Rating: 
Summary: This history is a necessary read
Review: I just read a "one star review" of this book, and it galled me. So I write this.
This book is a STANDARD history of Russia, used by many, including my, college courses on the subject. It is generally considered a classic.
If you want, or profess, to understand Russian history, this book is a must. Absolutely. First rate. NO, not without the author's personal imput.
But what book is without that imput? NONE.
Buy it, read it, and try to understand. Yes, read others, but read this first.
THIS IS THE STANDARD TEXT.
Take care and God bless your endeavors.
Rating: 
Summary: Good text for general reader.
Review: My Russian history prof. in college used this book because, "It was the only one he could get students to read, although it doesn't really reach the scholarly level of the likes of Kliuchevskii." Serious students of Russian history won't get much to chew here, but general readers will find it a pleasant read.
Rating: 
Summary: Very biased
Review: Riasanovsky's History of Russia is written from an unapologetically imperialistic and outdated perspective. It belongs to Victorian times when armies traveled overseas to take control of weaker and less well armed territories and peoples. Except that in the Russian case, no overseas risks were taken. Instead, the Russians preferred contiguous conquest of non-Russian territories which were renamed "Russia" as soon as they came under Cossack control. A prime example of this type of conquest is Siberia and "the Russian Far East" which remain the only parts of Asia presently controlled by a non-Asian military power. Even the voracious British did not call India "Britain."Riasanovsky's book contains countless omissions, inaccuracies, distortions, and plain untruths which together create an image of Russia as a nation state rather than a colonial empire; a benign power that subjugated those in need of tutelage. Nowhere in this book is there a mention of the unspeakable destruction wrought on peoples and territories by the centralized Moscow government which robbed, stole, or burned whatever could not be stolen as soon as it conquered, and left behind a network of spies comparable to those of the Mongol Khans. Nowhere does Riasanovsky explain why and by what means the kingdom of Muscovy conquered territory hundreds of times its size, and then claimed bogus origins in Kiev. Ask any Chinese, and he will rattle off names of territories taken away by force from their original Asian inhabitants and annexed by Moscow. Ask a Japanese what he thinks of what resembles a robbery in plain view (see Riasanovsky euphemistic description of this robbery which, he says, cost the Russians "considerable casualties, for the Japanese did resist." In her book, Kalpana Sahni tells a terrifying story of what the Russian empire did to the Central Asian and Caucasus peoples. Has anyone ever asked why the fertile territories near the Black Sea were so deprived of human settlements that Chichikov could plan to settle his "dead souls" there? Has anyone read the history of those peoples written from THEIR point of view?
In our own time, the killings and torture of tens of thousands of Chechens (a small nation that still resists Russian aggression) testify to a nearly total absence in Russian culture of resistance to Russia's relentless aggression against those neighbors who are weaker, less numerous, or located in economically advantageous areas. There is no reflection in Riasanovsky's book on this imperialistic past and present. The story might have been told by Father Christmas: Russia was born, then it grew, and grew, and grew.
This kind of story belongs to imperialism's heyday in the nineteenth century. Only a shortage of histories of Russia written by unbiased scholars makes this extremely biased, not to say propagandistic, volume pass for a good introduction to Russian history for American students.
Rating:
Summary: The overview text on Russian history for US readers
Review: This is an excellent survey text for American students, especially at an introductory level, by one of the leading Russian history scholars of our time.
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