Analyzing the historical literature on early modern Russia (late 15th – late 18th centuries), it is easy to see that the tendency to revise the seemingly established assessments and interpretations, which emerged several decades ago, far from being stopped, continues to evolve. Dedicated to the history of the early modern "Russian Empire", a new study by N. Sh. Kollmann, a famous American Russian scholar, is a clear confirmation of this. Operating with a significant volume of facts and approaching their assessment with a new questionnaire, the researcher gives an original and, in many ways, unexpected picture of the development of Russian statehood from the middle 15th to the beginning of the 19th centuries. At the same time, she questions and criticizes the established stereotypes regarding the political regime and the internal structure of the Russian state in the period under review, the nature of the relationship between the government and society, etc. The thesis about the absence of a gap in political tradition and culture between the “Moscow” and “Petersburg” periods of the history of Russian statehood was not a common thread through all this research, but, despite all the external differences, an unconditional continuity can be seen between these two stages of its evolution.
Analyzing the historical literature on early modern Russia (late 15th – late 18th centuries), it is easy to see that the tendency to revise the seemingly established assessments and interpretations, which emerged several decades ago, far from being stopped, continues to evolve. Dedicated to the history of the early modern "Russian Empire", a new study by N. Sh. Kollmann, a famous American Russian scholar, is a clear confirmation of this. Operating with a significant volume of facts and approaching their assessment with a new questionnaire, the researcher gives an original and, in many ways, unexpected picture of the development of Russian statehood from the middle 15th to the beginning of the 19th centuries. At the same time, she questions and criticizes the established stereotypes regarding the political regime and the internal structure of the Russian state in the period under review, the nature of the relationship between the government and society, etc. The thesis about the absence of a gap in political tradition and culture between the “Moscow” and “Petersburg” periods of the history of Russian statehood was not a common thread through all this research, but, despite all the external differences, an unconditional continuity can be seen between these two stages of its evolution.