Hello.
I was looking for books on Russian history from 1890s-1953.
A lot of attention is given to the revolution of 1917 and the years that followed. However I have an avid interest in the events leading up to that as well as the period after that.
What I'm looking for,
The poor economic and social situation in the late Russian Empire and 1890s famine, the loss to Japan, failed revolution of 1905 and disaster in WW1 (1900-1917). More depth info on Russian Tsar's policies in Russia such as the secret police and other conditions, WW1 leading to the revolution will be welcomed.
Accumulation and breaking point - 1917 revolution and removal of the Tsar.
Russian civil war -1917 -1922.
Lenin years - 1917-1924.
Early Stalin years - 1924-1939
USSR in WW2 - 1939-1945.
Late Stalin years and the Cold War 1945-1953.
I'm particularly interested in the Bolsheviks and their policies in running the USSR with their secret police, repression, purges, propaganda and famines.
I'm sorry if this was asking for too much but I'll really appreciate any good recommendations.
Thank you.
This is a big span of time! And generally it doesn't get treated in a single volume that isn't a larger one-volume Russian history, but here are some options:
Stephen Kotkin's Stalin biography (the current two volumes released go from 1879 to 1941, and a third volume for 1941-1953 is in production). The first volume in particular is more of a history of Russia from circa 1870 through Stalin's rise to power, and Kotkin actually covers a lot of ground concerning how the Russian government operated before and after the 1917 operations. He goes into a fair amount of detail around Stolypin and Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve, for example.
Shiela Fitzpatrick's Russian Revolution is a short and helpful primer on the 1917-1937 period. She also wrote groundbreaking social histories of life in the Stalinist era - Everyday Stalinism and Stalin's Peasants.
Orlando Figes also does social and cultural history, and his A People's Tragedy covers the 1891 to 1924 period (he has a Russian Revolution history, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, that gets deep into cultural symbols from the period).
David Stone's The Russian Army in the Great War is an updated history on Russian participation in the First World War. It's very military-focused. Something along similar lines for World War II would be David Glantz and Jonathan House's When Titans Clashed.
All of these will cover such fun topics as "secret police, repression, purges, propaganda and famines." If you're going to dive deeper into those, I would recommend sticking with newer publications rather than older ones. So, for example, go ahead and skip Robert Conquest, and if you read anything from J. Arch Getty, go with his newer things coauthored with Oleg Naumov like Road to Terror.
People may or may not recommend Anne Applebaum (Gulag and Red Famine) and I admit I'm really ambivalent about her. She's not wrong per se, but she can couch a lot of her history in heavy editorialization, and she ultimately is synthesizing secondary sources instead of doing original archival research. You'd probably do better to read Oleg Khlevniuk's History of the Gulag and Stephen Wheatcroft's Years of Hunger.