In Russia in the Early Modern World: The Continuity of Change (Lexington, 2022), Donald Ostrowski takes on the long-lived narrative that Peter the Great's reign constituted a pivot point in Russian history. Before Peter, this narrative generally says, there was continuity and even stagnation; after the Petrine Revolution, however, was dynamism, Westernization, and so on. Thoroughly documented and creatively organized, Professor Ostrowski's book suggests that this long-establish narrative has its roots in nineteenth-century Russian historical scholarship that was less attentive to the evidence than it should have been.

Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism.

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