“This small volume contains recent key essays on the historical subject that has most interested me ever since, for better or for worse, I became a student of Russian history more than three decades ago. Is Russia a part of Europe? And if it is, why deny it? This seems like an odd question, but it does represent the essence of the problem. While it is simple to say that Russia is not a European entity, it is not true. It is a commonplace proclaimed mainly in politics and publications. The historian must examine why, and in what way, Russia’s Europeanism is different. How can the universality and peculiarity of Russian history be best approached and grasped?” (2009)

“This book has had a pretty rough ride to publication. It lay tucked away in a file for a decade. The twelve papers in this book contain almost everything that, for me, is important in Russian history. Regardless of when I wrote these papers, I still consider them relevant and am glad to be able to share the insights I have gained with interested English-speaking readers. These readers will be treated to a narrative about the Russian path that is neither Russian nor Western, a narrative enriched and informed by the author’s experience of everything that fate has dealt to Central Eastern Europe.”