Holiday Book List in Russian History and Culture: Perfect Gifts, Engaging Reads
With the holidays approaching, we’re sharing a handpicked list of books on Russian history and culture—perfect as gifts or as enriching winter reads.
This has become our December tradition, and for the third year in a row we’re presenting an updated selection from our wonderful “Second Saturday” lecture speakers. We asked them to highlight their own recent work or recommend standout titles by other authors.
This year’s recommendations span a wide range of themes and genres—from Nicholas II to Soviet dissidents; from photo books to memoirs and poetry.
How Russia Became Big: A Territorial History, by Paul W. Werth (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)
Recommended by Janet Hartley and Russell Martin
As the author notes, “even people who know little about Russia know it is big.” This slim volume provides a compelling and clear account of how and why Russia expanded from the small principality of Muscovy to an Empire which covered one sixth of the earth’s land mass, and then takes the reader through the Soviet period to the Russian Federation, which is still the largest country in the world. It offers an important historical background for understanding not only territorial change but also the driving forces behind the actions of Russian leaders, past and present.
Watch: Janet Hartley’s lecture, “The Volga: A History of Russia’s Greatest River“; Russell Martin’s lecture, “Pageant and Piety at the Court of Russia’s Rulers”
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press, 2024)
Recommended by Nathaniel Knight
Benjamin Nathans’s vivid narrative tells the dramatic story of the men and women who became dissidents—from Nobel laureates Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to many others who are virtually unknown today. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, personal letters, interviews, and KGB interrogation records, the book reveals how dissidents decided to use Soviet law to contain the power of the Soviet state.
WINNER OF THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE
Watch: Nathaniel Knight’s lecture, “Unique Depictions of the Russian Empire’s People”
The Belle Époque Life in Paris: Olga Paley and Paul of Russia, by Wilfried Zeisler with contribution of Megan J. Martinelli (GILES, 2025)
Recommended by Wilfried Zeisler
Based on previously unpublished documents, this book traces the life in Paris of Countess Olga von Hohenfelsen, later known as Princess Paley, the morganatic wife of Grand Duke Paul of Russia, uncle of the last emperor Nicholas II.
While immersing the reader in the world of Marcel Proust (most of Princess Paley’s social contacts had fed the writer’s imagination), the book explores the couple’s day-to-day life, highlighting their relationships with leading suppliers such as couturiers Worth and Paquin and the jeweler Cartier. It also provides an overview of the Parisian art market and studies the development of the couple’s successive residences from Paris to St. Petersburg.
Watch: Wilfried Zeisler’s lecture, “Grand Duke Paul and Princess Olga Paley”
From Forest to Steppe: The Russian Art of Building in Wood, by William Craft Brumfield (Duke University Press, 2025)
Recommended by William Craft Brumfield
Renowned scholar and photographer William Craft Brumfield offers a panoramic survey of Russia’s centuries-long heritage of wooden architecture. Lavishly illustrated with more than 400 color photographs, the volume links log-built barns, windmills, houses, and churches in the Far North; Buddhist shrines in the Transbaikal region; and eighteenth-century palaces on the outskirts of Moscow. Brumfield also takes readers to the estate houses of many Russian literary giants, from Chekhov and Tolstoy to Dostoevsky and Pushkin.
Watch: William Craft Brumfield’s lecture, “Journeys Through the Russian Empire: Photography and the Art of Survival”
In Memory of Memory, by Maria Stepanova (New Directions, 2021)
Recommended by Julie Buckler
The narrator peruses a deceased aunt’s Moscow apartment full of memory-objects such as faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and souvenirs, and then works with these fragments to piece together the story of a Jewish family living through the struggles of the last century. The narrator reconstructs what she can and uses her imagination to fill the many gaps.
Watch: Julie Buckler’s lecture, “Imperial Petersburg as a Landscape of Literature and Culture“
All the World on a Page: A Critical Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry, by Andrew Kahn and Mark Lipovetsky (Princeton University Press, 2025)
Recommended by Andrew Kahn
All the World on a Page is a critical anthology of 34 Russian poems written between 1907 and 2022. Each chapter features a single poem (a short or long lyric, even a cycle) accompanied by an English translation and an extensive interpretative essay. Informed by scholarship and a variety of critical methods, the book appeals not only to students and scholars but also the general reader and poetry lovers, with or without Russian.
Watch: Andrew Kahn’s lecture, “How Pushkin Became Russia’s National Genius“
The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs, by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (Basic Books, 2024)
Recommended by Eric Lohr and Nick Nicholson
When Tsar Nicholas II fell from power in 1917, Imperial Russia faced a series of overlapping crises, from war to social unrest. Encompassing the captivating personalities of the era, the book untangles the struggles between the increasingly isolated Nicholas and Alexandra and the factions of scheming nobles, ruthless legislators, and pragmatic generals who sought to stabilize the restive Russian empire either with the Tsar or without him.
Watch: Eric Lohr’s lecture, “Russia in WWI and Revolution“; Nick Nicholson’s lecture, “Black Gold: Russian Lacquer from the 18th–20th Centuries“
Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great, by Rosalind P. Blakesley (Lund Humphries Publishers, 2023)
Recommended by Ekaterina Heath
Catherine the Great’s audacious power grab in 1762 marked a watershed in imperial Russian history. In her book, Rosalind Blakesley reveals the remarkable role women artists played in Catherine the Great’s reforms and cultural advancements. The book is beautifully illustrated—a great choice for both scholars and interested readers.
Watch: Ekaterina Heath’s lecture, “Russian Art in Chinese Style”
, by Robinson McClellan with contribution of Lynn Garafola (GILES, 2024)
Recommended by Maria Timina
This book celebrates one of the world’s finest private gathering of music manuscripts, held on deposit at the Morgan Library. Robert Owen Lehman’s superb collection of French and Russian ballet scores, including Firebird, Petrushka, Afternoon of a Faun, Bolero, are shown here for the first time alongside the vivid stage designs and rarely seen choreographic notations for these ballets.
Watch: Maria Timina’s lecture, “Forgeries in the Russian Avant-Garde”
