A comprehensive history of the transformation of Russia's southern steppes from border territories to Empire.
Michael Khodarkovsky's book tells the story of Semen Atarshchikov, a single man with multiple allegiances, and provides a concise and compelling history of the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian Seas.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the expanding Russian empire was embroiled in a dramatic confrontation with the nomadic people known as the Kalmyks who had moved westward from Inner Asia onto the vast Caspian and Volga steppes. Drawing...