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Introducton
Chapter 1 - The constituents of Muscovite power, c, 1450
Chapter 2 - Creating a Muscovite army, 1462-1533
Chapter 3 - The army that won and empire
Chapter 4 - The political prelude to military reform
Chapter 5 - The Thirteen Years' War, 1654 - 67
Chapter 6 - The steppe frontier after Razin, 1672-97
Chapter 7 - Peter the Great and the beginning of the Great Northern War
Chapter 8 - Military institutions afte4r Poltava
Conclusions
One may compare this book with Alexander Filjushkin's book,
Ivan the Terrible: A military history;
and Brian Davies' book Warfare, State, and Society on
the Black Sea Steppe, 1550 - 1700. They obviously overlap in subject
matter, but in many respects they are complementary. I recommend that they all
three should be studied together.
The author has made great use of Russian as well as western sources. She
notes the recent flood of literature on Russian military history. But as usual
I miss sources in the Turkish - Tatar languages. The time period covered is
much wider than that in either the history of Ivan IV or the study on steppe
warfare. This provides an excellent description of the overall context for the
reader of these other two important books.Theauthor sets here agenda in the
introduction. The book is about 'the development of Russian military power and
its interaction with social, administratibve and ideological change in Russian
society". It was during this 300 year period that Muscovy became the
Russian Empire. Dr. Stevens sets the background of this remarkable
transformation well in her description of the Muscovite military as it existed
before the reign of Ivan III, hardly changed from its medieval period. She
notes that the extensive expansion of the Russian territory required a massive
expansion of military power. And she shows that this expansion necessitated and
caused significant changes in the political structure and society itself. These
changes were occuring during the period convered by the other two books, but
those books do not focus as much attention on the political and social
transformations. She states her second theme in this way. "Military change
is neigher simply andstarkly military, nor technological. The second particular
emphasis of this volume is its focus on the military changes, as much as
military innovations sensu stricto. Thus, this book focuses on the ways
in which political organizations, the political will of elites, environment,
economics and social structure interacted with Russia's military efforts in the
early modern era."
At this point I have to digress to note the rather jarring comment she makes on
page 2 of the introduction. "The reigns of Peter's consort and son in the
years ...." But of course Peter's son died his father's hand and did not
reign.
She notes further, "The nature of Russian military innovation is another
theme of this volume". In this respect she strongly stresses that even
when Muscovy - Russia - was fighting major wars on two fronts these were not
such different kinds of war. There were changes, innovations, additions,
increasing practical use of foreign experts from western Europe, but the tsars
brought their cavalry forces so essential to steppe warfare to their western
campaigns, and conversely increasingly used the artillery and small-armed
infantry developed on western models in their campaigns to the east and south.
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