How Russia Got Big: A Territorial History by Paul W. Werth

How Russia Got Big explains how centuries of conquest and diplomacy turned a modest principality into the greatest land power in history. This sweeping history reveals how geography, ambition, ideology and sheer endurance forged a global superpower with a legacy that still echoes across continents today spanning from Siberia to Europe and beyond.

Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in the early 14th century, Paul W. Werth recounts the construction of the world's largest country—from Muscovy and the Russian Empire through the USSR to today’s Russian Federation—as well as its territorial retrenchment and even collapse on several occasions. Integrating geography, diplomacy, war, and imperial politics, the book ranges across three continents and recounts diverse interactions with neighbouring polities and peoples.

Werth likewise contemplates different ways of conceptualising territorial possession and related understandings of sovereignty, authority, and belonging. The result, illustrated with 29 original maps, is a grand story from a bird's-eye view that reveals deeper rhythms to Russia’s territorial history involving alternations of enlargement and crisis—ones that continue in our own day.

Paperback