à la découverte de Spitsbergen et, d’autre p