* History of Russia: From Peter the Great to Gorbachev (36)

It's difficult to imagine a nation whose history is more compelling for Americans than that of Russia. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, this was the nation against which we measured our own nation's values and power and with whom war, if it ever came, could spell unimaginable catastrophe for our planet.

Mark Steinberg
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign - Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley