Ebook: Russian Rebels, 1600-1800

Paul Avrich s latest book is an admirable blend of serious scholarship and appealing writing. His purpose is to tell the story of popular uprisings in Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with particular emphasis on those led by Bolotnikov, Razin, Bulavin, and Pugachev. To do so, he has made careful and intelligent use of a large body of published materials and from them has woven a lively and engrossing narrative. More than that, drawing on the previous work of Hobsbawm and others, he has offered perceptive explanations of the outbreak, course, and outcome of each revolt. Throughout the work, the author compares the principal revolts and searches, above all, for a general characterization of the tradition of mass revolt in premodern Russia. Robert O. Crummey, Yale University in Journal of Modern History