Primary Sources

Men's Memoirs, Literature, and Letters

Aksakov, Sergei. A Family Chronicle: Childhood Years of Bagrov Grandson. Raduga Publishers, 1984. ISBN: 9780785509318.

— — —. A Russian Gentleman. Translated by J. D. Duff. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016. ISBN: 9781537336428.

Annenkov, P. V. The Extraordinary Decade: Literary Memoirs. Edited by A.P. Mendel. University of Michigan Press, 1968.

Barratt, Glynn R. Voices in Exile: The Decembrist Memoirs. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974. ISBN: 9780773501836.

Berdyaev, Nikolas. Chapters 1–9 in Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography. Macmillan, 1951. (Memoir of a famous philosopher.)

Bonnell, Victoria E., ed. The Russian Worker: Life and Labor Under the Tsarist Regime. University of California Press, 1983. ISBN: 9780520048379. [Preview with Google Books] (Rare insights into working-class life from selections from memoir material by Russian workers.)

Cross, Anthony. Engraved in the Memory: James Walker, Engraver to the Empress Catherine the Great and his Russian Anecdotes. Berg Publishers, 1993.

 Custine, Marquis de. Journey for Our Time: The Journals of the Marquis de Custine. Edited by Phyllis Penn Kohler. Introduction by Walter Bedell Smith. Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2007. ISBN: 9780548448335.

— — —. Letters from Russia. Translated by Robin Buss. Penguin Books, 2014. ISBN : 9780141394510. (Important account by a French traveler.)

Freeze, Gregory L. From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia. Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780195043594.

Gorky, Maxim. My Childhood. Translated with an introduction by Ronald Wilks. Penguin Classics, 1991. ISBN: 9780140182859. [Preview with Google Books] (First section of the autobiography of the famous writer. There are several different translations and editions.)

Gurko, Vladimir Iosifovich. Features and Figures of the Past: Government and Opinion in the Reign of Nicholas II. Stanford University Press, 1939.

Haxthausen, August von. Studies on the Interior of Russia. Edited and with an introduction by S. Frederick Starr. Translated by Eleanor L.M. Schmidt. University of Chicago Press, 1972. ISBN: 9780226320229. (Important account of Russian customs and practices by scholarly foreign agronomist.)

Herzen, Alexander. Childhood, Youth and Exile. Translated by J. D. Duff. Introduction by Isaiah Berlin. Oxford University Press, 1980. ISBN: 9780192815057.

— — —. From the Other Shore, Translated from the Russian by Moura Budberg, and The Russian People and Socialism, Translated from the French by Richard Wollheim. Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN: 9780192812681.

Kokovtsov, Vladimir Nikolaevich. Out of My Past: The Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov, Russian Minister of Finance, 1904–1914; Chairman of the Council of Ministers, 1911–1914. Edited by H. H. Fisher. Translated by Laura Matveev. Stanford University Press, 1935.

Kropotkin, Peter. In Russian and French Prisons. Introduction by George Woodcock. Black Rose Books, 1991. ISBN: 9780921689980.

Maklakov, V. A. The First State Duma: Contemporary Reminiscences. Indiana University, 1964.

Manstein, C. H. von. Contemporary Memoirs of Russia: From the Year 1727 to 1744. Routledge, 1968. ISBN: 9780714615400. [Preview with Google Books]

Nikitenko, Aleksandr. Diary of a Russian Censor: Aleksandr Nikitenko. Abridged, edited and translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson. University of Massachusetts Press, 1975. ISBN: 9780870231520. 

Pipes, Richard. Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient & Modern Russia: A Translation & Analysis. University of Michigan Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780472030507. [Preview with Google Books] (Fascinating, opinionated history of Russia by a turn-of-the-century monarchist. Insightful introduction.)

Pobedonostsev, Konstantin Petrovich. Reflections of a Russian Statesman. Translated by Robert Crozier Long.  Grant Richards, 1898.(Memoirs of Alexander III’s arch-conservative teacher and adviser.)

Rieber, Alfred J., ed. The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii, 1857–1864. De Gruyter Mouton, 2019. ISBN: 9783111208503. [Preview with Google Books]

Snow, George E. The Years 1881­–1894 in Russia­­-A Memorandum Found in the Papers of N.Kh. Bunge: A Translation and Commentary. American Philosophical Society, 1981. ISBN: 9780871697165.

Steinberg, Mark D., and Vladimir M. Khrustalev. The Fall of the Romanovs. Yale University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780300070675. (Letters of Nicholas II & Alexandra.)

Tolstoy, Leo. Childhood, Boyhood and Youth. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Oxford University Press, 1957.

Trotsky, Leon. Chapters 1­–28 in My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography. Pathfinder Press, 1626.

Witte, Sergei Iur’evich. The Memoirs of Count Witte. Translated and edited by Sidney Harcave. Routledge, 1990. [Preview with Google Books] ISBN: 9780873325714. (Memoirs of important reformer of the early 20th century.)

Zelnik, Reginald E., trans., and ed. A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov. Stanford University Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780804713313. [Preview with Google Books]

Course Info

As Taught In
Fall 2019
Learning Resource Types
Written Assignments