Chester S. L. Dunning

I should probably give this book a higher rating but by the time I was done I was feeling ill-qualified to judge it, particularly since Dunning swings a really big ax.

There are a number of things that I really like about this book. I like the way that Dunning is prepared to engage in a macrohistoric perspective and to compare the Russian experience in the early modern period with that of other states, particularly in the West. By the time I was done I felt that while this experience had it's own peculiar flavor, it wasn't that far removed from the French Wars of Religion or the Thirty Years War as an analytic unit.

I also like the way that Dunning respects his subject, in that he was prepared to take the Tsar Dimitri seriously, and to take the people who fought in his name seriously, rather than as being some sort of cosmic joke. That Dunning finds there to be a popular consciousness as to what the realm of the Tsar should be is what makes this a civil war for him.

Also, while one could feel a little overwhelmed by the level of detail that Dunning brings to his study, the fall of the Russian Empire 1.0 and the rise of the Romanovs certainly deserves the blow-by-blow treatment.

As for what gives me pause, Dunning is somewhat tendentious in terms of telling the reader what the Time of Troubles was not. That this was not a simple dynastic conflict. That this was not a proto-socialist uprising. That this was not merely a scam perpetrated by the Polish crown when Moscow had overextended itself. This is not to mention that if I had a dollar for every time Dunning uses the term "Russia's first civil war" in the course of the work I could probably finance my book-buying habit for the next year. At the very least I don't see "dynastic war" and "civil war" as being mutually exclusive conditions while Dunning seems to, which makes him seem as though he's trying a little too hard to make his points.… (plus d'informations)