In a fascinating "urban biography," Michael Hamm tells the story of one of Europe's most diverse cities and its distinctive mix of Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish inhabitants. A splendid urban center in medieval times, Kiev became a major metropolis in late Imperial Russia, and is now the capital of independent Ukraine. After a concise account of Kiev's early history, Hamm focuses on the city's dramatic growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first historian to analyze how each of Kiev's ethnic groups contributed to the vitality of the city's culture, he also...

..". one of the most coherent and unified collaborative works in the field of Russian history." --American Historical Review

"This book excels in capturing the colors, tastes, sounds, and smells of Imperial Russia's rapidly growing, ethnically divided cities... " --Journal of Interdisciplinary History

..". must reading for those interested in Russian urban and social history." --Slavic Review

"This is a rich and informative book... "--Journal of Social History

From the Great Reforms that began in the 1860s to the revolutions of 1917, the Russian Empire experienced a...