Catherine the Great

Simon Dixon
Profile Books

A biography of Catherine the Great, which portrays the ruler, for 34 years, of the largest state in existence since the fall of the Roman Empire, against the background of the court society in which she grew up.

Fabergé’s Eggs: One man’s masterpieces and the end of an empire

Toby Faber (Pan Books)

The story of the fifty jewelled eggs made by Carl Fabergé between 1885 and 1916, which were given by Russia’s two last emperor’s to their wives as Easter presents, and, since the demise of tsarist Russia, have become famous surviving symbols of the Romanov Empire.

The Battle of the Alma 1854: First Blood to the Allies in the Crimea

Ian Fletcher & Natalia Ishchenko (Pen & Sword)

A study of the opening encounter of the Crimean War on September 20th 1854, which provides an insight into military thinking and organisation in the 1850s and considers the battle from all perspectives, British, French and Russian.

The Russian Civil War 1918-22

David Bullock (Osprey Publishing)

A study of the Russian Civil War which examines the rival forces of the White, Red, Black and Green armies, Allied intervention, and its impact on society and the political geography of eastern and north eastern Europe, the Far East and Central Asia.

Summary: Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: 1914-1922

Aaron B. Retish
Cambridge University Press

The evolution of peasant society and peasants’ conceptions of themselves as citizens in the Soviet nation, from the First World War to the end of the Civil War, in a period of total war, mass revolutionary politics and civil breakdown.