Free Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin by Catherine Merridale

Suggestions for Further Reading
    This book has covered nine hundred years in the history of the Russian state, and a bibliography that attempted to catalogue every source would present a formidable and probably impenetrable challenge to the reader. I have given full references in the endnotes, but here I offer a more general guide to further reading, restricting myself mainly to materials that are available in English.
    GENERAL
    The brave company of authors who have written on the whole sweep of Russian history is small but distinguished. Among the best general books are Geoffrey Hosking’s Russia and the Russians: A History from Rus to the Russian Federation (London, 2001) and James A. Billington’s The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York, 1966). In preparing this book, I also consulted W. Bruce Lincoln’s Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia (New York, 1998), Nicholas Riasanovsky’s Russian Identities: A Historical Survey (Oxford, 2005) and Mark D. Steinberg and Nicholas Riasanovsky’s two-volume A History of Russia, 7th edn (New York and Oxford, 2005). Michael Cherniavsky’s Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New York, 1969) was an inspiration, as was the much older The Russian Idea (London, 1947) by Nikolai Berdyaev. For an equally ambitious work that was written, refreshingly, by an expert in the medieval and early modern Russian world, see Marshall Poe, The Russian Moment in World History (Princeton, NJ, 2003). Readers with a taste for controversy will also enjoy Richard Pipes’ classic Russia Under the Old Regime (London and New York, 1974), which proposes the idea of the patrimonial state. By contrast, a brilliant collective endeavour, the Cambridge History of Russia (multiple volumes, 2006–8), presents very recent research in accessible form. Many of the individual essays are cited elsewhere in this survey.
    The general histories of the Kremlin are more disappointing. The most serious one in English is Arthur Voyce’s The Moscow Kremlin: Its History, Architecture and Art Treasures (London, 1955). For more sumptuous illustrations (but fewer words), see David Douglas Duncan, Great Treasures of the Kremlin (New York, 1967). By contrast, Laurence Kelly’s collection of excerpts, Moscow: A Traveller’s Companion (London, 1983) includes a section on the Kremlin that provides glimpses of the fortress and the myths that have surrounded it. For the architecture of Moscow in general, see also Kathleen Berton Murrell’s Moscow: An Architectural History (London, 1977).
    William Craft Brumfield’s History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge, 1993) is the best general introduction to its subject, while Dmitry Shvidkovsky’s Russian Architecture and the West (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2007) contains much valuable new material in a stunningly beautiful volume. There are several general histories of Russian art (the classic English-language work, in three volumes, is George Hamilton’s Art and Architecture of Russia (Harmondsworth, 1954)), but one of the most accessible is Tamara Talbot Rice, A Concise History of Russian Art (New York, 1963). Icons are discussed in illuminating ways by John Stuart, Ikons (London, 1975) and Oleg Tarasov, Icon and Devotion: Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia, trans. Robin Milner-Gulland (London, 2002). As for the Orthodox Church itself, Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London, 1997) provides the best general introduction.
    MEDIEVAL RUSSIA
    Among the best introductions to the story of Rus is Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200 (London and New York, 1996). The early chapters of Janet Martin’s wonderful Medieval Russia, 980–1584 (Cambridge, 2007) also cover early Rus. The Byzantine connection is beautifully presented in Dmitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth (London, 1971) and John Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian